The Daily Parker

To thoroughly depress you, SMBC starts the week by showing you appropriate wine pairings for your anxiety. In similar news:

• Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) seeks a 19th term as Speaker, but new Federal indictments and that people voted against Democrats statewide because they don't want him around anymore have made his bid unlikely.
• Vermont and South Dakota have similar demographics and both have Republican governors, so how did Vermont keep Covid-19 infections low while South Dakota didn't? Hmmm, could it be what kind of Republican governors they have?
• The Tribune describes the ghost town of Singapore, Mich., that vanished in the 1870s.

Time to take a walk.

Two women have stealthily implemented the proposed name-change of Stephen Douglas Park to Fredrick Douglass Park:

This is the first time the vandals have spoken about their crime, which involved adding a very official-looking extra “S” to every park district sign in Douglas Park, a year and a half before Chicago’s Park District actually decided to change the name this September.

“It had started to bother me, and I would wonder, ‘Why is this park not named after Frederick Douglass instead of Stephen Douglas?’” said Vandal No. 2. “It just seemed wrong and obvious.”

Some incredibly persistent middle-school students from Village Leadership Academy were responsible for getting the vandals and many others to think about this.

It’s an insult for the park to be named after a slaveholder, they argued beginning in 2017, especially when it would be so easy to rename the park for an African American hero. They argued the park district could just add an “S” to the end of Douglas to change the park’s namesake from Stephen Douglas, the former Illinois senator who profited from slavery, to Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist.

The park district’s board of commissioners is slated to finalize the park’s name change this month, after Frederick Douglass and his wife Anna. Official signs are expected to go up after that.

Apparently Park District employees caught the women more than once, but, not having any instructions to fix the signs, did nothing. Welcome to Chicago.

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...

As the counting continues in the states both presidential candidates need to win, and as Biden's lead continues to increase in Wisconsin and Michigan while he catches up in Pennsylvania, I should mention that voters weighed in on other races last night.

• Every person bar one I voted for won in Illinois, including Joe Biden, US Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D), US Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL09), my state representative Gregory Harris (D-13), and my state senator Heather Steans (D-7). (Steans ran unopposed.)
• Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL06) held his seat after his challenger Jeanne Ives came within a whisker of beating him. Meanwhile, extreme-right-wing dairy mogul Jim Oberweis' race to defeat incumbent US Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL14) remains too close to call; at this writing, Oberweis is up by 900 votes out of 375,000 counted.
• The Fair Tax Amendment failed. It would have allowed a graduated income tax in Illinois and slowed the concentration of wealth here, and I supported it. Plutocrat Ken Griffin provided most of the money towards defeating it, mainly so he could continue to hoard the wealth he gained through skimming off the financial system.
• A pair of billionaires succeeded in defeating Illinois Supreme Court Justice Tom Kilbride. Griffin contributed millions to this effort as well. (See a pattern?)
• Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx won re-election, but not easily.
• Mark Kelly won a resounding victory over US Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ). Because McSally was never elected to the office, Kelly can take his seat in the Senate as soon as the vote is certified.
• US Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) appears to have won, 52%-45%, denying us a pickup we had hoped for.
• In Maine, US Senator Susan Collins (R) is 66,000 votes ahead of challenger Sara Gideon, and looks likely to retain her seat.
• In Georgia, US Senator David Purdue (R) and challenger Jon Ossoff may go to a runoff in January if neither wins 50% of the vote. With 94% counted, Perdue is up by 3 percentage points, at just over 50%. Georgia's special election for Senate will also go to a runoff with Democrat Raphael Warnock winning 32% of the vote against incumbent Sally Loeffler (R).

In sum: Biden will probably win, but we won't know if we have flipped the Senate until January. When the 117th Congress sits on January 3rd, we will most likely have 49 senators to the Republicans' 50, with Warnock being our only hope of getting any significant legislation onto Biden's desk before 2023.

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

A few:

• Illinois set another record for Covid-19 infections with almost 7,000 reported today.
• Three-time Hannah Arendt Memorial Banality of Evil Award winner Stephen Miller has laid out how much more evil he would do if his boss gets re-elected.
• All 15 New York Times columnists look back on what we have lost in the past four years.

More later.

In all the excitement of the debate, I forgot to mention a couple of local news items that depressed me today:

• The world's only Michelin-starred brewpub, which is in my neighborhood, and which closed in July due to Covid-19, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It's dead, Jim.
• Illinois set a new record for Covid-19 positive tests today (almost 5,000), prompting the city to impose new restrictions on bars and public gatherings.

Also, former US Attorney DIck Schultz talked to the Chicago Tribune and the local NBC affiliate about the Chicago 7 trial. (Watch Aaron Sorkin's Trial of the Chicago 7 to see Joseph Gordon-Leavitt play him.)

OK, really walking Parker and going to bed now...

After finishing a sprint review, it's nice to reset for a few minutes. So after working through lunch I have some time to catch up on these news stories:

• Faced with rising Covid-19 infections and deaths, Governor JB Pritzker has ordered suburban Chicago bars and restaurants to temporarily cease indoor dining.
• The Verge has an analysis of how Foxconn conned the people of Wisconsin (with the active complicity of former governor Scott Walker).
• Steven Pearlstein points out that, should we win the Senate and White House, we will have a far easier time legislating than fighting the Supreme Court.
• Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steel has endorsed Joe Biden.
• Crain's political columnist Greg Hinz recommends voting for the Fair Tax amendment to Illinois' constitution, even though its biggest champion hasn't made the best case.
• Julia Ioffe investigates the mysterious attacks on American diplomats and attempts to figure out what actually happened.

Finally, mathematician and humorist Tom Lehrer has waived most of the copyright protections around his music and lyrics, effectively putting the corpus of his work into the public domain. He says: "Most of the music written by Tom Lehrer will be added gradually later with further disclaimers." People have until the end of 2024 to download the materials he has released.

A cold front pushed its way through Chicago this afternoon, making it feel much more like autumn than we've experienced so far. And it got pretty chilly in Washington, where Senate Republicans began the first day of hearings into the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court:

• Matt Ford says Barrett's nomination is "the culmination of [the right-wing Federalist Society] movement’s work—and perhaps its high-water mark as well."
• Aaron Blake calls the Republican Party's  gamesmanship over the past 30 years "court stacking," and argues it deserves a proportional response from the left.
• Microsoft and the United States Cyber Command discovered that they had both targeted a group of cybercriminals, with happy results for all (except the Russians who they targeted).
• Closer to home, a developer will start construction on an extension to Chicago's 606 Trail across the Chicago river, due to open in 2023.
• The Chicago Tribune has yet another explainer about the Illinois graduated income tax proposal.

And much farther from home, Mars will be in opposition tomorrow night, coincidentally during the new moon, meaning we'll get a really good look at it.

Let's start with the good news: Julie Nolke has a new video.

OK, ready for everything else?

• The president called Kamala Harris "this monster" in an interview Thursday, because of course he did.
• The New England Journal of Medicine came a millimeter from endorsing Joe Biden in an editorial published yesterday.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) have introduced legislation to create a commission on presidential capacity, without naming the person who inspired the bill.
• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has called for an independent commission on redistricting to draw the ward map in 2021.
• The World Food Programme has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
• My law school classmate and friend Paul Hletko has been named one of Crain's 2020 Notable Entrepreneurs for his work creating and managing FEW Spirits.
• The Guardian has an interview with author Neil Gaiman today.

And finally, today would have been John Lennon's 80th birthday.