It’s here.
Discuss. Here’s a question to start out with, maybe: Are you a bundle of nerves? Because I’m a bundle of nerves.
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It’s here: Election Day Open Thread
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
We Hunted The MammothIt’s here.
Discuss. Here’s a question to start out with, maybe: Are you a bundle of nerves? Because I’m a bundle of nerves.
At this point, the only thing we can do is try to force the counting of the last few votes in the swing states. According to the Associated Press Biden has 238 called for him, so he would need 32 more. Given that the upper Midwest has yet to count many mail in ballots, winning any 2 out of the three of PA, MI, and/or WI would get him over the top. The main issue is Trump obstructing that.
We’re about where we were expected to be. It was never going to be a landslide, despite what the polls said. 40% of the country is intractably stupid, cruel, and racist. They haven’t changed a bit since 2016. Their personal identity is deeply vested in Trump and they’ll happily follow him right over the cliff into the abyss if there’s even a 1% chance it might hurt a liberal. It’s no longer about right and wrong for them. It’s about winning and losing. Yesterday they voted to send a QAnon supporter and a literal Hitler worshipper to Congress. Nothing is going to bring them out of the darkness. The rest of us are going to have to figure out how to survive with them in our midst.
Reporting is saying that Republicans are likely to keep the Senate. That’s one thing I was worried about: Some conservatives may have turned against Trump, but they justify voting Republican down-ballot, thus supporting the very conditions that gave us Trump to begin with.
McConnell’s strategy has worked through two presidents, now. Why would he stop?
Michigan is now leaning blue with the newest numbers. Pennsylvania is worrying me though.
MI, WI, NV, and one of Nebraska’s districts are leaning Biden right now. If he wins all of those he will win narrowly without PA. Fingers crossed.
Of course, if the GOP keeps the senate that makes things a lot harder and precludes possibilities like packing the courts.
Apparently some believe that PA still have a good chance to turn blue.
@Ohlmann
It could happen, but it really depends on how many mail-in votes are left. Mail in votes skew heavily Democratic and likely won’t be done counting until Friday.
Apparently, Trump’s tweeting is now heavily focused on that special naughty content that gets hidden under Twitter’s misinformation disclaimer. It’s so bizarre when I scroll English language Twitter feeds and people keep quoting something that only shows as that disclaimer, again and again, and it’s in Finnish due to my laptop’s language settings.
We won’t know Pennsylvania for a while, but if Biden gets to 270 by the end of today by virtue of holding all the places he already leads, the Republicans have no reason to contest it.
@Lumipuna
So far Twitter has defended their decision not to ban Trump by saying that he’s the president. When he leaves office, they still probably won’t ban him but will have to think of a new justification.
Naglfar – I’ve long thought that’s when we’ll see some top level creativity.
God I’m scared.
As he’s (correctly!) rather admired by readers here, let’s get Chuck Tingle’s take on the election:
http://fark-usrimg-850.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/U/U2/fark_U2CrLoMK3bKV8YH3QYAXoNLS7qY.jpg
(Hoping this works, linking an image from the Fark election thread #5)
Edit: Nope. It didn’t work. 🙁
Trying this instead:
I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster these past 24 hours. I signed up to work the polls so I barely got any sleep yesterday. They didn’t end up needing me because there were so many volunteers, but I was so excited I only got a couple of hours of sleep and was up at 7 AM, which is very early for me. They told me they would call of they needed me so I stayed up, but I never got the call.
The day started off optimistic, then became filled with trepidation, then intense concern (I’m not going to say fear) and anger at Trump and his enablers. I spent the whole day alternating between doing mindless tasks to keep myself busy and reading news stories where the comments were full of gloating Trump trolls. I was honestly afraid of going to sleep because I was afraid of what I would wake up to and I finally went to bed exhausted at 8 AM.
Now I’m up and the story is Biden looks likely to eke out an electoral college win and Dump has promised to challenge the ballots.
It’s like one of those nightmares where you wake up in the dream and something horrible happens because you’re still in the nightmare. Please let me wake up for real and everything be OK.
Unless there is a severe blue shift in some of these uncalled states, it looks like we may have a tie … ??? I think that means the race is called by the House, but the House is not looking like it’s a slam dunk either.
@ POM
It goes to the House, but each state just gets one vote.
So it depends on the distribution of congresscritters in each state.
If there’s still a deadlock then the VP becomes ‘acting’ president on inauguration day, and that continues until the House selects a new president.
(The way the house chooses president and VP are slightly different, so it’s meant to be less likely they would have a stalemate for VP too. Which would be just as well, and the amendment doesn’t say what would happen then)
@POM
The way I’m seeing it, with Nevada Biden would have 270 votes, which would narrowly miss a tie. I could be wrong, but given what’s been called and what’s leaning towards Biden I am cautiously optimistic.
If he’s able to snag PA, which seems plausible, that would bring him to 290.
Biden has officially got Michigan, so just 6 EC votes now needed.
@Alan Robertshaw
Nevada’s leaning blue, 538 says it’s likely Biden, and it has 6 votes. They do raise the slight concern of whether AZ was prematurely called, but still think that it’s likely Biden.
And remember PA is still counting votes. The Trump campaign is getting nervous on Twitter.
Good. This is nail biting though. Squeezing in catching up on things with my US friends on Discord on my way to work just now.