GET OUT: US politics November 2020

more generally I don't see how anyone looks at this election, or any election in their lifetime, and comes away still holding the belief that most people are fundamentally good

I'm bored with Wisconsin imminence now.

Oh, it's already called by NBC, I see. I was following AP.

also the suburbs are a lot less white now, though non-white does not equal a monolithic voting bloc

Sorry, I'm in a mini thread with myself but I shouldn't trust people on Twitter - NBC hasn't officially called WI either.

like, i wanted certain former loved ones to wake up today and feel

This is always a sucker’s game unfortunately, no matter what the feeling is

i'm a lifelong sucker, what can i say

relative closeness of this election just makes me think we should restore voting rights to the incarcerated

and also abolish prisons but you know one step at a time

jesus christ I am so confused about PA right now from everything said here and on the web in general. Is PA looking really good? Or is it actually a doubtful long shot? Feel like I'm hearing both equally can someone summarize...

― Evan, Wednesday, November 4, 2020 12:13 PM bookmarkflaglink

Nate Cohn wrote this (paywalled) about 45 minutes ago:

Pennsylvania. Looks can be deceiving. This one might seem out of reach for Mr. Biden, with the president holding an 11-point lead. But Mr. Trump is in quite a bit of danger here as well. The preponderance of the remaining vote is mail absentee, and Mr. Biden has won mail absentee votes in Pennsylvania by a margin of 78 percent to 21 percent. There are more than 1.4 million absentee votes left to count, according to the secretary of state, and that’s not including ballots that might arrive over the next few days. If Mr. Biden wins these 1.4 million votes by the same margin he’s been winning them so far — and it seems a safe bet — it would net him 800,000 votes, enough for him to pull ahead. That said, it’s hard to be too confident with this many ballots left to count. State officials expect the overwhelming majority of votes will be counted by Friday.

there is never a lightbulb moment. you think they’re going to wake up? “i want to be good! i want to be a good boy!” - never going to happen, not even in a 50-state sweep

more generally I don't see how anyone looks at this election, or any election in their lifetime, and comes away still holding the belief that most people are fundamentally good

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Wednesday, November 4, 2020 12:15 PM bookmarkflaglink

I've never believed it! people are crap-filled crap

Oh, it's already called by NBC, I see. I was following AP.

― Alba, Wednesday, November 4, 2020 11:15 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think it has. The Wisconsin Election Commission told NBC that all of the votes have been counted, and apparently Biden currently holds a 20,000 vote lead. But no decision desks have made a call yet.

Since Biden seems to be ahead by less than a percentage point, it's eligible for a recount.

Oh, the Trumpists know they're looking at doom. At the market an hour ago, a MAGA hive, the mood was rather grim. The cars in the parking lot boasted not a single flag, something I haven't seen since June.

I've heard many Decision desks don't do calls for margins under 1%

so we 'know' he won, but it's not official at the network, etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrdTG70sYEw

oh I agree a quick and decisive loss would've been amazing but you know they would've just justified it another way, like "huh guess the fake news really did get ahold of suburban idiots" or whatever. at the end of the day Republicans treat politics like sports, I know because they're so emotionally invested in winning but don't have any real policy goals, and in sports this is the most painful kind of loss

here's the entire paywalled Cohn article (fuck you, this should be free). only thing that worries me is not only does he still have Arizona up for grabs, but makes it sound rosier than the other networks. however, he may just be bet hedging:

"Nevada. Mr. Biden has only a narrow lead, but here again it’s hard to see where Mr. Trump is supposed to make up ground. All of the Election Day vote has been counted, and now only Democratic-leaning late mail and provisional ballots remain. Nevada election officials said no more results would be released until noon Eastern on Thursday.

Arizona. The president is at a much larger five-point deficit in Arizona, so you might be surprised to learn that it’s still up for grabs. But there’s uncertainty about the remaining vote. One thing we know: There are late mail ballots, received by the state over the last few days. These ballots usually tilt Democratic, but this year they might not. So many Democrats rushed their ballots in early that most of the remaining absentee ballots are from registered Republicans. It’s possible these Republicans just went out and voted on Election Day. But it’s also possible they’ve sent in their ballots, which haven’t been counted yet. We’ll get a better idea later Wednesday, when officials have said they expect to have finished counting ballots.

Michigan. Mr. Trump had the lead here all night, but his path is now looking bleak. The lead dwindled in the morning, and Mr. Biden has now overtaken him, with many votes remaining to be counted in heavily Democratic Wayne County. It’s also reasonable to assume that a lot of the outstanding vote is Democratic mail absentee, which poll workers weren’t allowed to begin processing until either Monday or Tuesday. This might not be particularly close in the end, and there’s a decent chance it’s called today. The secretary of state said on Tuesday night that she expected to have “a very clear picture, if not a final picture” of the results by Wednesday night.

If Mr. Biden were to capture Michigan, he would have the advantage in states that would push his total past the 270-electoral-vote threshold.

Pennsylvania. Looks can be deceiving. This one might seem out of reach for Mr. Biden, with the president holding an 11-point lead. But Mr. Trump is in quite a bit of danger here as well. The preponderance of the remaining vote is mail absentee, and Mr. Biden has won mail absentee votes in Pennsylvania by a margin of 78 percent to 21 percent. There are more than 1.4 million absentee votes left to count, according to the secretary of state, and that’s not including ballots that might arrive over the next few days. If Mr. Biden wins these 1.4 million votes by the same margin he’s been winning them so far — and it seems a safe bet — it would net him 800,000 votes, enough for him to pull ahead. That said, it’s hard to be too confident with this many ballots left to count. State officials expect the overwhelming majority of votes will be counted by Friday.

Georgia. This might surprise people. Mr. Trump has a two-point lead with more than 90 percent of votes counted, but there’s a lot of Democratic vote left in the Atlanta area. It might be just enough for Mr. Biden. This one’s sure to be very close either way. The secretary of state has said he expects the winners of most races in the state to be announced by Wednesday.

If Mr. Biden did carry Georgia, along with the other states mentioned so far, he’d win more than 300 electoral votes.

Since Biden seems to be ahead by less than a percentage point, it's eligible for a recount.

doesn't it have to be 0.5%? Trump won by 0.7% in 2016 and I remember it being ineligible, but maybe I was too drunk to remember anything

btw the markets are way up now that it seems likely that Biden's going to win, not sure what that says

This will surprise many!

I don't see how anyone looks at this election, or any election in their lifetime, and comes away still holding the belief that most people are fundamentally good

yeah, but ... so yesterday I was driving around downtown and looking at all the buildings boarded up in case of civil unrest and I was thinking back to the same downtown on Election Night in 2008, when Obama won for the first time. And I actually did have that feeling. So many people were out that night, walking around, driving around, and there wasn't a single homicide!

speaking of which, where are all the promised Q maniacs shooting up polling places

It occurred to me, perhaps longer than most of you: should Biden win, waking up to not seeing news cycles worrying about a malicious rancid mayo-in-a-garbage-bag of a president's tweets is taaaaasssty pudding.

maybe I should stop talking about it, cuz Biden hasn't won yet. obviously there's well enough votes out there to tilt it Trump's way, even if there's no indication it's coming from the places it needs to be. still, I guess if there's one thing we're learning it's that these super-high turnout elections do in fact cause some very weird things to happen.

Remember, the unofficial numbers being reported for Wisconsin come from the news media. The state doesn't have its own election night system for unofficial results. The WEC won't start getting official numbers from county clerks til next week.

More here:https://t.co/hKzI82DCeC

— Wisconsin Elections (@WI_Elections) November 4, 2020

I think the markets are way up now that it's obvious that Republicans are going to win the Senate and thus that the corporate tax cuts will not be reversed.

speaking of which, where are all the promised Q maniacs shooting up polling places

― it bangs for thee (Simon H.), Wednesday, November 4, 2020 12:26 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

supposedly the Qs now think that Trump actually won all 50 states in a landslide and this fact is being suppressed by the mainstream media

speaking of which, where are all the promised Q maniacs shooting up polling places

Yeah if there's a narrative that was clearly disaster porn it was the idea that everything was going to go down on Election Day itself one way or another. And...nothing happened! People just voted.

xp -- from what I've read the markets are up because of a likely Biden win and likely larger stimulus

already tired of this narrative:

Amy McGrath and Jaime Harrison raised a combined $199,004,686 and lost to Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham by a combined 35 points.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 4, 2020

yes of course this represents a poor allocation of resources but you can hardly blame the average small-dollar Dem donor who isn't hyper-aware of polling for being overly focused on getting rid of arguably the two biggest pieces of shit in the Senate.

A long but worthwhile thread:

I probably texted well over a million people

Before I forget them, a few observations from thousands and thousands of conversations with voters.

CAVEAT: a lot of people decide who to vote for, then rationalize it. Not vice versa.

🧵 1/

— Georgia Bear (@dataandpolitics) November 4, 2020

i want the photo-op of harris and biden personally removing the first panel of fencing from around the white house, and i want it now

i get that this should have been a rout but i'm still absolutely thrilled at the prospect of a close win (if it happens). but then i live in a state where these people are 65 percent of the majority and racism is just the natural order of things.

It is really rough in Q Land today. https://t.co/e7YxESf9Ub

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) November 4, 2020

I want them personally removing Trump's pants and then kicking him

lol

15/11 this is where I go from reflections to punditry, so CAVEAT.

The number of voters for whom terms like Latinx are meaningful is tiny. Maybe 3%?

The number of voters who HATE that term is far higher.

Politics is for power, so talk to voters where they are to win.

— Georgia Bear (@dataandpolitics) November 4, 2020

I must say that, as a former employee in the all-grift "blockchain sector", I take an immense level of personal delight from brock pierce getting a grand total of 4 votes in San Francisco

v much looking forward to the next xouple eps of QAnon Anonymous xps

this is extremely otm:

16/11 Voters expect — nay want — politicians to punish their opponents.

When Biden is president, he needs to stop this “bipartisan” charade nonsense.

Punishing the GOP — jail, prison, policy — is the only path forward.

— Georgia Bear (@dataandpolitics) November 4, 2020

Biden's lead in Michigan has grown to more than 34,000 votes. That's about three times larger than Trump's victory there in 2016.https://t.co/LUAtbpbUkA pic.twitter.com/uTHXs9ICRu

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) November 4, 2020

xp lock him up?

Trump just won the highest share of non-white support of any Republican in 60 years. The Democratic Party is an absolute joke.

— Gravel Institute (@GravelInstitute) November 4, 2020

would love someone to explain why exactly this is

one thing's for sure, we're going to hear a whole lot of bad and wrong answers over the next forever

there's a tweet thread about it posted a few minutes ago

the liberal assumption that "minority" or "POC" = will vote on "woke" issues is dangerous and Trump clearly took advantage of that misunderstanding

people at the bottom love cruelty just as much as people at the top

the thread unperson posted upthrrad explains a lot, really good read

also The Wilderness podcast (Crooked Media/Jon Favreau) came to some similar conclusions

instead of these dumb tweet hot takes by Gravel polling, we could actually seriously ask the question and try to learn over the next 4 years. we've only ever paid lip service to it, which is how we get comments like Biden's "If you don't vote for me, you're not Black!".

the nice thing is these are conversations that are good and we can learn from if we ask the right questions and actively listen, rather than focusing our efforts on trying to appease racist coal voters after 2016.

indeed, I think Dems' reputation for canvassing a ton in minority communities and then doing nothing for them is biting them pretty hard

people at the bottom love cruelty just as much as people at the top

― Give me a Chad Smith-type feel (map),

^^ THIS. My Cuban parents, raised with this up-from-the-bootstraps shit, have absorbed the self-absorption but fortunately not the cruelty.

xpost that's been the Dem stereotype for a non-negligible amount of time, and while some of it is Republicans doing their Pee Wee Herman impression, there's a lot of truth to it.

I still can't rectify how that would lead to a Republican vote of all things, considering they've paid less than lip service to minority communities, but...idk