By hook or by crook is Trump’s losing strategy
As it stood while he spoke, Biden had racked up a recordsetting 74 million votes, some 4 million more than Trump.
“As slow as it goes, it can be numbing. But never forget, the tally’s not just numbers. They represent votes and voters. Men and women who exercised their fundamental right to have their voice heard.
“What’s becoming clearer each hour is that a record number of Americans of all races, faiths, religions, chose change over more of the same. They’ve given us a mandate for action on COVID, the economy, on climate change, systemic racism. They made it clear they want the country to come together, not pull apart.
“The people spoke … and they spoke loudly for our ticket.”
Biden totally ignored the orangutan in the room.
Five states — Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia (recount demanded) and Arizona (which the Associated Press had already awarded to Biden) — remained in roiling play as ballot custodians juggled mail-in votes, advance votes, in-person votes, absentee votes, overseas military votes, damaged votes, re-examined votes that may or may not be valid, “segregated” votes, and a debunked conspiracy theory involving Sharpies.
Might as well pass out crayons to the cry babies in the White House.
The nut of it: Biden was leading in all four states.
In Pennsylvania, Biden had a 14,923 edge at 6:30 p.m., 17,012 at 7 p.m., 21,705 at 9 p.m. Nowhere near safe as houses, as count officials worked their way through some 100,000 ballots still to be processed, and, mercy, speculating they might not finish the lot until Saturday. Simultaneously, hordes of lawyers had been unleashed by Trump to waylay the Pennsylvania vote at every turn, pre-emptively or afterthe-fact. The president’s legal lackeys had twice been swatted down by the state courts.
By hook or by crook is the Trump strategy, where losing means never having to say you’ve lost.
But even Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had apparently had a bellyful, temporarily approving a Pennsylvania GOP request to ensure that county election officials were segregating mail ballots delivered after Election Day. The state courts had granted a three-day grace period extension for mail-in ballots to 5 p.m. Friday. Notably conservative Alito received the petition because he’s the justice responsible for that region. That piece of legal jockeying went into the GOP win column, interim, Alito calling for a response from Pennsylvania officials by Saturday afternoon.
The impact is purportedly minimal. Pennsylvania officials said they’d already set aside the small number of mail ballots that had arrived since Tuesday.
Unfathomably, Trump had discouraged his supporters from voting by mail, urging them instead to get out there in the midst of a raging pandemic to cast their ballots on Election Day. Which is how he’d nose-thumbed the coronavirus all along, turning rallies into super-spreader events.
The upshot of that gambit has been a confusing patchwork of mail-in rules across 50 states.
Nevada and Arizona, together, would turn the trick for Biden. If he secured the Keystone State, with its 20 Electoral College votes, every pathway to a Trump second term would be choked off. Can’t get there from here, sitting on 213 votes, regardless of what happened elsewhere. Biden was poised to flip-flip-flip-flip them all. He’d already upturned Wisconsin and Michigan, setting the stage for a resurrection of the Blue Wall that had been smashed to smithereens by Trump’s wrecking ball in 2016, Hillary Clinton still picking the plaster out of her hair.
There were reports that an enraged Trump was having conniption fits in the White House, levelling his fury and grievances at advisers, GOP governors and Republican senators wavering in their troth. Also, with endless pitches made to the Trump base for more money to support the “Official Election Defense Fund.” Otherwise, his spokesfolks had disappeared from all platform airwaves.
Yet all was serene at Casa Biden, amidst the rolling hills and foliage of suburban Greenville. While the professional prognosticators remained averse to a pick-and-roll declaration, 77-year-old Biden has appeared genuinely confident throughout this exhausting exercise in democracy, repeatedly assuring everyone to stay calm, be patient, keep the faith, as he has.
The Biden camp strategists had indisputably made some tactical errors during the campaign, most significantly failing to reach out effectively to Latino voters in the south of Florida, which cost the Democrats the important swing state.
Overall, Trump had received more than one-third of the male Hispanic vote, according to an exit poll from Edison Research, conducted for a consortium of news organizations.
But the same analysts were correct that Biden votes would climb sharply up the graph when advance ballots were blended in — precisely what happened in the rolling count around sunrise Wednesday, fattening further when dense urban precincts started reporting, belatedly, in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
Public servants counting votes — some claimed they felt intimidated — as Republican (but also Democratic) eagleeyes kept close watch, the former succeeding in their demands to be allowed closer.
Trump shocked the world four years ago with his comefrom-behind triumph over Clinton. But there didn’t appear to be that kind of momentum for a second act gotcha this time around. As the hours passed, the flurry of Trump tweets subsided, the greatest indicator that perhaps the surging inevitability of a Biden victory was settling in the sitting president’s choleric bloodstream, too. But concede? As if. The word does not exist in the incumbent’s limited vocabulary. Instead, it was a gore splatter of RIGGED! and DEMOCRATS WANT TO STEAL THE ELECTION! But by Thursday evening, the incumbent had retreated from all-caps. “I had such a big lead in all of these states late on election night, only to see the leads miraculously disappear as the days went by. Perhaps these leads will return as our legal proceedings move forward!”
Then, in a meek spitball: “Scary thought — @JoeBiden is a heartbeat away from the Presidency.”
Which sounded an awful lot like another C-word: Capitulation.