Biden Win Looking Closer
The picture is becoming clearer.
As the voting continues, things are already looking better for Joe Biden than they did at 6am.
WaPo’s Matt Viser:
Biden campaign thinking:
*They believe they’ve won Wisc, expect it to be called this morning
*Mich vote by mail lead is insurmountable and will be called midday
*Philly vote by mail will come in tonight or tomorrow
*GA result midday or early afternoon
*NV called tomorrow
Biden is already ahead and Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada and there’s zero reason to think the outstanding votes will go to Trump. Those three states alone would put him over the top. And there’s very good chance still that he’ll win both Pennsylvania and Georgia given that the outstanding votes are in Philadelphia and Atlanta.
David Plouffe, granted a motivated observer, notes as well,
Biden’s lead is now currently bigger than Trump’s final 2016 margin in both MI and WI and is projected to grow. Estimates are his PA lead will be bigger as well. If smaller margins were good enough for Trump to collapse the Blue Wall, larger ones certainly OK to rebuild it.
This is all good news.
The bad news, of course, is that Biden is likely to have a Republican Senate led by an emboldened Mitch McConnell. That leaves massive reforms unlikely to pass, which is a good or bad thing depending on one’s point of view. But it beats four more years of crazy from the Commander-in-Chief.
The long awaited trumpectomy will be much harder and hazardous than anticipated.
I think I’m getting why the Greeks had this thing about hubris. That pretty much lies at the heart of all Greek Tragedies, and many myths as well
ABC’s website is now reporting Biden ahead in MI by 10K votes, with 10 percent left to count. So yeah. That’s done.
PA still seems like a stretch, but this is a strange situation.
If there is just one thing the Democrats can learn from the Republicans is that no matter how close the margin, declare a massive win and a mandate.
Hate to be a Debbie Downer but I’ve seen the faithless elector question raised. Even if Biden lands on 270 can we be sure he’ll still be there after the electoral votes are actually counted?
@Paine:
Many states have laws precluding faithlessness. Regardless, given that Electors are party officials who were specifically affiliated with the campaigns, it’s hard to believe any will defect when the outcome hinges on it. The handful of defectors in recent years have been meaningless protest votes that didn’t impact the result.
I can only say – Good bloody fing Lord. You people (as in the USA) need a serious house cleaning.
This is a mess worthy of some third world backwater.
@Lounsbury:..third world backwater.
Trump has been cultivating this image for some time.
@Lounsbury: Seems large portions of the USA are not far off from third world backwater. (Still incensed that the worst president in a long time, possibly ever, can get so many votes.)
The Wisconsin Elections Commission just indicated with all votes counted Joe Biden has won the state by 20,967 votes.
Keep an eye on Georgia. Trump is up by only 100,000 votes and there are still 200,000 votes to be counted, mostly from strong blue counties. Like Michigan, Georgia has also 16 EVs.
@Paine:
A faithless elector that hands the election to Trump from a Biden win will…. let’s be honest, be looking into moving to another nation PDQ. Can you imagine a single person being responsible for flipping such a contested election? Even the SC as an institution would offer shelter to the conservatives should Barrett and the others side with him; being a faithless elector would paint an *enormous* target on an individual’s back that would require some pretty hardcore MAGA / QAnon values to sustain. Someone like that wouldn’t be involved in the first place on the Dems side and I’m very sure they’re marshalling the troops to see if anyone’s got a wandering constitution to lock the vote down.
On the other hand, it *is* 2020……
@KM:
As one of my best friends calls it, “Junk Punch 2020.”
I wasn’t sure which thread to put this in, but I’ve been having these thoughts since last night.
History suggests it’s hard to beat an incumbent president. Even a modest non-landslide win for Biden makes Trump only the 4th president to lose reelection in the past hundred years (plus Ford, who was facing his first election in 1976 despite being an incumbent). You’d think the pandemic would be just the kind of situation to have him lose in a rout like Hoover or Carter. But the country is just a lot more polarized than it used to be.
@Paine:
Yup. Noted in the OP.
I posted to the open forum around 6 this morning right after looking at the election tallies of the states in play. It didn’t look good for Biden.
It now looks like Biden will pull out a narrow win. A couple of comments
1 Don’t be surprised if Trump or the GOP sue in some of these tightly contested states.
2 Based on yesterday’s results, I think my prediction of Biden losing if the economy didn’t tank would have come out to be true. People and businesses are hurting right now and a good number of them may have inclined to go for Trump before the pandemic hit.
3 Trump is liable to sulk and do nothing at all between now and January 20th. He’s been rejected by the voting public and therefore he has no need to do any Presidential duties. This could leave our country dangerously vulnerable.
They can sue all they like…what possible grounds could they have to overturn the vote counts?
The irony there being that Trump’s party will likely do little to nothing to help those people and businesses hurting right now…
Of course that is exactly what he will do…he has shown repeatedly that the only person in the whole world he cares about is himself…our country has already suffered because of that and will now suffer further for the same reason…
@Lounsbury:
Well, trump did spend 4 years working on it. The sad part is 48% of Americans celebrate it.
@An Interested Party:
Nothing so far as I know. I was just making a prediction.
My mother taught me irony a long time ago. She said to me once “If I said it once, I said it a thousand times. Never exaggerate.”
@An Interested Party: “….(W)hat possible grounds could they have to overturn the vote counts?” I bet Mr Barr will enlighten us before too many more hours or days.
Remain seated with seatbelts fastened!
@reid: That’s why Walt Kelly wrote We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us all those years ago. But I suspect that even he would be gobsmacked by Trump.
I’m watching the PA returns, and it’s been fascinating watching it roll in slowly. This morning, it was a 700K Trump lead with 80.1% returns in.
It’s currently 399K with 83.7% returns in.
PA is going to go to Biden as well, based on this trend, and where the votes are left to count.
@JohnMcC:
And with your tray table restored to its upright positions.
Oops! That’s for an airplane.
@EddieInCA:
My prognostication skills the past two cycles have not been good but that’s been my sense since around 10 Eastern. I think Biden wins everything except North Carolina.
@James Joyner:
If that happens–if he pulls off a win in GA, in addition to PA, MI, WI, AZ, and NE-02–that puts the final tally at 306-232, a perfect mirror image of Trump’s 2016 total.
@James Joyner:
Better than mine. Silly me. I thought there was no way ALL the pollsters would have another night of HISTORIC polling errors. All of them missed it, except one pollster in Iowa who called it almost right on the button, but only for Iowa.
@JohnMcC: I’m pretty sure Mr Barr will stay far away from any election litigation. The US govt “doesn’t care” who wins or loses an election.
s// but for appearances sake, he will stay far away from it.
In Michigan right now, Trumpist imbeciles are pounding on the windows of a vote counting center, demanding the count be stopped NOW!
Biden is currently ahead in Michigan.
I mean, I still say count all the votes, but if Trump’s supporters REALLY want to stop now…hahaha…morons.