US Election

[El Pollo Diablo]

Biden is within 19,000 now in Georgia according to the NYT - what was your maths?

[lpm]

225,000 votes left.

55% / 45% to Mr Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

Gives extra 22,500 extra and overcomes the 18,540 lead for Mr Donald c.nt Trump.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Sweet.

Now, let's just hope Biden doesn't lose AZ, NV and PA and only win Georgia. That's unlikely to happen but Christ on a bike it's 2020.

[El Pollo Diablo]

f.cking hell someone get these vote counters some cocaine or something

[Sciolus]

Will you bastards stop trying to get my hopes up? I don't think I can cope with the crushing despair that will inevitably follow.

[Vertigowooyay]

f.cking hell someone get these vote counters some cocaine or something

Don Jnr's good for it. He knows a guy.

[lpm]

Will you bastards stop trying to get my hopes up? I don't think I can cope with the crushing despair that will inevitably follow.

Why are your hopes down?

Here's a chart of remaining votes. Takes a moment to figure out. But look at a state - Nevada say - and you see there's vote left in two counties that are usually blue and very little left in mostly red counties.

It doesn't guarantee anything. The votes left in that big blue county in Arizona (which is the Phoenix area) might be mostly Republican votes. Usually more Democrats than Republicans used mail voting which helps, but offsetting that (in Arizona at least) is Democrats mailing votes early and have already been counted, while Republicans voted late.

Nevada is clear. Arizona has already been called for Biden and not retracted. The line in Pennsylvania tracks relentlessly towards Biden winning by +2. The line in Georgia tracks to very close to zero and it will be tight either way,

[El Pollo Diablo]

this might actually be worse than that time I was on hold to Virgin Media for four f.cking hours.

[Little waster]

this might actually be worse than that time I was on hold to Virgin Media for four f.cking hours.

What you are worrying about?

Good morning, early birds! Overnight, both Georgia and Arizona tightened some but are still led by Trump and Biden, respectively. While we aren’t expecting to get our next update from Maricopa County in Arizona until 9 p.m. tonight, Georgia is expected to finish counting its remaining 25,000 ballots today. Elsewhere, Nevada will announce more results starting at noon Eastern, and we continue to get results at a steady pace in Pennsylvania — which may be Biden’s best chance to end this race.

See it'll be sorted tomorrow morning at the latest ... well definitely tomorrow anyway ... or at least the weekend ... unless there are recounts ... and legal challenges ... and late mail votes turning up till the 12th ... and some they found undelivered at the post office. So just another week tops .... probably.

It's tantric or something.

[dyqik]

Will you bastards stop trying to get my hopes up? I don't think I can cope with the crushing despair that will inevitably follow.

Why are your hopes down?

Here's a chart of remaining votes. Takes a moment to figure out. But look at a state - Nevada say - and you see there's vote left in two counties that are usually blue and very little left in mostly red counties.

It doesn't guarantee anything. The votes left in that big blue county in Arizona (which is the Phoenix area) might be mostly Republican votes. Usually more Democrats than Republicans used mail voting which helps, but offsetting that (in Arizona at least) is Democrats mailing votes early and have already been counted, while Republicans voted late.

Nevada is clear. Arizona has already been called for Biden and not retracted. The line in Pennsylvania tracks relentlessly towards Biden winning by +2. The line in Georgia tracks to very close to zero and it will be tight either way,

I think the remaining Arizona votes also include mail-in ballots dropped off on election day itself, which I suspect may be very blue.

[AMS]

What also horrifies me is that the main reason he's trailing in the polls is the pandemic. If it hadn't been for Trump's mishandling of covid, he would probably be favourite to win.

I don't think that's true. Biden had a 5-6 point lead on him before the pandemic. Now, maybe the laptop nonsense etc. would have had more effect without the pandemic, but I'm not sure about that.

I think my post has held up better than you expected.

[sTeamTraen]

Will you bastards stop trying to get my hopes up? I don't think I can cope with the crushing despair that will inevitably follow.

Why are your hopes down?

I can't speak for Sciolus, but for the past 4-5 years I've had the feeling like we're in a movie where the bad guys have a magic button that moves the goalposts so they win every time. It's the reasoning pattern of a 7-year-old who's seriously into magical thinking, I know, but it's hard to shake. I realise how much of politics, especially in the UK, is run on the idea that people have some degree of decency with respect to the spirit of the rules, which falls apart when uber-rationalist c.nts like Dominic Cummings or Stephen Miller show up and go "Well, there's nothing to acksherly prevent us doing this".

I have seen various posts and a video (can't find link...) showing ways in which Trump, the Senate, and/or a few Republican governors could, if they really wanted to f.ck things up, block or interfere in the Electoral College process, and ultimately it would end up in front of the Supreme Court. Now I don't think that even the conservative judges there are servants of the party to the extent that they are in a true dictatorship, but again, it feels like Sod's Law has become Sod's Constitution.

For the moment I will settle for 270 EVs for Biden, meaning that the democracy part worked. If Trump & Co try to stay on and the American people allow them to get away with it, then f.ck them. I doubt that tens of millions of people would actually protest Belarus-style, when the RWNJs have a lot more firepower.

[Gfamily]

For the moment I will settle for 270 EVs for Biden, meaning that the democracy part worked. If Trump & Co try to stay on and the American people allow them to get away with it, then f.ck them. I doubt that tens of millions of people would actually protest Belarus-style, when the RWNJs have a lot more firepower.

The question then is whether the Senate under Mitch McConnell blocks any significant changes that Biden attempts to make.
It doesn't seem likely that there will be anything positive coming from getting rid of Trump other than getting rid of Trump.

[El Pollo Diablo]

The question then is whether the Senate under Mitch McConnell blocks any significant changes that Biden attempts to make.

It's not even really a question to be honest. It's Mitch McConnell. He's a c.nt.

[dyqik]

For the moment I will settle for 270 EVs for Biden, meaning that the democracy part worked. If Trump & Co try to stay on and the American people allow them to get away with it, then f.ck them. I doubt that tens of millions of people would actually protest Belarus-style, when the RWNJs have a lot more firepower.

The question then is whether the Senate under Mitch McConnell blocks any significant changes that Biden attempts to make.
It doesn't seem likely that there will be anything positive coming from getting rid of Trump other than getting rid of Trump.

A fair number of the people who helped get Trump to where he is are charged with crimes - Bannon, Flynn, etc. It's possible that the Trump campaign organization implodes sufficiently that it's not useful for the future. That doesn't fix the Senate, but it maybe does help prevent Trump 2.0 on the same lines.

The Senate depends on changing the narrative around "Congress does nothing". That's a much harder task, but made a little easier if McConnell spends all his efforts blocking CoVID stimulus and coverage for pre-existing conditions, ahead of the 2022 mid-terms where 22 GOP and only 12 Dem senators are up. It may also factor into the Georgia run-off(s). It still needs Democrats to play hard to attack the counter-majoritarian tactics though.

[Bird on a Fire]

it feels like Sod's Law has become Sod's Constitution

Nicely put.

It's pretty depressing the way the c.nts always seem to have the upper hand.

[Stephanie]

The people who feel they were let down and overlooked by politicians for years after the financial crisis have not gone away. The fact that their champion is such a horrible piece of sh.t is a distraction because it's not all about him even though he is incapable of conceiving that anything isn't all about him.

When R4 came on this morning a commentator whose identity I missed said some simple but fairy insightful stuff including that pro-Trump voters ignore everything he says and just look at what he does and the anti-Trump voters just look at what he says.

Just to go back to this, as this short thread of replies popped up on twitter - suggests the idea Trump represents the working class is a myth

https://twitter.com/simonhedlin/status/ ... 47713?s=19

[Little waster]

The question then is whether the Senate under Mitch McConnell blocks any significant changes that Biden attempts to make.
It doesn't seem likely that there will be anything positive coming from getting rid of Trump other than getting rid of Trump.

The difference between 53-47 and 52-48 or 51-49 could be quite marked particularly with a Democratic VP as tie-breaker.

Carving off one or two "moderate" Republicans looking to burnish their bi-partisanship credentials is possible especially with the right dollops of pork; for instance Lyndsey Graham is an odious little sh.t but he has been willing to be bi-partisan in the past and his primary interest has always been to get close to whoever is in power (regardless of which party they are from) in order to advance his own career.

[sTeamTraen]

For the moment I will settle for 270 EVs for Biden, meaning that the democracy part worked. If Trump & Co try to stay on and the American people allow them to get away with it, then f.ck them. I doubt that tens of millions of people would actually protest Belarus-style, when the RWNJs have a lot more firepower.

The question then is whether the Senate under Mitch McConnell blocks any significant changes that Biden attempts to make.
It doesn't seem likely that there will be anything positive coming from getting rid of Trump other than getting rid of Trump.

As a citizen of the world, with no real interest in US domestic affairs, I would settle for Trump being gone and the institutions that make America work as a major world power getting back to normal, notable the DoJ and FBI. Getting rid of Trump means, first and foremost, getting rid of executive interference. If Trump goes to jail, it will be because Federal and State prosecutors establish a case against him. Many are surely itching to start doing so; Biden won't be issuing overt or clandestine orders about this, or naming his Attorney-General based on a commitment from the latter to Get Trump.

Obviously, as a person who believes in humanity, I would also like to see the Democrats control all of Congress and pass all kinds of progressive legislation. But in a sense, I want that just as much for the people of Brazil or Russia or Saudi Arabia, and I don't spend much time thinking about their internal politics. It seems inconsistent, at least, to worry about certain regressive aspects of American society while not saying much about the far bigger problems affecting far larger numbers of people around the world whose regimes are actively evil and corrupt.

Put another way, if Trump had died of COVID and the race had been between Biden and Pence, I would be very much hoping that Biden would win. But I wouldn't have been losing too much sleep about him not winning. Pence's attitude to politics is wrong in a normal way of being wrong, whereas Trump is wrong at a completely different level, and he surrounds himself with other of that ilk, like Giuliani, Bannon, and Miller.

[El Pollo Diablo]

PA has updated - Biden now 140,000 away.

The beeb speak:

Philadelphia to release updated count
In just a few minutes, we are expecting the Philadelphia City Commissioners to give an update on the ongoing mail-in ballot count.

Trump's lead in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which he won in 2016, has been falling as more postal votes are tallied.

Trump is currently leading by around 160,000 votes, but Philadelphia election officials say that they are now counting approximately nine Biden mail-in ballots for every Trump postal ballot.

[Bird on a Fire]

The people who feel they were let down and overlooked by politicians for years after the financial crisis have not gone away. The fact that their champion is such a horrible piece of sh.t is a distraction because it's not all about him even though he is incapable of conceiving that anything isn't all about him.

When R4 came on this morning a commentator whose identity I missed said some simple but fairy insightful stuff including that pro-Trump voters ignore everything he says and just look at what he does and the anti-Trump voters just look at what he says.

Just to go back to this, as this short thread of replies popped up on twitter - suggests the idea Trump represents the working class is a myth

https://twitter.com/simonhedlin/status/ ... 47713?s=19

Thanks - good succinct points there.

I think the way class is assessed in the polls seems to be quite crap - race and education are generally what comes up, rather than things like wealth.

For instance, I reckon white-no-college people (in rural areas at least) are much more likely to be landowners than white-college in cities. The security of having property vs being subject to a landlord's whims is an important consideration in people's conceptualisation of society and their place in it.

The US economy has developed quite a lot over the last century, and it's naive and a bit patronising to conflate university education with class. Loads of working-class jobs require an education, but that doesn't get necessarily reflected in income, wealth or working conditions. Coders are the loom operators of the 21st century, for instance, literally paid per line of output.

[dyqik]

Both Georgia Senate races are looking like January run-offs now (Perdue is on 50.03% with more D votes coming in). Which means a f.ck-ton of money pouring in to try and get the Democrats to 50:50 in the Senate, against a background of Trump going nuts and the Republican Senate blocking CoVID relief.

[El Pollo Diablo]

I mean, that background has already been there for months, and well... <points at world>

[dyqik]

I mean, that background has already been there for months, and well... <points at world>

There's a matter of degree. And no Trump on the ticket then.

[Martin Y]

The people who feel they were let down and overlooked by politicians for years after the financial crisis have not gone away. The fact that their champion is such a horrible piece of sh.t is a distraction because it's not all about him even though he is incapable of conceiving that anything isn't all about him.

When R4 came on this morning a commentator whose identity I missed said some simple but fairy insightful stuff including that pro-Trump voters ignore everything he says and just look at what he does and the anti-Trump voters just look at what he says.

Just to go back to this, as this short thread of replies popped up on twitter - suggests the idea Trump represents the working class is a myth

https://twitter.com/simonhedlin/status/ ... 47713?s=19

Yeah, it reflects what monkey said; before there was Trump there was the Tea Party, and while it might have become the cliche that a Trump supporter is a blue collar guy waiting for life to be breathed into his town's old heavy industry, there's a lot of political landscape between him and "the 1%". The cliche Tea Party supporter is a lot more middle class. That tweet would indicate that they're where Trump's real support is; people who expect to be more comfortably off than they were left by the financial crisis and they want that status back while having no love for policies that might share that modest level of privilege with everyone else.