Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
It’s all over but the shouting, as well as the whining from Trump and the inevitable court challenges. Trump won’t be President after January 20, and regardless of what happens in the Senate, that makes this an especially good day. I refuse to say that we have to wait patiently; I’m done with that. Dems win! Dems win! Dems win!
Just remember who called the election first.
As I retire early, I predict that by Friday noon, both Georgia and Pennsylvania will have gone for Biden. You don’t have to be Nostradamus to see which way the votes are coming in. The final count: 306 Electoral College votes for Biden.
I may be slightly off, but I won’t be wrong in predicting a Biden/Harris victory.
The election will be over and Trump will begin his tantrums and lawsuits. For the rest of us, I ask that the naysayers allow us at least a brief moment to celebrate the defenestration of an unhinged narcissist before they begin wailing over a Republican Senate and the inevitable deadlock.
Good night—for America.
I’ll look pretty dumb if I’m wrong, but it won’t be the first time. But based on the facts that both the Associated Press and Fox News have already called Arizona for Biden (though other outlets have held off) and that Biden is gaining ground rather than losing it in Nevada, where he was already ahead, I’m declaring that Biden has now been elected President. Those two states give Uncle Joe 270 Electoral College votes, which is a WIN. Pennsylvania would then be the icing on the cake, but it’s not needed.
Go ahead, call me premature, call me overly optimistic, call me uninformed and naive (but don’t call me late for dinner)! The Orange Man is toast!
I think I’ll be proved right, and you can say that PCC(E) was the first to call the election correctly.
h/t: Karl for the picture
Yes, I’m premature here, but Biden has now officially taken Michigan and Wisconsin. If he wins Arizona and Nevada, which seems likely, he’ll have 270 Electoral College votes, and that means VICTORY.
Trump, of course, has his lawyers in line demanding recounts, but I’m pretty happy. We’re not going to have the hanging chad issue this year.
The second best thing about this, besides putting us back on the road to being a decent country again, is to watch a raging narcissist face the fact that America rejected him, when it almost always reelects a sitting President. That will be fun. Imagine the tweets between now and January!
I wouldn’t normally put up another post meant for discussion, but this is an unusual day. The Presidential election is still a toss-up, and results change from hour to hour. Before we begin, have a gander at this map (data here, h/t Nicole). I don’t think there’s a correlation with the map below it:
Here’s the latest from the New York Times:
Of course, we’re all pundits now, but here are my thoughts, which are mine.
1.) I think Biden/Harris will squeak through, and we’ll know tomorrow.
2.) I think that most of the mail-in votes will be from Democrats, which heartens me.
3.) I am, perhaps like most of you optimists, deeply surprised that Trump is doing so well. My only explanation is that Trump voters did not reveal that they favored him when they were polled. That, of course, means that they are ashamed of voting for him. I cannot IMAGINE anybody voting for Trump after seeing him for four years in office, but people who vote their pocketbook think he’s helped the economy and they may agree with his xenophobia, faux religionism, love of guns, and authoritarian stand. I was depressed when he won in 2016, but now, after we’ve seen that he’s even more horrible than we imagined, it’s even more depressing, not to mention the damage he’ll do to the country and to the world
4.) As usual, the Northeast and the Far West are democratic. I’m pleased that New Mexico went for Biden, and of course Arizona will be a key capture for the Democrats (Biden’s leading there). Fingers crossed
5.) Everyone I know is sweating bullets lest Trump wins (I don’t have any close friends who aren’t Biden supporters), and that includes people overseas. It’s gonna be a tough two days.
6.) I’m especially worried that the Senate will stay Republican. That, like the days of Obama, is a recipe for stalemate, especially now that the Supreme Court is deeply conservative. When I told a friend this, and that I was worried that it would lead to a lack of “progress”, he said, “forget about progress—we’re doing damage control here.
7.) To add to the distress, Trump said yesterday that he wants the vote-counting stopped now, and will take the election to the Supreme Court. As far as I know, he can’t do either of these things, particularly the first one.
Let’s take a poll, and please vote. Make that two polls, and remember, you’re just guessing. Nobody knows the answer to either question; I’m just assessing feelings.
Weigh in below.
I’m a wuss when it comes to getting sliced open, so I’m not sure how much I can brain today. However, what I can do is initiate a discussion thread, and there’s plenty to discuss with respect to tomorrow’s election.
Here are some questions that come to mind:
a). Who will win?
b.) Will we have a near-definitive result tomorrow night, or will the result be in abeyance until all the mail-in ballots are counted?
c.) Will Trump begin contesting the results tomorrow, after he loses (assuming he will lose), or after the mail-in votes are counted?
d.) Will Trump supporters (or militant Lefties) begin rioting or protesting immediately? (I don’t expect this will happen until Wednesday.) Will any protests be violent and widespread?
e.) Does anybody think that Trump stands a chance of winning?
f.) Will the election go to the courts if Trump loses? (I have a bet that if he does lose, it will NOT wind up in the Supreme Court like Bush v. Gore did.)
g.) How nervous are you about the outcome? I have to say that I’m not that nervous, but, surprisingly, some of my friends who live overseas—and aren’t Americans—are more nervous than I.
h.) Will the Senate go Democratic?
i.) What surprises do you predict?
I remember the 2016 election when I was in Hong Kong, and was able to see the results in real time as I was many hours ahead. I was so confident that Hillary would win, and had voted for her by mail. But, as the hours progressed and I watched the needle on the New York Times’s election meeter move slowly but inexorably towards Trump, I got more and more depressed. When they finally called it for Trump. I went out for a long walk along the harbor. I was gone for an hour and a half or more, and when I returned to my hotel I had no idea where I’d been. Things have been downhill, government-wise, ever since.
I haven’t found the latest few installments of Andrew Sullivan’s The Weekly Dish terribly exciting, and, truth be told, they haven’t been as thoughtful or engaging as his old tripartite column for New York Magazine. I know his readers enjoy the ability to publish their “dissents”, which is good, and like to guess “where was this photo taken?”, but I prefer his serious, longer-form pieces.
There’s only one such piece per week now, and this week’s is about Joe Biden. It’s pretty good, but I’m wondering if my $50 subscription was well spent. I’m hoping that, after the election, Sullivan will find new and interesting things to write about. I’m not giving up yet.
I think The Weekly Dish is now pay-only, but if you subscribe you can see the post by clicking on the screenshot below. I’ll give a few excerpts, but I have little to say about Sullivan’s take, which is fine but unoriginal.
Do note that this week’s podcast on Sam Harris’s Making Sense site, also reproduced on Sullivan’s page, is a 1.5-hour conversation between the two of them about Trump. I’ll probably listen to it since it’s relatively short for Sam (how can anyone listen to three hours of conversation?), so stay tuned. If you subscribe to Andrew’s site, the podcast is free there, but if you don’t subscribe to Sam’s site you can listen to only an excerpt. I guess the serious media people on the Left have decided that, in the future, podcasts are the way to go. They’re more lucrative and also more spontaneous, but I’m happy to keep typing.
Sam says this about Andrew on the site:
[Sullivan] is writing a book on the future of Christianity, and his collection of essays will be published in 2021.
Christianity, eh? That should be interesting!
The main lesson from Sullivan’s piece is that Biden is not going to further wokeness in America, and that Uncle Joe turned out much better than Sullivan anticipated. Just a few excerpts:
. . . Biden’s core appeal, as he has occasionally insisted, is that he ran against the Democratic left, and won because of moderate and older black voters with their heads screwed on right. He was the least online candidate. For race-leftists like Jamelle Bouie, he was part of the problem: “For decades Biden gave liberal cover to white backlash.” For gender-warriors like Rebecca Traister, he was “a comforter of patriarchal impulses toward controlling women’s bodies.” Ben Smith a year and a half ago went for it: “His campaign is stumbling toward launch with all the hallmarks of a Jeb!-level catastrophe — a path that leads straight down … Joe Biden isn’t going to emerge from the 2020 campaign as the nominee. You already knew that.” The sheer smug of it! And the joy of seeing old Joe get the last laugh.
. . . His core message, which has been remarkably consistent, is not a divisive or partisan one. It is neither angry nor bitter. Despite mockery and scorn from some understandably embittered partisans, he has a hand still held out if Republicans want to cooperate. In this speech at Warm Springs, where Biden invoked the legacy of FDR, you can feel the Obama vibe, so alien to the woke: “Red states, blue states, Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, and Liberals. I believe from the bottom of my heart, we can do it. People ask me, why are you so confident Joe? Because we are the United States of America.”
. . . What I grieve is an idea of America that is decent, generous, big-hearted, and pragmatic, where the identity of a citizen, unqualified, unhyphenated, is the only identity you need. I miss a public discourse where a president takes responsibility even for things beyond his full control, where the fault-lines of history are not mined for ammunition but for greater understanding, where, in Biden’s words, we can once again see the dignity in each other. I am not a fool, and know how hard this will be. But in this old man, with his muscle memory of what we have lost, and his ability to move and change in new ways, we have an unexpected gift.
Sullivan is a big believer, as I used to be, in America United—the possibility that someone could bring the ends of the political spectrum together and we’d be One Big Happy Country. While I fervently wish that were possible, and it’s my ideal as well (so long as the Happy Country is a liberal one!), I don’t think that it’s possible for Biden, or anyone, to Superglue the fractures in the American populace. Yes, we may well have a Democratic Senate, House, and President, and that means that things will get done, but don’t expect the evangelicals, the gun nuts, the anti-maskers, and others on the extreme right to come around. And, of course, we’re facing a Supreme Court that will fight liberalism at every turn.