Election Night 2020 thread

[David Horn]

Forget the Presidential election, I think it's plain that Biden will win. The real issue: who controls the Senate? We won't know that until the Georgia runoff.

[pbrower2a]

Fitting music!





Biden wins as about everyone calls Pennsylvania.

[pbrower2a]

Isn't it ironic? Some armed men from Virginia were arrested driving a pickup full of forged Pennsylvania ballots.

They had a QANON hat in their pickup.

[pbrower2a]

No Verdi Requiem this time! No Bruckner Ninth this time!

[pbrower2a]

Jeb Bush
@JebBush

Congratulations to President-elect Biden. I have prayed for our President most of my adult life. I will be praying for you and your success. Now is the time to heal deep wounds. Many are counting on you to lead the way.

[pbrower2a]

...and just when you try to forget all the stories about electoral fraud, here comes this one courtesy of CNN:

Wouldn't you know... a pair of armed men from Virginia were just busted in a Hummer with a load of forged ballots for Pennsylvania.  



(CNN)Two armed Virginia men who were arrested Thursday outside the Philadelphia Convention Center may have believed fake ballots were being counted there, Philadelphia District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Jane Roh told CNN.

"According to our information at this very early stage of investigation, it appears these individuals were operating under the belief that 'fake ballots' are being counted at the Convention Center -- a completely unsupported claim -- and that belief may have been what drew their attention to Philadelphia." Roh told CNN in an emailed statement.

CNN affiliate KYW had earlier reported that the men were "coming to deliver a truck full of fake ballots" to the city, citing prosecutors.

The center is one of the places where election workers have been counting votes from the 2020 general election, which includes the race for president.

Text messages reveal that the men were concerned about the tallying of votes at the convention center, prosecutors said, according to KYW.
Antonio LaMotta, 61, and Joshua Macias, 42, both of Chesapeake, Virginia, were arrested Thursday night outside the center on suspicion of carrying handguns in Pennsylvania without permits, authorities said.
Philadelphia police said they found the men Thursday night after receiving a tip that people with firearms were heading to the Pennsylvania Convention Center in a silver Hummer truck.
Officers found a silver Hummer a block from the center -- parked and unoccupied -- around 10:20 p.m. Thursday, about seven minutes before finding the men, who acknowledged the Hummer was theirs, police said.
Both men were carrying loaded handguns, and police found an AR-type rifle in the Hummer, authorities said at a news conference Friday. About 160 rounds of ammunition were found in the weapons and the vehicle, authorities said.
Stickers and a hat with logos of the QAnon conspiracy movement were found in the vehicle, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said.
LaMotta and Macias were charged with having a concealed firearm without a license and carrying a firearm on a public street or public property, Krasner said.
"This alarming incident is still very much under investigation regarding additional charges," Krasner said.
LaMotta and Macias were arraigned Friday night, and a judge set bail at $750,000 each, Krasner's spokeswoman Jane Roh said.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the men had legal representation. CNN has sought comment from the Philadelphia Public Defenders Office and LaMotta's relatives.
A woman who was traveling with the men has not been arrested, Krasner said.




https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/07/us/pennsy...index.html

[gabrielle]

Praise Jesus and the astrology gods, hallelujah!

And congratulations Silent Generation for your first US president, and Gen X for your first vice president.

[Bob Butler 54]

I began to wonder if the CNN headline of 'Biden Almost' was stuck until after the inauguration.

Now the court phase. It is looking like a dud. Then maybe the revenge phase, then maybe the pardon phase... I'd guess the excitement is not over.

Still not clear that Biden will be the 46th president. Possible that Pence and perhaps Pelosi might get in first briefly.

[pbrower2a]

With the caveat that the colors are inverted here from what they usually are, but this comes from Leip's Election Atlas, which sticks to the very old convention of Red for Democrats and Blue for Republicans as was the norm as late as the 1970's.

[pbrower2a]

My suggestion to people who still can't accept that Donald Trump has lost:



1. How could America not vote for Donald Trump?

2. Damn those (name of group) who got in the way of a second term for the best thing that ever happened to America!

3. Shouldn't we do everything possible to Make America Great Again -- and make sure to freeze such by law!

4. We will never have the chance for the nation of our dreams.

5. Maybe the Other Side has some valid points, such as that Donald Trump is the wrong means of achieving my idea of what America should be. Maybe he is too flawed a person and he never adequately thought out what was necessary to make America "great". Maybe there are legitimate ideas of what makes America great. Jim Crow certainly wasn't great!


Now, what to do with all those banners? 

1. You might consider giving them to animal shelters for bedding for the critters who don't understand human politics. 
2. Any others?


Any others?

[Eric the Green]

(11-07-2020, 08:09 AM)David Horn Wrote: Forget the Presidential election,  I think it's plain that Biden will win.  The real issue: who controls the Senate?  We won't know that until the Georgia runoff.

It's interesting to see how much each side can bring to bear on these two races. The Ossoff-Perdue race is close, whereas the Warnock-Loeffler campaign appears to favor the Republican looking at the party vote per se. It would be interesting if Ossoff can pull off a win and leave the election of McConnell as co-president or prime minister (whatever you call it) depending then only on Susan Collins. What will the people of Maine think if McConnell can just sit on every bill and block every appointment, based solely on her party identification?

[pbrower2a]

The Trump cult is gone, or at least moribund. Receptiveness to cult messages never quite goes away. Cults are dependencies as are addictive behaviors -- gambling, compulsive shopping, compulsive sex, alcohol, and drugs.  The need that people who supported Trump for reasons other than partisanship (the Republican Party used to be a benign organization!) for an idealized leader who tells them exactly what they want to hear is still there.

If we are Democrats we need not be so smug: that sort of person could conceivably hijack our Party. To be sure, many of us have said that we as liberals would reject a candidate with Trump's dishonesty if he gave us a huge amount of boilerplate liberalism. Donald Trump really is a shallow, horrible person. But suppose that we Democrats are in trouble politically due to some demographic decline. So he gives us voters that we have never had before even if we are uncomfortable with them, but those people are simply crazy. They fall for wild conspiracy theories that we pooh-pooh.

No matter where we are we must choose our allies wisely. Some hangers-on are just not worth it. If you are a conservative, then fascistic types are the ones who, should you get their votes, will demand of you what you cannot deliver -- and they will have infected a part of your constituency that never was fascist. We don't want any "ethnic cleansing", do we? If you are a liberal, then you don't want Marxist-Leninists in your midst. I think of the dictatorship in Venezuela: what once had been originally social-democratic took on dangerously radical and authoritarian qualities.  Just think of what we could have ended up with as liberals if we sought to rush our return to power without doing what is usually necessary (building credibility in local elections, developing coalitions, vetting out extremists, and insisting upon character). We might have ended up with our own version of Donald Trump, someone like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

We Democrats have much forgiving to do. Those people who voted for Trump because he scared them about Biden being too much like Fidel Castro or Nicolas Maduro? We need to make sure that we don't fall for any left-wing extremism ourselves, and it is best that such people who voted for Trump as an expression of disdain for Castroism in Cuba or Chavecismo in Venezuela demonstrate clearly that we are democrats first and reformers second. (I hope that such people come to recognize that Trump is basically a right-wing version of Castro, Chavez, or Maduro).

Having impeached Donald Trump at the polling place, which is our only means, we are in new and uncharted territory in American history. We are still in the Fourth Turning.

[sbarrera]

(11-07-2020, 02:36 PM)gabrielle Wrote: Praise Jesus and the astrology gods, hallelujah!

And congratulations Silent Generation for your first US president, and Gen X for your first vice president.

And womankind for your first in either office; why did that take so long??

[jleagans]

So this is the first white house without a boomer since 1988 ?

[pbrower2a]

Howe and Strauss suggested that Adaptive men often combine characteristics of Civic and Idealist masculinity (such as Clint Eastwood, GI toughness and Boom judgmentalism), Carl Sagan, GI rationality with Boom imagination) -- with many being confused muddles like Woody Allen. Obama is a pragmatist above all else (which is very Reactive), but he seems to combine GI rationalism with Boom moralizing. Who else could have had Osama bin Laden whacked in a gangland-style hit and made it seem inevitable after the fact? This is about the coldest serving of revenge possible.

[Bob Butler 54]

CNN is reporting on one red violence advocate.  The police chief of Marshall Arkansas apparently posted on social media a picture of many Democratic mainstays and advocated that they find their way to the gallows.  It is a rare exception to the call for unity, not violence and division.

Result?  He soon resigned.

[gabrielle]

(11-08-2020, 10:38 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN is reporting on one red violence advocate.  The police chief of Marshall Arkansas apparently posted on social media a picture of many Democratic mainstays and advocated that they find their way to the gallows.  It is a rare exception to the call for unity, not violence and division.

Result?  He soon resigned.

I have a vague feeling of unease, underneath the relief. Someone on social media likened it to being in a horror movie where the monster has been killed, but there's still 15 minutes left in the picture.

[Eric the Green]

(11-09-2020, 12:06 AM)gabrielle Wrote:

(11-08-2020, 10:38 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN is reporting on one red violence advocate.  The police chief of Marshall Arkansas apparently posted on social media a picture of many Democratic mainstays and advocated that they find their way to the gallows.  It is a rare exception to the call for unity, not violence and division.

Result?  He soon resigned.

I have a vague feeling of unease, underneath the relief. Someone on social media likened it to being in a horror movie where the monster has been killed, but there's still 15 minutes left in the picture.

I agree. I hope it's not a long 15 minutes, but a lot can still happen.

[pbrower2a]

He was fired for that.

The role of the police should be to foster domestic tranquility (if necessary suppressing mob violence), and certainly not to incite mob violence.

[David Horn]

(11-08-2020, 01:32 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-07-2020, 08:09 AM)David Horn Wrote: Forget the Presidential election,  I think it's plain that Biden will win.  The real issue: who controls the Senate?  We won't know that until the Georgia runoff.

It's interesting to see how much each side can bring to bear on these two races. The Ossoff-Perdue race is close, whereas the Warnock-Loeffler campaign appears to favor the Republican looking at the party vote per se. It would be interesting if Ossoff can pull off a win and leave the election of McConnell as co-president or prime minister (whatever you call it) depending then only on Susan Collins. What will the people of Maine think if McConnell can just sit on every bill and block every appointment, based solely on her party identification?

Having a 4-year long lesson in politics won't overwrite the damage that will be done in that time.  It won't even guarantee that the voters at large will see the cause as an obstructive GOP.  McConnel already played that entire deck of cards, and managed an easy personal victory in his Senate race.  So did most of his party -- Susan Collins not the least of them.  We're outside the boundaries of logic here.  It's tribal to the core.