Was watching the news this morning figuring that, since Joe Biden wasn’t formally declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential race yesterday, they had to do it this morning, right?

Over on MSNBC, I suspect they were thinking the same because they had their Morning Joe crew in for a Saturday session -they are usually on from Monday to Friday- and they remained there for the entire morning even though they usually end their show by 9:00 am.

By 12 noon practically on the dot, statistical whiz Steve Kornaki (I really, really hope he’s getting some much needed sleep at this hour!) reported that a new batch of results came in which bumped Biden’s lead over Trump in Pennsylvania over 30,000 votes and, literally the very next moment…

The BBC quickly called the election for Biden and, soon after, so too did CNN.

It was finally done.

In the hours since Pennsylvania put Biden “over the top”, Nevada has been declared as well for Biden, bringing his total electoral college number to 279 (270 was needed), which excludes Arizona and Georgia.

In Georgia, Biden has the lead by just north of 7000 votes and may well take that state. As for Arizona, it was declared early on for Biden by the Associated Press and (of all stations) Fox but there is some hesitancy by others to declare it a Biden win even though at the moment he has a little more than 20,000 vote advantage. The reason being is that there is at least a statistical possibility Trump might gain enough of the remaining votes to tie or go up on Biden in the state.

Not that it matters.

Regardless, the two remaining undeclared states, North Carolina and Alaska. are currently trending toward Trump and likely will be won by him.

If Biden does take Arizona, he will have earned 306 electoral college votes, wildly enough this is the same number of EC votes that Trump had when he won back in 2016.

Once Biden was finally declared the winner, I felt an overwhelming sense of… relief.

While I know there are too many things going on in the world for a Biden win to change things overnight for the better, I truly feared we couldn’t survive another four years of Trump’s craziness. It seems like every day we had another story which made me shake my head and wonder how anyone could support him and his… uh… governance and its corruption, lies, and belligerence.

To those that supported Trump, I’m not the type to wallow in your pain or rub it in even as I did see plenty of insults hurled from them in the direction of the “other side”.

Trump’s whole act was to build an “us versus them” mentality among his people and, frankly, it was a disgusting display but not a unique one. Trump, sadly, is the result of too many years of right wing media bashing the other side over and over again and cultivating an audience of people who fear the “other” rather than, you know, look into their ideas and realize they might not be so abhorrent as they have been led to believe they are.

I’ve written this before and I’ll reiterate it here: I’ve experienced just about every type of government in one way or another through my lifetime.

I was born behind the communist iron curtain and my parents, with at the time two kids in tow, fled that oppressive regime. We lived in Canada for a while, what could be described as a “socialist” country, before moving to and living in Venezuela in the mid-1970’s and into the early 1980’s. While today Venezuela is a left wing dictatorship, back then it was very much a right winger’s wet dream, a country with almost no regulation, taxes, and Catholic ideology. When that went bad, they moved in the complete opposite side.

Finally, I settled in the United States and I felt for a long while it was the best of all worlds.

But over the last few years, the rise of this right wing propaganda machine has worried me.

Perhaps the fever finally breaks, but it won’t be easy.

Trump has not conceded the election nor do I expect him to anytime soon. He will sick his lawyers on the electoral process and, though it seems a waste of time, it is his right as a citizen to do so.

What I’m most curious about is how the Republicans react now that they know Trump is on his way out. As the saying goes, do the rats abandon the ship now, finally? Or do they still cover for him while he surely tries to hold onto the power which will soon be gone?

As I said above, this represents an end and a beginning.

We’ll see where things go from here.

It’s been two days since Tuesday’s election and, at the moment, we still have no declared winner in the 2020 election though compared to when I wrote yesterday morning, it appears more likely now that Joe Biden has won the election… but that Democratic candidates generally underperformed.

The main change between earlier yesterday morning and today is that Michigan and Wisconsin went to Biden, which pushed his electoral college totals tantalizingly close to the 270 needed to win the election.

The Senate, thought a possible flip based on statistics, appears likely to remain in Republican hands, though perhaps with a somewhat smaller majority than the one they originally had.

As was expected, Trump and his minions are going around shouting there was cheating going on and suing some states to stop their counts and not suing others to do the same (guess which ones he’s leading in and which ones he’s not?).

Despite the legal threats, I’m hoping that by later today we’ll have a declared winner… and it all boils down to one state in particular: Pennsylvania.

Currently, Trump leads the vote count there but the mail in ballots -and there are apparently quite a number of them, all properly received by the election commission and without a doubt legal- are expected to heavily favor Biden and push him over the top and into winning this state.

Should he do so, he will make it past the magical 270 electoral ballots and be declared the winner of the election.

Meanwhile, there is also the possibility Biden formally takes Arizona (while some news agencies have already given the state to Biden, there are mail in ballots here still to be counted which may give Trump enough to tie/beat Biden, who is currently leading). Finally, there’s Nevada which looks like it will go for Biden. If those two states are formally declared Biden victories, he’s got exactly 270 electoral points, which is what is needed to win.

If he gets those two and Pennsylvania, he’ll have 290 electoral votes.

Yeah, I really hope that by end of today we do get the Pennsylvania votes and they prove, like most people believe, that Biden has won the presidency.

It’s time to put the 2020 election, and Donald Trump, into our collective rear-view mirror.

Oh my…

Much as I may personally despise Donald Trump and all he stands for, I have to give him credit: He’s a resilient creature and he got his people to come out to vote for him.

However, at this point in time and despite his attempts to proclaim victory, the 2020 Presidential election isn’t in the books. In fact, also despite Trump’s attempts to proclaim otherwise, things might in fact be looking good for Joe Biden to win… that is, if I’m reading all the information about the election right (I’m no expert, nor pretend to be one!).

Why?

Because there are a vast number of mail in votes still to be counted, and those have at least to this point shown themselves to favor Joe Biden.

If we are to take the current electoral college numbers, Joe Biden has -give or take depending on your news source- 238 EC votes to Trump’s 213 with the following states still to declare winners: Nevada (6 electoral votes, leaning Biden), Alaska (3, leaning Trump), Wisconsin (10, leaning Biden), Michigan (16, leaning Trump), Pennsylvania (20, leaning Trump), North Carolina (15, leaning Trump), and Georgia (16, leaning Trump).

One needs 270 electoral college votes to win and, If the “leaning” figures stay as they are, Trump wins 70 electoral votes and therefore the Presidency with a total of 283 electoral votes to Biden’s 254 (we are also assuming Nevada and Wisconsin stay with Biden, of course).

Here’s the thing though: Michigan and Pennsylvania, with a total of 36 electoral votes, have Trump ahead by a very small margin of 24,248 votes in Michigan with 91% of the precincts reporting and a larger margin of 675,012 votes in Pennsylvania BUT with only 64% of those precincts counted at this particular moment in time. Similar stats are to be found with both North Carolina and Georgia.

The votes still to be counted are the mail in votes which the states will count between today and… I dunno, perhaps later this week.

Those votes, many believe, are far stronger for Biden than Trump, perhaps much, much stronger, and they could well boost Biden into winning both Michigan and Pennsylvania -and maybe even Georgia as well!- in the end… assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t interfere in the count.

If -and its a big one- Biden carries the 238 electoral votes I noted above and winds up winning the two states he’s already trending positive in, Nevada (6) and Wisconsin (10), and the mail in votes counted for Michigan (16) go his way -we’ll leave out the larger hurdle he has so far for Pennsylvania- he will have added 32 electoral college votes to his total.

Using grade school math, Biden’s current 238 plus 32 give us… 270 and the election. At that point its irrelevant what ultimately happens in Pennsylvania, Alaska (which its somewhat fair to assume will go Republican), North Carolina, and Georgia..

So the big question becomes: Does the Supreme Court interfere in this election and stop the voting?

Clearly Donald Trump wants this. If things were to freeze as they are at this moment in time, he’s won the re-election.

However, I can’t help but wonder what possible justification the Supreme Court would produce (a majority, no less) to stop the count. These are legitimate mail in ballots we’re talking about, votes which have always been counted in previous elections and not some oddball votes that were “conveniently” found just today, the day after the election.

They were properly sent in and received by election day yesterday and, by all rights, should be counted.

Let’s see if they are.

November 2nd, the day before the election, and things are… interesting.

If you go by all the polls, it appears Joe Biden will win, though Donald Trump does have at least a statistical chance of pulling it off.

I know what you’re saying: Didn’t the pollsters predict Hillary Clinton would win in 2016?

They did, for the most part, but the reality is that 2016 was a far different election than the one about to formally occur tomorrow.

To begin, Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate. To some extent, she was a victim of many years of Republican smears. She was also a victim of Comey’s idiotic decision to, a week from the election, make a formal announcement about… jeeze, I’m not even sure what he was saying back then. Emails? Hard drives? Seems silly considering what’s occurred since then. Finally, Mrs. Clinton didn’t help herself by ignoring certain states toward the end of the election.

Like most people, she seemed to assume the election was in the bag and perhaps let off the proverbial gas toward the end while those who voted for Trump were either a) completely won over by him and excited to vote for him or b) were people who shrugged and decided “Hey, why not? He’s better than Hillary.”

Maybe.

Thing is, we’ve now had nearly four years of Trump’s presidency and if what I wrote above is true, I think there are many people who decided to give Trump a try who are today no longer interested in continuing this particular experiment. Though there’s no way to quantify them, I think there are a pretty large number of usually reliable Republicans and those who thought “Hey, why not?” who are now thinking: “No way.”

The early voting, as of this particular moment and according to Barbara Sprunt for NPR, stands at an eye-popping 93 million early votes. The article linked to, by the way, is from yesterday at 5 pm.

Again according to the article, that represents some 68% of the total votes cast in the 2016 election, and we haven’t even gotten to the actual election date!

Florida, my state, ended early voting yesterday, allowing preparations today for the formal votes tomorrow.

Our state, as usual, is something of a toss up. Current polling indicates a dead heat, with Biden and Trump both getting about 47/48 percent of the votes.

The fact is, if Biden takes Florida, Trump is done. If Biden loses Florida, however, he has plenty of other chances to still win the election.

That, in a nutshell, is Trump’s problem: He has a very narrow path to getting the 270 electoral college votes needed to win while Biden has so many openings/availabilities. Trump needs to win certain states or else. Biden can hope for many combinations to get to the goal.

The state I have to admit I’m most curious about is Texas. Current polling puts Biden and Trump, like in Florida, in a statistical dead heat at 47/48 percent. However, given the astonishing amount of early voting, I’m thinking the edge has to be with Biden… at least at this point.

Why?

Because I suspect those who are early voting, in general, are doing so to kick out the incumbent. The fact is that those most excited to vote are usually in two camps: 1) Those who love their candidate and want him/her to remain in office and 2) Those who hate the current person(s) in power and want them out.

I tend to think we’re seeing more of #2 because Trump has never been a very popular figure. In fact, he never once broke the 50% positive barrier during his presidency, usually falling somewhere in the low 40% range in terms of approval.

He’s a deeply unpopular president, in that respect, and this is the people’s chance to get rid of him and, from what I can see, many are taking advantage to do just that.

Going over to fivethirtyeight.com, we find that as of today, Biden has moved from “favored” to win the election to “clearly favored” to win. This is because Biden now has a 90% chance of winning while Trump’s odds have dropped to 9%. There is a 1% chance of an electoral college “tie”…

While Trump still isn’t mathematically eliminated from re-election, this is the sort of stuff that makes me hopeful.

I’ve said it before and I won’t make any bones about it: I feel Trump has been the very worst president I’ve certainly ever seen in office. His lies, bloviating, incompetence, and general hateful attitude is a big turn off and, should he lose, I’ll certainly shed no tears for his departure.

One more day to go.

Let’s see what happens.