Michigan’s secretary of state announced that final results won’t be ready until Wednesday. Philadelphia has 300,000 mail-in ballots to count. Milwaukee isn’t reporting until later this morning.
And despite President Trump’s phony declaration of victory, we do not know who won the presidential election as of this morning.
Because Trump doesn’t give a shit about the law or due process, he’s gone full authoritarian and said he won—even though we have no idea who is the winner.
Said Trump:
“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
And, as my colleague Michael Harriot, pointed out in our work Slack, Trump might declare martial law until all the votes are counted because he doesn’t trust y’all.
In the House, the Democrats will hold on to power, after a strong showing Tuesday.
As for who will control the Senate, that’s not known yet. What we know so far is that Republicans have a 45 to 42 seat lead over the Democrats; 51 seats are needed for majority rule. U.S. Senator Doug Jones got his ass kicked in Alabama by former football coach Tommy Tuberville, so Democrats lost a seat that no one honestly expected Jones to win again.
Rev. Raphael Warnock and Kelly Loeffler will advance from the jungle primary to the runoff in January because neither could garner 50 percent of the vote. Warnock has been leading all candidates, regardless of party, in recent polling and is the favorite to win the runoff. David Perdue has a strong lead over Jon Ossoff in the other senate race, but that race may not be called until later today—or even later than that.
The reality is that neither the presidential nor the senate races should be this close. More than 230,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. Trump had ample time to respond to the pandemic earlier this year but took more delight in xenophobia by chastising Beijing for speaking the “China Flu” across the world. He did not use his executive powers to immediately call on major U.S. manufacturers to produce PPE. He did not coordinate with states on how to best stop the spread of the virus.
This no-good, yuckmouth-ass-fool did not even have the decency to wear a mask.
Ironically, per Brad Heath at Reuters, Trump is doing better this year than in 2016 in counties with high coronavirus death tolls. I guess white people are literally willing to die to keep white supremacy alive.
Or, as my colleague Stephen Crokett notes: “If we know anything is that racism won tonight. In the end, the people saw exactly who Trump was and voted for him because his racism aligns with theirs. This wasn’t even supposed to be close and the fact that it is is a direct testament to America’s moral compass. As Harriot has said, ‘We really aren’t better than this.’”
Facts. But don’t feel defeated, yet.
More ballots have to be counted. And Biden is leading so far, per the Associated Press. But the reality is that there are so many Republicans, from the state level on up to the White House, who have no interest in seeing democracy work that we should expect legal challenges over what they may likely deem “invalid” ballots.
Be hopeful, but do not be surprised by anything—2016 should have taught us as much.