CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD--If Donald Trump takes a loss in Arizona and in Nevada (Biden is leading in both as of this writing), then Joe Biden is the next President of the United States.
For Arizona, some of the Biden votes can be attributed to the fact that Trump kept insulting John McCain. He didn't have to, but he kept on doing it anyway, and it annoyed a lot of people who liked and respected McCain. It has had an effect on the Arizona voting. You could say with all seriousness that this is the first time that an American president has been defeated for reelection solely because of being an asshole.
There are 3 cups of coffee on the desk in front of me. I'm not sure how they got there, or how old the brew is getting. It's been a long week for a lot of us. We're in that stage where we agonize over what we didn't accomplish, quietly savor what we may have accomplished, and otherwise just worry, worry, worry. But if the leads in Arizona and Nevada hold up (likely, but not mathematically proven), Biden has been elected. It would be by the smallest of margins (one whole electoral vote) but it would be victory.
Meanwhile, CNN is obsessing (and talking a mile a minute) about Georgia and Pennsylvania. Even if the election would be essentially over as soon as Nevada and Arizona come through, Pennsylvania and Georgia are the big prizes because the loss of either would defeat Donald Trump immediately.
Meanwhile, the spin from both sides is so intense it's giving me vertigo.
By the way, the "easy path" to victory for Joe Biden -- Arizona, Nevada, and a single electoral vote from Nebraska -- was explained a couple of days ago by Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight. He had even pointed it out as one of several possibilities at least a week before the election. Nate and his process (take the average of the polling data) have been heavily criticized because the polls that averaged a 7% preference for Biden did not translate to a Biden landslide. But Nate also predicted a Biden win.
Trump obvious ly performed better than one might have expected, considering that Nate and his system gave Biden a slight edge in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, etc. In the end, Trump won handily in Florida and Ohio, instead of -- at best -- squeaking through with narrow wins.
That's the part that inspires the thought: "Oh, how wrong we were!"
But -- assuming that Biden holds on, even with a final count of exactly 270 electoral votes, we can also realize that there were some things we were right about. One was to hold on for 4 years, keep the faith with our brothers and sisters, and wage the election battle these past 8 or 10 months. The next realization would be that we won. We didn't get control of the Senate, but that was kind of wishful thinking. The idea of a blue wave or a blue tsunami was just that -- an idea, a hope -- and obviously was stoked by some of that polling data. But in the end, the Democrats will control the House of Representatives and the presidency, and that is a victory we can relish.
Interestingly, the pundits and political professionals got another thing right. Donald Trump is still arguing (even as these words are being typed) that he was robbed, that the whole thing is rigged, that big cities are corrupt. It is an old truism about Trump that every accusation he makes is really an admission about his own character.
We have one more such admission to add to the list this week. The president's son went to Pennsylvania along with Rudi Giuliani, and complained about corruption. Imagine that, a Trump complaining about somebody else's corruption.
God willing, it will be an enormous relief to be done with this misery.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
