November 5, 2020: Trump Lead in Pennsylvania Shrinking

 

11/5/20: My wife and I spend the day watching vote totals change. In Pennsylvania, something like 500,000 mail-in ballots remain to process. Trump’s fat lead has slowly shriveled to 136,000. If Democrats continue to rack up huge margins in mail votes (since we were told to vote by mail and not risk catching COVID-19), Biden has an excellent chance of wiping out Trump’s lead. 

I know the Keystone State could go either way; but I would bet a milkshake on Mr. Biden’s chances, if I could find a conservative friend who would promise not to spit in my shake if I won.

Can we please fire Donald J. Trump?

 

Biden trails in North Carolina by 77,000 votes, with six percent of the vote not recorded. If more than 300,000 votes are left to tally, and they’re from the bluest corners of the state, that could get my boy Joe over the hump. When I check a North Carolina newspaper, however, they say only 117,000 votes remain. I like facts; but here, I can’t be sure where we stand. 

Nevada is still reporting only 75% of the vote. Trump trails by only 8,000. So: he could still win that state. 

And here’s a final oddity – a Trump scam, if you will – for his fans to ponder. Right now, Team Trump is insisting that vote counting in Pennsylvania (where he leads) come to a screeching halt. 

In Arizona, however, where Biden leads by 68,000, the president is demanding that the tallying continue to the bitterest end.

 

If Biden holds Arizona and Nevada and wins a recount in Wisconsin (almost a certainty if you know how recounts go) he has exactly the 270 electoral votes he needs to send Trump packing. 

I head for bed Thursday feeling good. Georgia is teetering. There’s a chance it may turn pale blue. 

It helps me to remember that these increasingly good numbers for Democrats are not so very surprising, at all. 

First, turnout in the 2018 midterms was up by 30 million over 2014 midterms. So the huge numbers for both Trump and Biden track. 

Second, in those 2018 midterm elections Democratic candidates outpolled Republican candidates by 8.6 million votes. (See: 11/6/18.)

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: While Americans wait to see how voting shakes out, they are also waiting to see if the coronavirus goes away. The president insists it will, but he may be going away, first. According to the CDC, yesterday was the worst day yet for our country, with 106,537 new cases.

 

Another 1,141 Americans died from COVID-19. So, even if the virus isn’t going away, plenty of loved ones, some of whom loved Trump, and some who didn’t, were definitely going away.

 

We still don’t know who will win the election. We know for sure: The latest weekly jobs report is only slightly better than all the other awful reports we’ve seen since April. Adjusted seasonally, another 751,000 Americans filed first-time jobless claims in the week ending October 31. Another 362,833 persons filed under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.