Biden Sees Slim Path to Victory; Trump Seeks to Cancel Counting
I’m sure more than one Democrat was hurling their chardonnay in the wee hours of the morning as early results suggested the possibility of a Trump win.
This morning in key states where Republicans sued to prevent advance counting of mail-in ballots --Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania-- saw the incumbent’s early leads fade. The vote counting isn’t over, and, thanks to President Trump, it’s going to be going to be a long time until the results are certified.
Trump has already claimed victory. After 2am he made the call, and demanded all voting be stopped. The voting IS already over. The counting of ballots is what his lawyers will go to court to stop.
Here's Mark Sumner, via Daily Kos:
No one sitting through Tuesday evening, or looking at where things stand on Wednesday morning, should be surprised. This is exactly the scenario that was predicted over and over.
Trump and other Republicans worked hard to throw as many monkey wrenches into the works as they could. They’ve already launched, lost, appealed, and tried again on everything from halting drive-up voting locations, to throwing out whole boxes of mail-in votes. This is literally the effort Trump put underway months ago. It’s the reason he employed DeJoy to wreck the Post Office, and the reason he was so determined to seat Amy Coney Barrett before the election.
Trump thought he would lose, and set up a process to make it seem like he hadn’t. Now he’s executing that plan. On Wednesday morning, that plan looked like Trump standing in front of a hundred maskless supporters to lie about winning, call counting the vote “stealing,” and make false claims of fraud.
My reading of the tea leaves is that Biden will be able to claim victory. Someday.
We’re in for a long stretch of stinko politics. Don’t expect Trump to hesitate; he’s going to act as if he’s won. Bad things are likely to be the result, only limited by his inability to focus.
https://twitter.com/jacobbogage/status/1324010243232325633?s=20
Regardless of his proclamations, the various states’ tabulation of legal votes will continue, as it has after election night in every election.
The President can’t automatically go straight to the Supreme Court. His side will need to have a case—brought by someone with legal standing—in each state whose results he wants to overturn. And we can expect his followers to make trouble, especially in the states in question.
As Fox News’ Chris Wallace said immediately after the “victory is mine” press conference: “This is an extremely flammable situation. The president just threw a match into it.”
Trump and his followers did garner the votes of millions of Americans, many of whom will eagerly take up whatever call for action he puts out in the next couple of days.
The rest of us will have to calmly but firmly insist that every single vote gets counted, and the results of the election respected. What Trump wants is chaos.
What we’ll have to do is to watch each move from here on out closely, demanding justice from every still-standing institution. If there was ever a time to take a deep breath and refocus our efforts, it’s now.
NOTE- I’ll update this post with information about “Count Every Vote” protests now scheduled for 500 locations nationwide. I’m going to announce San Diego’s progressive responses to Trump’s actions and local election analysis in other posts throughout the day.
https://twitter.com/noreaster/status/1324006736248930305?s=20
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Lead image: Gerd Altmann via Pixabay