Joe!

Pennsylvania was finally called for Joe Biden. That’s enough to put him over 270 Electoral College votes. So … he won! The GOP in the state tried to suppress the vote. Biden won anyway. Nevada has also been called for Biden, giving him 290 EC votes. Georgia, and Arizona haven’t been called yet. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos list the firsts that Vice President Elect Kamala Harris fills. First woman vice president. First black vice president. Also a first for a South Asian person. Ian Reifowitz mentions a couple more firsts. Harris and her husband Douglas Emhoff are in an interracial marriage. And also an interfaith marriage – He’s Jewish and she’s Baptist with a good understanding of Hindu. Jews are delighted. Mark Sumner has a few videos of Americans in cities across the country celebrating the Biden win. A big crowd gathered in Black Lives Matter Plaza just north of the White House. Sumner also gathered tweets from foreign heads of state congratulating Biden and Harris on their win and expressing their willingness to work with America. We have allies again! Lisa Goldman tweeted a quote from Channel 4 News describing the partying:

Even after Obama was elected in 2008...you didn't see crowds like this. This feels more like the end of a regime than the end of a democratically elected government.

As for why four days passed before declaring a winner … Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo tweeted yesterday afternoon that the Associated Press and the networks had shifted from a reasonable doubt standard when calling a state to a theoretical doubt standard, a much higher threshold. The reason: the nasty guy and his supporters made a big scene when the AP called Arizona. So they were scared to call any other state. Sara Konrath is a social psychologist at Notre Dame studying empathy and narcissism. She tweeted:

Our research has found that red & blue US political maps create increased perceptions of polarization and more political stereotyping, compared to more accurate purple maps.

That tweet has an image of the states in various shades of purple giving a sense of their balance between liberals and conservatives. None vote 100% for a party. She also included a link to the Purple States website that has this type of map for this year and for every election going back to 1980. The nasty guy is asking for donations for his post election litigation efforts. There’s a line in the fine print that 60% of each donation will go to pay off campaign debt. Yeah, forever a con man. I paused in my writing to watch Joe Biden’s address to the nation, his first as president elect. Kamala Harris, vice president elect, spoke first. And no, I would not have bothered with any address from the nasty guy. Both speeches were full of hope and building community with a good dose of thankfulness. Something we haven’t heard from the White House occupant in four years. I feel better, much better. Some tweets from Leah McElrath, starting with one from yesterday.

The Electoral College needs to be abolished. Having a candidate ahead by over FOUR MILLION VOTES and not being able to call the election clearly violates the spirit of the foundation of our democracy as it now exists.

I wrote yesterday about the discard phase of a malignant narcissist, which McElrath mentions in this tweet from this afternoon.

Do you realize how unlikely it was for us to be able to stop the ascendance of fascism? I mean, we still have so much work to do to repair what was good and has been or might still be destroyed and to break down what is bad and needs rebuilding from the foundation up. But damn. The threat is not over yet, but we’ll make it through. I’ve been putting off writing about what we can expect from the Discard Phase because it’s hard to write about and people deserve a chance to breathe. So breathe, people. Take in what YOU did. We ARE our greatest strength. Let’s be clear: We will not get another chance to save our democracy. We cannot take it for granted EVER again. We must focus on expanding our electoral power and dismantling the obstacles erected to maintain minority rule. So celebrate, rest, and get ready to stay engaged.

McElrath responded to Ari Berman, who wrote:

They gutted the Voting Rights Act. They sabotaged the Postal Service. They closed polling places, purged voter rolls, attacked mail voting, tried to throw out ballots. And yet voters turned out in record numbers to overcome these barriers & make their voices heard.

And McElrath’s reply:

By the way: This election wasn’t “close.” More people voted for Biden and against Trump than have ever voted for any candidate in the history of this nation. And those are just the ballots that managed to get cast and counted. Biden’s popular vote lead is over four million.

During his speech Biden said he received over 74 million votes. That’s at least 8 million more than Hillary Clinton got four years ago. There is one concern in today’s events. Bide will turn 78 in about two weeks. He will be our oldest president. If he gets a second term he will be 82 at the start of it. I suspect he won’t be up to it. Though if he dies in office I think Harris will make a great president. I checked the Michigan coronavirus data today, which is based on data through yesterday. In the last week the state hit over 4900 cases in one day. That’s three times the peak back at the beginning of April. Thankfully, the number of deaths per day is still low, running about 25 a day. If the death toll matched last April we would be seeing about 270 deaths a day now and about 500 a day in about two weeks. There is the important question of why the state government isn’t imposing the same restrictions that brought down the caseload last April. The answer is the GOP led Supreme Court (which I’m glad we’ve flipped) gutted the law that allowed the Democratic governor to issue emergency declarations. And the GOP majority legislature (which will remain in GOP hands) is refusing to pass comprehensive stay home orders matching what the governor had issued.