Election Day is finally here!!!
Unfortunately, the media just spent the past 24 hours telling me not to expect a winner. The “coronavirus election” ballots may take a bit longer to count, considering the outrageous increase in absentee and mail-in voting.
Donald Trump appears to be surging down the stretch, as Democrats are noticing some key demographics on which they relied missing from the early voting turnout data. Now, they’re praying Black and Latino Millennials and younger show up on Election Day, after casting half the number of votes projected by Democratic operatives.
This is it; get your picks in now at our top-rated political betting sites!
The Election Night that Wasn’t
As a result, the mainstream media spent all of Monday warning Americans to expect a victory announcement from Donald Trump, but not to believe it. No matter how promising the tallies appear on Election Night, Joe Biden will not be conceding.
There are multiple court battles taking place right now over a variety of election issues, ranging from the legality of drive-thru voting to how many extra days after Election Day states have to continue accepting ballots in the mail. Ballot counting timelines, in general, are a source of immense contention.
Early signs point to this election being a long, grueling war in which neither candidate – nor their supporters – will ever believe they’ve lost.
That means a series of strategic court rulings will probably decide anything short of a Joe Biden Tuesday night landslide. The Trump administration has been packing the federal courts – including the Supreme Court – for years now for precisely this situation.
Declaring Victory
Something hilarious happened.
All-day long on Monday, the main headline was that Donald Trump planned to declare himself the winner prematurely on Election Night in an effort to force states to stop counting ballots and steal the election.
The story came from Axios, which ran “Scoop: Trump’s plan to declare premature victory” on Sunday. Here’s an excerpt from that article:
Behind the scenes: Trump has privately talked through this scenario in some detail in the last few weeks, describing plans to walk up to a podium on election night and declare he has won.
For this to happen, his allies expect he would need to either win or have commanding leads in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Arizona, and Georgia.
Why it matters: Trump’s team is preparing to falsely claim that mail-in ballots counted after Nov. 3 — a legitimate count expected to favor Democrats — are evidence of election fraud.
Details: Many prognosticators say that on election night, Trump will likely appear ahead in Pennsylvania — though the state’s final outcome could change substantially as mail-in ballots are counted over the following days.
When asked about it by reporters, Trump denied the story, adding, “I think it’s a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election. I think it’s a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over.”
“I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election. … We’re going to go in the night of, as soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers.”
The article goes on, explaining all the reasons why Donald Trump’s claim of winning will be baseless and underhanded and an attempt to steal the presidency from Biden.
Less than 24 hours later, this is Axios’ headline for Election Day morning: “Scoop: Biden’s plan to assert control.”
Check out this excerpt from the very same publication that spent the previous day pearl-clutching over premature victors:
If news organizations declare Joe Biden the mathematical president-elect, he plans to address the nation as its new leader, even if President Trump continues to fight in court, advisers tell Axios.
Why it matters: Biden advisers learned the lesson of 2000, when Al Gore hung back while George W. Bush declared victory in that contested election, putting the Democrat on the defensive while Bush acted like the winner.
So if Biden is declared the winner, he’ll begin forming his government and looking presidential — and won’t yield to doubts Trump might try to sow.
Biden’s schedule for Tuesday includes a clue to this posture: He “will address the nation on Election Night in Wilmington, Delaware.”
Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters Monday that even if all the votes aren’t counted tonight, the campaign should have “a very good sense of where we’re headed”:
“We’re not really concerned about what Donald Trump says. … We’re going to use our data, our understanding of where this is headed, and make sure that the vice president is addressing the American people.”
Now it’s okay!!!
This kind of thing has been one of the worst parts about the Trump era. The utter lack of moral or ideologic consistency is insane. The “team sport” aspect of politics has wholly drowned out any sense of hypocrisy.
Ballot Counts and Court Battles
Donald Trump’s only prayer of securing a second term is by winning by such a monstrous landslide; nobody can deny its validity.
Unless the pollsters made everything up all campaign, we know a Trump landslide isn’t very likely. He can still win by outperforming his poll numbers, but you wouldn’t expect him to blow them out to that degree.
An emphatic electoral college showing for Joe Biden could result in the Democrats’ early declaration of victory, but it’s unclear whether the incumbent would concede under any circumstance.
Anything other than massive blowouts in either direction threats to complicate matters some. State GOPs and DNCs are already squaring off in a series of legal battles, each with the potential to decide the election.
- There are concerns over the number of additional days that local officials in Pennsylvania have to accept and count ballots after Tuesday night.
- New Hampshire has a pending lawsuit over voters being asked to pay for postage on mail-in ballots and rules regarding drop-off box collection that the Democratic Party says “threaten to disenfranchise and unduly burden voters in these unprecedented times.”
- In Wisconsin, Trump won a case barring election officials from counting mail-in ballots that arrive after November 3.
- Democrats scored a vital win in Texas, where a judge lifted an order from the Governor, trying to limit drop-off sites to one per county.
- However, the Republicans have won two key legal triumphs in Texas – one limiting mail-in voting eligibility to “those who are 65 and older, cite a disability or illness, are in jail but otherwise eligible or are outside the county where they are registered.”
- The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals also said Texas doesn’t have to allow voters to correct mail-in ballots that are rejected for ballot signatures not matching the one on file with the state.
These are only a small handful of the cases being discussed; many more will be launched after tonight. Many will be around counting deadlines – how long states have to continue finding and tallying ballots after Election Day.
Who’s Better to Win “Dirty?”
I think the prospect of a prolonged contested election with a bevy of court battles benefits Joe Biden over Trump. Not only have think-tanks like the Transition integrity Project been game planning for tonight since June, but they’ve also developed strategies to take back power even if Donald Trump does win!
The project was undertaken by a “bipartisan group of over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders and other experts in a series of 2020 election crisis scenario planning exercises.” Participants include Bill Kristol, David Frum, Michael Steele, and John Podesta.
Ultimately, Donald Trump and his small circle of loyalists are outsiders.
The establishment insiders are closing rank and pulling out all the stops to remove the current President from office.
As we’ve seen from its many Supreme Court losses, the Trump administration isn’t good at the technical, procedural part of governance. He’s up against the entire DC machine that wrote the rules and has been playing this game for decades.
I’m guessing it will happen sometime in December to minimize the damage the President can do during his lame-duck period.