Trump is currently fairly comfortably ahead in Florida, which is good for his chances.

He's behind in Arizona though, which is bad for him.

So far Trump is perhaps doing better than expected, but the map hasn't changed in his favor yet.

It doesn't look like a clear landslide for Biden, and that means it's going to be ugly.

Yes, we're more or less where we were yesterday tbh.

Whether or not Biden or Trump wins it doesn't look like any party is gonna win a trifecta in congress, which means gridlock and no stimulus in the middle of numerous crises. The United States is fucked as a nation.

Just got a number of over half a million mail-in ballots from heavily Dem counties yet to be counted in Michigan. That's why Trump's ahead there. He's not carrying that state.

Good news for Republicans is they'll probably keep the Senate albeit with a reduced majority.

:cry:

Oh, btw, your state is going to come down to just a couple of thousand votes. Trump loses that and he's toast. Break out the popcorn.

Trump is about to make a statement. We are at exactly at the point where, according to predictions, Trump would look the strongest. At the end of election night, before mail in votes are counted.

This unfortunately sets the US up for the nightmare scenario of Trump declaring that the election is being stolen from to try and stop the count.

Isn't Biden ahead still in the official tally so far?

Isn't Biden ahead still in the official tally so far? — Benkei

What matters to Trump and the GOP is whether they can plausibly spin this into a victory, and have the means to fight it to the bitter end.

Trump hasn't lost Florida. If he did, the race would have been all but over. Georgia is close, but might well go to Trump. Trump can still plausibly win. And with control of the Senate, the GOP can challenge the election all the way to the actual meeting of the electors.

I fully expect them to launch an all out war on the vote count now.

Edit: Hey and Trump's speech just proved me right. Now we'll see whether the powers that be in the GOP have a smidgen of decency left in them. I wouldn't bet on it.

Breitbart and Fox haven't gone all out yet. Fox still looking decently neutral, but Breitbart looks like it's gearing up it's spin machine.

Edit: Hey and Trump's speech just proved me right. Now we'll see whether the powers that be in the GOP have a smidgen of decency left in them. I wouldn't bet on it. — Echarmion

If principled means that the end justifies the means then you're just a pussy whining about details. Politics isn't about decency. This is why the left sucks monkey balls at playing the game.

Just listened to Trump's speech, where he claims he's "frankly, already won" and going to the supreme court to stop counting ballet's "found at 4 o'clock in the morning".

With the supreme court solidly "crazy" I predict Trump will come out on top after all this. It will of course trigger complete chaos.

As a European, Trump is likely the best result (for us). It's better to have a incompetent clown in charge of the mafia (which the US government should be classified as, at this stage) than a seasoned professional, even if an older model. Like, if you could vote for your local Mafia boss, I think Trump has a lot of favourable characteristics for this position.

I also predict actual mathematical analysis of "voting machine" results and other disenfranchising tactics results will show highly likely fraud in favour of Republicans, as in 2016. Somehow the "liberal establishment", so convinced the levels of corruption are totally fine and normal (as they benefit from it too), falls for the Republican trick of first accusing the Democrats of cheating, then Democrats (feeling confidence of the polls) fall over themselves to claim the election process is totally fair and no cheating or fraud is happening (which is largely true about isolated individual voter fraud the Republicans cry fowl about) and is not a problem and the result must be respected with a "good sportsmen" attitude, and then Republicans use every single trick they can logistically accomplish, all illegal just with varying degrees of the public being aware of such tricks and accustomed to such tactics as "of course the Republicans can do it", and then Republicans "declare victory" and that "the vote must be respected, just like the Democrats have been saying".

The only solution is to purge the Democrat leadership of politicians that "just want a little bit of the corruption" and who view a Trump victory better than someone arguably not corrupt like them. So maybe a Trump victory would lead to that, but I think simply the collapse of civil society in the US is likely to happen before that.

Of course, Trump victory comes at the risk of literal nuclear war, but life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

This is why the left sucks monkey balls at playing the game. — Benkei

You beat me to it.

Man who spent months sowing doubt and confusion about election continues to sow doubt and confusion about election. People shocked. More at 7.

Pivot to political thread you haven't been lambasted in yet. More at 4am.

u wut mate

If principled means that the end justifies the means then you're just a pussy whining about details. Politics isn't about decency. This is why the left sucks monkey balls at playing the game. — Benkei

But democracy does require decency. It cannot work in an environment of pure power politics. It requires the consent of all involved to abide by some basic rules, like conceding and a peaceful transfer of power.

There is no way to enforce democracy by power politics.

'mercans need an independent body to run their elections.

Some back-of-the-envelope math on Pennsylvania:

Trump is currently ahead by 680.000 votes. There are about 1.7 million votes to be counted. If those break 2/1 for Biden, Trump's lead would remain, but only barely. If they break closer to 3/1 for Biden, he wins.

There is no way to enforce democracy by power politics. — Echarmion

Democracy is brought to you by revolutionary wars, or then the threat of revolutionary war.

Democracy can only be maintained by a pure power politics of the majority committed to maintain democracy as something worthwhile and worth fighting for, and willing to pay a real cost: for instance, threaten the system with revolutionary war when obviously anti-democratic and nominally illegal things emerge such as gerrymandering and followup with threatening to overthrow the judiciary if it obviously participates in maintaining such crimes by absurdly (and obviously corruptly) declaring gerrymandering a political issue that can only be resolved through voting in gerrymandered elections.

Your idea that when a minority criminal cabal breaks laws, abuses established customs, entrenches anti-democratic policies by passing anti-democratic laws or appointing anti-democratic judges, and does whatever it takes to gain and maintain power, that the only thing that can and should be done about it is "be nice", has no basis in reason nor history. It is the wishful thinking of cowards.

Democracy is brought to you by revolutionary wars, or then the threat of revolutionary war. — boethius

A country that engages in revolutionary war every four years isn't going to last long.

Your idea that when a minority criminal cabal breaks laws, abuses established customs, entrenches anti-democratic policies by passing anti-democratic laws or appointing anti-democratic judges, and does whatever it takes to gain and maintain power, that the only thing that can and should be done about it is "be nice", has no basis in reason nor history. It is the wishful thinking of cowards. — boethius

I didn't say anything of the sort.

I didn't hear Trump's speech yet. My wife stayed up all night and told me about it.

My first impression was that this is good. A Biden tidal wave would have been much better of course. But lacking that, it looks like Trump is about to totally over play his hand. All the other forces within the power structure may soon be concluding that this is an emergency situation which can't be handled with the usual procedures. Keep in mind that the White House staff has no guns. The only real hard power they have is that their orders are followed.

The US military swears an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.

My first impression was that this is good. — Hippyhead

I find it hard to see anything good about the results. Biden is still favoured (even heavily so if AZ flips), but the result still seems to validate a politics of extreme polarization.

The GOP got three SC Justices, tons of lower level court appointment and in general a free reign to try every strategy they might want out of the Trump presidency. They will now get an opportunity to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the electoral system and see what sticks. Even if this doesn't save Trump, they'll have massively solidified their powerbase and, given likely results in the house and senate, did not pay much of a price for doing so.

Trump or no Trump, this is a not at all good for anyone hoping for an improvement in US politics.

Under your "decent" Presidents the likelihood of the people getting what they want was no different than under Trump. Even if we were to accept the US is a democracy (highly debatable) Trump's character has absolutely nothing to do with how representation of the people's will is provided by the system. Very badly it seems. But in the end democracy is not one man and it's certainly not just this election.

As to power politics, this is precisely the only way you can keep a semblance of democracy alive in the US because of the winner-takes-all system. You don't build common ground, you don't compromise and you should win at all cost. If people can't tell the difference between us and them it will cost us votes. If we don't win and give voters what they want, it will cost us votes. This has nothing to do with decency.

The only reason Democrats need to act "decent" is because they try to appeal to 20.000 different groups instead of providing an overarching story that transcends modern identity politics and goes back to people vs. corporations, workers vs. capitalist, poor vs. rich etc. take your pick. Not "not Trump". But Democrats are too scared of losing their Wall Street backers, who, despite record spending and outspending of Trump, can't even decisively deliver victory, if at all. The story is wrong, the politics naïve and shows that it's basically the Democratic Party that is in crisis - in light of the challenges they don't offer anything new, they just double down on the same old thinking. Donkeys indeed.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/gop-state-legislature-candidate-in-north-dakota-who-died-of-covid-wins-election-433998

"A Republican in North Dakota has won a seat in the state legislature — nearly a month after he died of complications from Covid-19.

David Andahl was 55 when he died on Oct. 5, after winning a heated primary with an incumbent committee chairman. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) had endorsed the Bismarck rancher, saying, “we need more Trump Republicans in the State Legislature.”

Rather a corpse than a Democrat... I guess that tells us something about the warm fuzzy feelings they feel for each other.

And jokes aside, the situation is now critical re that animosity in a way it may not have been if Arizona and Georgia had been counted first and Pennsylvania had been allowed to count absentee ballots in advance of the election. Large swathes of Trump voters (judging by their voluble online presence) really believe Trump has won, the MSM are lying to them, and the left are trying to steal the election. Unfortunately, some level of violence now seems inevitable should Biden eventually triumph (as I think he will).

Of course, if Trump wins, the opposing side should just suck it up too. That's Democracy. But I don't see that happening.