6 November, 2020

Well. That was interesting.

The election happened on Tuesday and now it’s Friday night. Between then and now, Democrats went from despairing over the loss of Florida and the Senate to realising they might actually win the White House. And then realising they were definitely going to win the White House. Then realising there would be two runoffs in Georgia, meaning they could even win the Senate, as long shot as it might be.

At this point, the race hasn’t officially been called. Biden has been stuck at 253 votes for several days, but it’s clear the votes in Pennsylvania will put him over the top, and over the course of the last 24 hours he went from being behind to being very, very ahead.

Last night is when Georgia gave him an incredibly slim lead, and today that lead grew slightly. Biden might win the state, he might not. He might win a recount, he might not. But the idea that Georgia is a swing state is hilarious.

And then there’s Arizona and Nevada. Nevada is clearly in Biden’s camp, but no one is calling it yet for a variety of reasons. Arizona is trickier, because Fox News called it for Biden on Election Night but now it’s looking like a true nailbiter. Trumpworld is very upset about the early call. But, again, Arizona isn’t why Trump is going to lose. That honour goes to Pennsylvania.

Right now it looks like Biden may hit 306 votes, the same number Trump got in 2016. Speaking of which, Trump was considered to have a “mandate” in 2016, but tonight I heard an anchor argue that Biden doesn’t. That seems like odd math. No one has ever gotten more votes for president, and Biden even got a bigger percentage of the vote than Reagan in 1984. Some estimates say he might end up with 7 million more votes than Trump, and so far the number is already up to 3 million.

Tonight Biden gave a speech where he talked about his mandate. He explained that he won, and that he won by a lot. Then he said he wants to lead all Americans, not just those who voted for him. He talked about Covid and economic recovery. He said he wanted to remove the vitriol from politics.

But he still can’t formally declare victory. That might happen tomorrow.

When I think forward to the 5th of February next year, a few things seem clear:

• Trump’s gonna contest
• Trump’s gonna lose
• Trump’s gonna be mad
• Biden will be president
• I’m gonna assume the Democrats don’t have the Senate
• Covid will still be bad
• Biden will be making an effort to address it
• The contrast with Trump will be huge