Tag Archives: Election 2020

COronavirus Diary 22

Wow, some weekend.

First up, on Saturday, the networks finally give the Presidential election to Joe Biden and, then on Sunday, it becomes clear we have to deal with Tropical Storm Eta.

I was aware she was around, having ravaged Central America earlier in the week as a very powerful Hurricane.

However, the fact that it was projected to go very close -even possibly over us- came abruptly. So abruptly I didn’t have the time to take down the car canopy our home has.

The canopy was there when we bought the house over 20 years ago and we’ve replaced it some two or three times since. Thing is, the metal which holds it up is pretty rusted now and I’ve been thinking of replacing the whole thing in the last year.

If the canopy is removed, the frame itself will easily survive a hurricane, much less a tropical storm, because the metal frame doesn’t catch air. However, with the canopy on, it can act as a parachute and, given the weak frame, my fear was that the whole thing would get ripped up and out of the ground.

But I couldn’t take it down. Even when I knew the storm would close in on us, we had plenty of rain and I realized I’d have to take my car out of the carport area because if indeed the carport folds or gets torn out of the ground, last thing I wanted was for the metal frame to mess up my or my wife’s cars.

This morning, I was happy to see that the canopy survived, though one of the metal posts lifted from the ground.

Yeah, its looking like I’m gonna have to spend some money on a new canopy after all.

Even with all this happening, the buzz I feel for Biden’s election hasn’t lifted. I remain incredibly happy about the election results -though I’d be lying if I said that I’m not depressed by the number of people who, despite all that Trump did, still felt he was a viable choice for re-election.

Worse -and expected- Trump has yet to concede the election and some of his sycophants (the increasingly unhinged Rudy Guliani in particular) are talking about lawsuits and finding all this imaginary fraudulent votes and… sheesh.

There have been some news analysists who worry what Trump will do on the final days of his presidency, if he will try to “break” as much as he can on the way out the door.

I hope he doesn’t, but one never knows.

Hope everyone else out there had a decent weekend!

It Would Appear The Proverbial Fat Lady Is Stepping Onto The Stage…

As I type this at a little past 9:00 am on the morning of Friday the 6th of November, a full three days following Tuesday’s election, there have been two major developments in the counting of the various outstanding mail in ballots throughout the country:

First, Joe Biden has taken the lead over Donald Trump in -shockingly!- Georgia. Second, and just happening a few minutes ago, Joe Biden has taken the lead over Donald Trump in -more expected- Pennsylvania.

Both margins are, at the moment, rather small, amounting to a little over 1000 votes in Georgia and over 5000 votes in Pennsylvania. The Georgia figure will likely wind up remaining in and around that area as 99% of the votes have been counted. Biden may gain a little more but GA will likely wind up being a state with a very narrow margin of victory, likely for Biden.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, still has some 5% of the votes -mail in votes- to come in, estimated to be over 100,000 to go, and they have been trending strongly toward Biden by a margin between 70-80%.

Already comments made on the news networks indicate that if this trend continues -and there is so far no evidence at all to expect it won’t- Biden will have won Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral college votes.

So, with a win in PA, if we are to take Biden’s current EC total (even removing Arizona which, though declared for Biden by NPR and Fox has mail in/outstanding votes which may be trending more toward Trump than originally anticipated, though maybe not enough to get him in the lead), Biden will have his 253 electoral college votes given a 20 EC boost which will put him at… 273.

The magic number to win, of course, is 270.

If, as it seems to be, Biden wins Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, he will acquire an additional 11, 6, and 16 EC votes which may make his final total 306.

Again, though, if things go completely sideways for Biden and he loses the above three states, if he wins Pennsylvania that’s the ball game…

…and it would appear the ballgame is done.

If indeed the networks declare Biden the victor today at some point (I’m guessing around noon, but we’ll see), the next question will be what will Trump do.

There are reports he will not concede and, perhaps its wishful thinking on my part, even his biggest fans might begin to realize its time for him to face reality and his loss.

Maybe if he prolongs this with pointless lawsuits, they may even come to see the childishness within him.

Who knows.

I’m probably being too optimistic, but I’ve always tried to look on the bright side of life…

About those electoral predictions…

Looks like the people who work with statistics/prognostication really blew it this time around.

I mean, they were off in 2016 too, mostly predicting a Hillary Clinton win, but they could hold that off by stating, like fivethirtyeight.com did, that they had her win within a statistical margin of error and, voila!, she fell into that and Trump won.

But this time around…

The fact is that all the major statistical organizations had this looking like not only a Biden win -which increasingly (I hope!) will prove true- but a rather overwhelming victory.

I remember on election day one pundit -I believe he was involved in the Lincoln project- stated that this election wasn’t going to be like the 1980 election where Ronald Reagan overwhelmed Jimmy Carter, but like the 1964 election, where Lyndon Johnson cremated Arizona Governor Barry Goldwater.

Yeah, didn’t quite turn out that way, did it?

Anyway, over at Slate.com Matthew Dessem offers this amusing article:

Once Again, the American People Have Misunderstood My Election Entrail-Reading Methodology

Read it and laugh.

Or cry.

Either way…

😉