The Daily Parker

Because it's 2020, we're still counting votes. And that's not all:

• The New York Times has not called the presidential vote Arizona, contra the AP and Fox News.
• Illinois' senior US Senator and minority whip Dick Durbin asked for the Speaker of the Illinois House Mike Madigan to resign, saying the party "paid a heavy price" for his corruption probes.
• A former chess champion praises the accuracy of the way Netflix portrayed the game in The Queen's Gambit.
• David Graham says whatever the outcome, pollsters were the biggest losers this election cycle.
• Noam Chomsky believes the president is "the worst criminal in human history."

And the counting goes on...

The AP has called Wisconsin for Biden, as his margin over the president continues to grow as workers report on last few ballots left in Milwaukee. The New York Times believes Michigan and Nevada will also go to Biden, North Carolina won't, and Pennsylvania and Georgia are still too close to call. So as of now, the map looks like this:

Nevada won't release any new numbers until 9am PST tomorrow (18:00 UTC, 11am in Chicago), but Biden's lead seems insurmountable at this point. North Carolina's secretary of state said he expects to announce the winner later today. No word on when Michigan and Pennsylvania will finish counting; most sources say Friday at the earliest.

In other news, we've officially counted 139.8 million votes, blowing past the 137.1 million cast in 2016. It's the largest number in American history and we still have over 2 million to go. Also, win or lose, Joe Biden has received more votes for president (over 70 million) than anyone else in history. That's something.

Good morning! We're still alive, and I still think we'll win. So do both candidates, as evidenced by the president claiming victory overnight and Biden's firm "not so fast, Charlie."

The map of called races has not changed since the AP called Arizona around midnight. Nevada will eventually go to Biden, so the president needs to win 4 other states to win. Biden needs only 2. And since I finally got back to sleep around 4am, the counting has shifted Michigan and Wisconsin blue. And all evidence suggests they will stay blue.

In Wisconsin, with 95% of expected votes counted, and many of the remaining absentee and early votes concentrated in Milwaukee, Biden leads by 21,000 votes. In Michigan, they're still counting in the heavily-Democratic Detroit and Flint, and Biden has crept ahead to an 18,000-vote lead; the state believes it will be done counting in about 11-12 hours.

Pennsylvania has so far counted only 64% of the votes they expect to count, with only 58% counted in Philadelphia and 73% counted in Pittsburgh. Biden trails right now by 660,000, but there may be a million ballots left to count.

North Carolina has counted 94% and Biden trails by 80,000. In Georgia, he trails by 102,000 with 94% counted. Those states look like losses for us. But wow, what narrow losses, in states that haven't voted Democratic since 2008 and 1992, respectively.

It surprised me how little anxiety I experienced yesterday, but I realized it's because I'm sad about Parker. Who knew a good helping of depression could make a stressful time easier?

And here he is as a puppy, demonstrating the proper attitude for today:

Well, here we are. After just shy of four years living with the current president, I can say that his most remarkable accomplishment has been to raise the reputations of George W Bush, Warren Harding, and Franklin Pierce, if only relatively. Forty-four men have been president of the United States, one for only a month, and one who was never elected. Someone had to rank 44th in that list. It makes stack ranking so much easier when the most recent addition goes straight to the bottom.

I don't know that I'll stay up until 2am like I did last time. But I'll hang in there as long as I can. (All times US Central Standard, UTC-6.)

I am not calling any races; that's illegal in most states before polls close. I am, however, making a first prediction:

If we start there, we win with any other state on the map. And I think we're starting there.

17:00 CST: Polls have closed in the eastern portions of Indiana and Kentucky. Nothing to report yet; the rest of both states have yet to finish voting.

18:00: Polls have closed in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia, and Vermont, plus the eastern part of Florida. I'm confident only in two: Indiana (R) and Vermont (D).

18:05: The Associated Press calls Vermont for Biden and Kentucky for the president. No surprise there. The New York Times projects Mark Warner (D-VA) will go back to the Senate. No significant reports of poll disruptions reported.

18:13: I'll be updating the map at the top of this post as the night goes on.

18:42: Polls closed 12 minutes ago in North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia. The AP has called West Virginia for the president and Virginia for Biden. Still no surprises.

19:00: Polls in 21 states and DC just closed, including here in Illinois. NPR believes Biden leads in Florida. Everyone knows Biden won Illinois. The AP called West Virginia for the president a few minutes ago; again, no one died of shock.

19:31: Arkansas, unsurprisingly, goes to the president. Meanwhile, no one knows nothing at this point.

20:01: Another 14 states with big Electoral Vote delegations have closed their polls. New York's 29 votes go to Biden; Wyoming's 3 and Kansas' 6 go to the president, as do Indiana's 11. NPR says Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio all lean Biden, while Florida leans the other way. The Chicago Tribune thinks Kansas, Missouri, and Pennsylvania will also break our way. Sadly, Amy McGrath has lost her challenge to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Also, the AP's website now displaying a generic 500 error. Oops.

Now Parker needs a nice, long walk, so I don't have to think about the election for half an hour.

20:45: Back from a nice walk, I hear we have our first pick-up in the Senate, in Colorado, which also has gone to Biden, and Kansas has slipped back into play.

21:01: Iowa, Montana, Nevada, and Utah have closed. Republicans have filed suit to stop vote counting in Clark County, Nevada, because they can't win there without cheating.

21:05: Keep in mind: we won't know the results in Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania until tomorrow at the earliest.

22:01: The West Coast and Idaho close; no surprises. All of the surprises will take days to count. So far tonight, Parker and I have walked for more than an hour, I've had only two beers, and I just can't stay up until midnight waiting for the results this time.

Counting will take a long time. And smaller, rural precincts can always report their results before larger, urban precincts. No one has gotten close to calling anything on the brown portion of the map at the top of this post. As I said to one of my friends, we're not fucked yet. The whatever from high atop the thing hasn't even taken off its pants yet.

We did lose the Alabama US Senate seat, so we're still at 47-53, even though 13 million more people have voted for Democratic US Senators than for Republican ones. (We knew Doug Jones would lose, though. Again: no surprise.)

I will say that Biden will win the popular vote by millions more votes than Clinton won in 2016, and if he winds up losing the Electoral College, people will be unhappy. Very unhappy. Minority rule has to end. I'm still pretty confident it will end in January, but until then, we just won't know.

So, I'm going to bed. I expect I'll wake up around 3 to clean up some poop (not mine), and if that happens, I'll check the map. But Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida won't have results tonight.

We're not fucked yet. The whatever from high atop the thing hasn't even taken off its pants. I'm going to chill for eight hours and come back in the morning.

02:51: I don't know what woke me up. I thought someone on my "OK to disturb me" list texted, but that wasn't the case. In any event, this is not the map I wanted to see in the middle of the night, but (if you recall) it's almost exactly the map I predicted earlier. Except for Pennsylvania.

We still don't have final counts for the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, or Atlanta. Also, no one knows what "100% reporting" means in those areas, because no one will know the total number of early and mail-in votes until they're all counted.

Mark Kelly won the special election for US Senate in Arizona, giving us a second pick-up. But Joni Ernst (R-IA) won re-election, which says something about Iowa, and possibly the whole race.

Of course the president went on TV to claim victory earlier. And of course Biden went on TV to say we have millions of votes left to count. And it also seems clear that, regardless of the Electoral College, Biden will have won millions of votes more than the president, by a margin considerably larger than Hillary Clinton won four years ago.

I will also say, the whatever from high atop the thing definitely has a "hey, baby" look in its eye.

Dixville Notch, N.H., votes for Biden, 5-0:

The results are already in from two New Hampshire towns where voters famously head to the polls just after the stroke of midnight on Election Day.

In Dixville Notch, where a handful of masked residents voted shortly after midnight on Tuesday, all five votes for president went to Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee. He is the first presidential candidate to sweep the general election vote in Dixville Notch since the midnight voting tradition began there in 1960, when Richard M. Nixon won all nine votes over John F. Kennedy.

The other northern New Hampshire town that voted around the same time on Tuesday, Millsfield, favored President Trump by 16 votes to 5.

But:

Antsy journalists and political types often look to these New Hampshire towns for clues as to how the election will unfold across the country, but they have a spotty track record. While Millsfield voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, Dixville Notch went for Hillary Clinton.

See you at 6.

(Apologies for posting this almost 10 hours late.)

I plan to live-blog off and on tomorrow evening, understanding the likelihood that we won't know the results of many of the races until later in the week. I'm watching these races most closely (all times CST, UTC-6):

6pm

Polls close in Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia. Of these, I mainly want to know the results in Georgia's two US Senate races, plus the US Senate race in South Carolina and the Georgia presidential totals. In Kentucky, Amy McGrath has less than a 1 in 20 chance of winning, but if you've ever played D&D you know that doesn't mean she's dead. Kentucky expects 90% of votes to be counted Tuesday night. The other three may have all their results as well, but Virginia might not have close races resolved until next week.

6:30pm

North Carolina and Ohio are must-wins for the president; North Carolina is a likely US Senate pick-up for the Democratic Party. In Ohio, the president is favored by about 62%; in North Carolina, Biden is favored around 66%. While most ballots will be counted Tuesday night in Ohio, final results may take until November 18th. We should know North Carolina by Wednesday morning.

7pm

Polls close here, in Maine, most of Texas, and a number of states unlikely to sway the election. However, by this point, polls representing 272 electoral votes will have closed. Illinois results for everything except the Fair Tax amendment will come out Tuesday night, though final results could take until the counting deadline on November 17th. We'll know whether Maine's Susan Colins goes on the dole before midnight in Chicago. But Texas, boy, I don't know. They may have some results Tuesday night but absentee ballots can come in through 5pm Wednesday.

8pm

Polls close in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, New York, the western nub of Texas, and Wisconsin. Arizona should start releasing their results by 9pm, and with Mark Kelly and Joe Biden both expected to win the state, this may be the first one I actually celebrate. Colorado should start reporting results overnight, and Wisconsin should report everything by Wednesday morning. Michigan and New York will take several days to report results. (New York, in fact, has until the 28th to report its results, according to state law.)

9pm

Of the races whose polls close at this time, I care most about Iowa's US Senate race. It's dead-even between incumbent Republican Joni Ernst and Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield. Because Iowa counts ballots that arrive up until the 9th, we will have to wait a week to know for sure.

10pm

All three West Coast states plus Idaho close at this time, though I don't expect any surprises. All three should go for Biden by wide margins, and only Oregon has a US Senate race that incumbent Democrat Jeff Merkley should win easily. The only exciting event at 10pm will be the AP officially calling all 74 of those Electoral College votes for Biden.

11pm

The networks can call Hawai'i, with its 4 electoral votes and no US Senate race, at this time.

Midnight

Alaska finally closes its polls, sending its 3 electoral votes to the president. But the US Senate Race is still in play, with Democrat Al Gross nipping at incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan's heels. Unless the revolt from the left exceeds even my optimistic expectations, Sullivan will probably sit in the 117th Congress. However, since Alaska won't even start counting votes received after October 29th until next Tuesday, we won't know until the 18th.

In the background, I want to know state legislature races in a few states, like North Carolina. 

Sources:

• Poll closing times from 270towin.com
• The Economist
• Election Results Timing from 538

Milestones today:

• Sir Sean Connery has died at 90.
• On this day in 1864, just 8 days before a hotly-contested presidential election during the Civil War, Congress admitted (abolitionist, Republican-leaning) Nevada as the 36th State, adding 3 Electoral College votes towards President Lincoln's re-election and, three months later, a solid vote towards ratification of the 13th Amendment. Think about this precedent when the District of Columbia becomes a state next summer.
• The Atlantic's Megan Garber suggests the character Dwight Shrute in the US version of The Office "was a warning."
• With 3 days to go before polls close, the president's net approval rating remains -9, and the Economist's model has his chance of re-election at 4%.

Also, this is the 600th post on the Daily Parker since last November 1st, and the 7,600th since May 1998. In each of the last 6 months, the 12-month running total has hit a new record, mainly because if I post once more today, this will be the 8th month in a row of 50+ posts. In the 22-year history of this blog, I've only posted 50+ posts 13 times, including those 8. So in future, when I look back on 2020, I'll have at least one good thing to talk about.

Jennifer Rubin (a Republican, I keep having to remind myself) finds former President Obama's mockery of the current president impressive and effective:

In Orlando on Tuesday, Obama told the crowd, “Our current president, he whines that ’60 Minutes’ is too tough,” he said referring to Trump’s walking out of an interview last week with CBS News’s Lesley Stahl. “You think he’s going to stand up to dictators? He thinks Lesley Stahl’s a bully.” He does not need to say Trump is a “crybaby” or “weak”; he lets Trump indict himself with his own conduct.

Obama does not need to label Trump “nuts” or a “conspiracy monger.” Again, Obama simply needs to point out what Trump has done and asks the audience whether it’s normal. “[Our] president of the United States retweeted a post that claimed that the Navy SEALs didn’t actually kill [Osama] bin Laden. Think about that. And we act like, well, okay. It’s not okay.” He added: “We’ve gotten so numb to what is bizarre behavior. We have a president right now who lies multiple times a day, and this is not my claim. Even Fox News sometimes says, well, what he says, isn’t really true, he didn’t mean it. It’s not normal behavior. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a coworker. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a football coach. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a high school principal. I mean, we might have to put up with it if it was a family member, but we talk about them afterward.”

With his relaxed body language and humorous delivery, Obama conveys in these short vignettes what pundits and psychologists have spent years analyzing. In doing so, he makes clear to those who do not follow politics routinely that this is not hard. You don’t have to be a political junkie or policy wonk to figure out something is very, very wrong with Trump.

And here we are, six days until the election, with the following polls-of-polls:

• The Economist has the chance of Biden winning the Electoral College at 97%, with an 80% chance of taking Florida*, and the Democrats with a 75% chance of taking the Senate.
• Nate Silver has Biden at 88%.
• The University of Virginia model has Biden winning 350 Electoral College votes.
• Even Fox News had Biden up 16 points a week ago, but for some reason they haven't published a new poll since the 2nd debate.

Know hope.

* Florida matters, because they will count all their ballots on the 3rd—in fact, they're already counting them. If Florida's 29 votes go to Biden, the president's path to re-election becomes nearly impossible.

The first polls close in the US next Tuesday in Indiana at 6 pm EST (5 pm Chicago time, 22:00 UTC) and the last ones in Hawaii and Alaska at 7pm HST and 8pm AKST respectively (11 pm in Chicago, 05:00 UTC). You can count on all your pocket change that I'll be live-blogging for most of that time. I do plan actually to sleep next Tuesday, so I can't guarantee we'll know anything for certain before I pass out, but I'll give it the college try.

Meanwhile:

• The US Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court last night by a vote of 52-48, with only Susan Collins (R-ME) joining the Democrats. It's the first time since Reconstruction that the Senate confirmed an Associate Justice with no votes from the opposition party. And in the history of our country, only two people have been confirmed by a smaller margin: Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas. I'm sure the three of them will continue to fight for bipartisanship and good jurisprudence as strongly as they ever have.
• Emma Green points out "the inevitability of Amy Coney Barrett," because the Republicans don't care. And Olivia Nuzzi brings us the story of "the tortured self-justification of one very powerful Trump-loathing anonymous Republican."
• Bill McKibben reminds us "there's nothing sacred about nine justices; a livable planet, on the other hand..."
• Speaking of the planet, Tropical Storm Zeta became Hurricane Zeta last night. The 2020 season has now tied the all-time record for the number of named Atlantic storms set in January 2006, and it's only October.
• Bars and restaurants in suburban Cook County have to close again tomorrow as statewide Covid-19 cases exceed 4,500 on a rolling 14-day average. Some parts of the state have seen positivity rates over 7.5% in the last couple of weeks. My favorite take-out Chinese place down by my office is also closing for the winter, which I understand but which still saddens me.
• The Washington Post asked TV screenwriters how 2020 should end.
• In one small bit of good news, the Food and Drug Administration has finally agreed that whisky is gluten-free, as gluten does not evaporate in the distilling process and so stays in the mash.

Finally, from a reader in Quebec comes a tip about violent clashes between a Canadian First Nation, the Mi'kmaw tribe of Nova Scotia, and local commercial fishermen over First Nations lobster rights. If you think Canada is a land without racism, well...they're just more polite about it.

Unlike the first presidential debate on September 29th (i.e., two years ago), nothing that happened at last night's debate made me want to become a hermit in the mountains of New Zealand. But two big things stood out.

Most importantly, Joe Biden pledged to expand Obamacare with a true public option. This would expand health coverage to the entire country. It would constitute the broadest expansion of a public program in my lifetime. And it would take the biggest step towards a true guarantee of health care in the US since Medicare became law in 1965. I imagine UHG, Blue Cross, and all the other health insurers in the country just started taking a hard look at their stock option plans.

On the other side of the ledger--the side making New Zealand more attractive to me--the president essentially said that only stupid undocumented immigrants show up to immigration court. This goes along with his general belief that following the law is for suckers. And coming in the same debate in which he reiterated his "rapists and murderers" view of immigrants, it really showcased his unfitness to lead a country where fewer than 1% of its families can claim to have lived here for 500 or more years.

Other reactions, from home and abroad:

• The Guardian: the president "has given up trying to articulate a plan."
• Le Monde: the president "needed a striking victory to change the dynamic of the election. This wasn't the case."
• El Universal: "nada cambia." (Nothing changed.)
• The Toronto Star: "final debate is calmer amid the campaign storm."
• The Washington Post: The changes to the debate format "all worked. There were far fewer interruptions — perhaps because Trump recognized it didn’t really work for him last time, but also because of the changes — and there was a far more substantive exchange on the issues." Still, the president said nothing new.
• The New York Times: "Biden’s win is also a function of a solid performance focused on real issues, in contrast with the president’s decision to spend most of the debate on the deep lore of the Fox Cinematic Universe."

Of course, last night's debate won't change a thing. About a third of the electorate, including I, have already voted. The number of truly undecided voters this cycle wouldn't make a dent in the Tampa Bay Rays fan base. And as the man himself pointed out last night, we're only one Scaramucci (11 days) from the polls closing.