Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

It's not shocking but it's both sobering and depressing to now have confirmation that, for half of the voting public, the following are not deal breakers when they decide who and what to vote for. In fact, 80,000,000 of our fellow citizens and neighbors voted for the candidate whose platform is listed below:

1. a candidate that was convicted for bilking people out of their hard-earned money with a fake university that gave them nothing in return. I'll just let this one stand in for all of Donnie Godfather's criminal activities, known and as yet unknown. To list it all would take a book.

2. a candidate who has a history of racist acts and statements of encouragement to white supremacist groups (found guilty of racist rental policies, Central Park 5, "very fine people," re-tweets of white supremacist propaganda, etc., etc., etc.),

3. a candidate who is proud to be a practicing misogynist, making no effort to change or evolve in any way,

4. a candidate who is fighting in the courts to take away healthcare for 30,000,000 Americans even during a pandemic,

5. a candidate who deliberately made that pandemic even worse and suggested homicidal cures,

6. a candidate that publicly mocks the disabled to the cheering of his supporters,

7. a candidate who is a serial child abuser and surrounds himself with the same (Miller, Mnuchin, DeVos, his "I don't care" wife...)

8. a candidate who incites violence and turns Americans against Americans with his rhetoric,

9. a candidate who "misuses" charity donations entrusted to him,

10. a candidate who nominates homophobic judges,

11. a candidate who owns casinos so he treats every citizen of the country as a mark,

12. a candidate who supports dumping carcinogens into our water supplies (his environmental policies will kill more babies in their wombs than all "abortion clinics" combined),

13. a candidate who sides with Putin and our other adversaries over us for his own personal financial gain,

14. and, a candidate who has never even made an attempt to address his personal issues and failures of character because he doesn't see them as such or think they matter.

15. a candidate who got himself impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress and should have been impeached for much, much more, including being a Manchurian President and traitor to the United States Of America.

Sure, there could be more items on the above list but who has time to read it all? Whether taken individually or together, the above characteristics indicate a candidate who is a sociopath on his "be best" days and a psychopath on his normal days. Apparently, 80,000,000 people who walk among us see the above as perfectly A-OK. As I indicated at #1 on my list, I haven't even included the extensive list of things Trump is being investigated for and will be investigated for, not the least of which is tax fraud.

None of us are perfect but it used to be that most people tried to be better and do their best to make at least some little part of the world better. Instead, way too many have hatefully and nihilistically set out to do the opposite and endorsed Trump's massive bad character with their votes. Thus, it rubs off on themselves and they like it. Some, for instance, will tell you that they aren't racists even though they voted to encourage a racist and his racism. That's like going to watch and applaud a lynching while saying you had nothing to do with tying the rope to the tree limb.

The Wealthiest Parts Of Beverly Hills-- Where Greed And Selfishness Trump Humanity-- Voted Fascist Last Tuesday

 

Los Feliz, where I live, is an old L.A. neighborhood, originally a Spanish land-grant to corporal José Vicente Feliz. The birthplace of Disney Studios (and home of Walt Disney) and the West Coast headquarters of ABC, Los Feliz was the original Beverly Hills. The other day a friend came over for a little hike in the neighborhood, the only way I've gotten together with friends since March. The election was over but hadn't been called for Biden yet. We passed a house-- a house I pass every time I go for a hike-- and there was a huge 20 foot wide banner hanging from the balcony. In the middle of a neighborhood where basically every house has a Biden-Harris sign, the banner was a Trump-Pence one. I was shocked, horrified. In my neighborhood!??! Everyone votes for and supports Democrats around here. This area just voted out a solid progressive incumbent, David Ryu, to replace him with a Democratic Socialist, Nithya Raman, 52.46% to 47.54%. Our congressman, Adam Schiff beat well-financed ($3,649,968) Republican Eric Early 218,101 (73.28%) to 79,544 (26.72%). In my immediate neighborhood (Precinct 900067A) Biden got 1,147 votes to Trump's 209.

But in the actual Beverly Hills, things went far worse than a Trump banner hanging from a balcony. Keep in mind that in 2016 Trump won Los Angeles County with 23.4%. Votes are still being counted but Trump increased his support in L.A. (so far) to 26.9%. And, according to L.A. Times reporter Lila Seidman, Trump increased his support in Beverly Hills to the point where two precincts-- like Trousdale Estates area, where the average home sale price is currently more than $15 million-- gave Trump majorities! "The two precincts," she wrote-- "both above Sunset Boulevard in the areas synonymous with wealth-- stick out like a red thumb among the blue sea representing what has traditionally been seen as Los Angeles’ liberal stronghold on the Westside. They are some of the county’s most affluent areas, yet they backed Trump more than neighboring luxury areas such as Bel-Air, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and Holmby Hills, which went to Biden along with other parts of Beverly Hills... But neighboring precincts-- which run roughly from Trousdale Estates to the Los Angeles Country Club, with the Beverly Hills Hotel in the middle-- voted for Trump 56% to 44%, according to data from The Times.

When it came to light that one of the same neighborhoods, or precincts, in 2016 voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton, it was seen as an anomaly. This time around, no one seemed shocked to learn that an even wider swath of the small, affluent city of about 34,000 went red.

“Trump has been very good for rich people,” Steel said, “and I think that sometimes people forget to think about human life and human policies versus what’s good for your wallet.”

Walking his dog near Will Rogers Memorial Park, just south of Sunset Boulevard, resident David Shapiro said he voted for Trump for the first time this year-- abstaining in 2016-- because of his economic and tax policies, as well as his support of Israel and tough stance on China.

A Jewish emigree from Moscow, Shapiro, 65, said that Trump was not cozy with Russia as many people thought and that America was not seen as a friend in his home country.

“He’s good for international relations,” said Shapiro, a businessman. “We don’t have any war-- the problem is there will be war in the Middle East. And he’s good to Israel.”

Beverly Hills Mayor Lester Friedman said he didn’t see the expansion of Trump voters to two neighborhoods as indicative of a trend.

“I don’t really sense a big change in political outlooks, just that they’re more vocal,” Friedman said by phone Friday afternoon.

As some residents noted, pro-Trump supporters have gathered every week for nearly four months along one of Beverly Hills’ main thoroughfares to proclaim their support for the president. Rally organizer and resident Shiva Bagheri said in late October that the events empowered people like her to go from “the silent majority” to the “loud-lion majority.”

On Saturday morning, a handful of Trump supporters gathered at a park where the rally usually kicked off at 2 p.m. A man and a woman who declined to comment were standing behind a sign calling for the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom, as neighborhoods just a few miles away were celebrating Biden’s victory by dancing in the street, cheering and honking their horns.

Contrary to the notion of a louder electorate, many Trump and Biden supporters said they felt they could not speak fully on the record for fear of retribution from neighbors or potential negative impacts to their business. One man from Bel-Air went off on Trump but then declined to give his name, saying, “I have to work in this town.”

Republicans Are Far From Ready To Give Up On Trump-- Or Trumpism-- Yet

 

We didn't do much coverage of the manufactured Hunter Biden scandal here, not even when we were pushing Bernie in the primaries. As disgusting as it has always been that Biden has so many sleazy lobbyists in his family and that DC functions like that, the whole "scandal" generally reeked of bullshit. On the other hand, we consistently warned that if Biden was handed the nomination, the general election would devolve into-- among other things-- a discussion of whose family is more repulsively corrupt... and that's a battle in which no one could ever top the Trumps.

Earlier today, London's Times published a piece by Manveen Rana about how a Kremlin-linked Ukrainian oligarch and Giuliani "associate," Dmytro Firtash, was involved in a Trump campaign conspiracy to manufacture "evidence" against the Bidens.

Assorted Dildoes by Chip Proser

According to Lev Parnas, one of Mr Giuliani’s associates, they had sought help in their quest for a scandal that would damage Joe Biden’s run for the presidency from Dmytro Firtash, a Kremlin-linked Ukrainian oligarch.

Mr Firtash, who has faced extradition to America since 2014, had cut a deal, Mr Parnas claimed, that would quash his extradition order in return for any evidence of scandal surrounding the Bidens. Mr Firtash, who was shown to have extended a $1 million loan to Mr Parnas during this period, has always denied any involvement in the smear campaign directed at the Bidens.

The allegations come from Hares Youssef, a Ukrainian businessman and close friend of Mr Firtash. An adviser to Viktor Yushchenko, the former president of Ukraine, Mr Youssef said that he was asked to invent links between Hunter Biden and a business deal with one of his former associates that had gone wrong.

“The deal was to lie,” Mr Youssef claimed. “I had never even met him. But the hunting dogs were out for Hunter Biden.”

Mr Youssef, who was born in Syria and is a dual national, invested just under $3 million in mbloom, a tech start-up fund backed by Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner.

The details of mbloom’s investments were always obscure. Mr Youssef claimed that he believed his investment would be used to create a gold-backed virtual currency named Golden Hearts, a project he has long wanted to get off the ground. The managers of mbloom, however, used the fund to invest in their own start-ups.

Mr Youssef lost the bulk of his investment when the fund was shut down in 2016 after Mr Archer was accused of fraud in a separate and unrelated case.

Hunter, the youngest son of Mr Biden, now the president-elect, had previously been on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, with Mr Archer and had become involved in his investment firm, Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, one of the main funders behind mbloom.

Hunter had ceased any association with the company before Mr Youssef made his investment in mbloom.

Yet last year, Mr Youssef briefly courted journalists with a story about Hunter’s links to the now-defunct mbloom fund and claims that he had promised businessmen access to his father in 2015, when Mr Biden was vice-president under Barack Obama. Mr Youssef had no evidence at the time to support his assertions and now he has admitted that it was all untrue.

...Youssef claimed a member of Mr Firtash’s team approached him, saying: “We can solve this relationship with America if you can help us.” He said that he was told his friend’s extradition order could be rescinded if he could find enough evidence against Hunter Biden.

He claimed that knowing that Mr Youssef had been involved with mbloom, the Firtash team asked him to create a story about Hunter Biden being linked to the doomed fund.

“But I told them Hunter Biden wasn’t linked to mbloom,” Mr Youssef insisted. “I said it was absolutely impossible because the documents I signed with this investment could appear anywhere and they would show Hunter Biden was not involved. It would break the story because it’s not true.”

...“Somebody from Firtash’s team asked me if I wanted to get my visa back and to be able to travel to the United States again,” Mr Youssef claimed. “They said if we solved the problem in the United States, we can solve the problem of your visa, you can even get immunity, if we can use your investment in mbloom in this Hunter Biden case.”

...Firtash, a billionaire who is closely linked to the Kremlin, made his fortune acting as a middleman for the Russian government’s gas interests in Ukraine.

The US Justice Department has alleged that Mr Firtash was also heavily involved with “Russian organised crime.”

...Firtash has been a frequent presence in the controversies surrounding Mr Trump. Paul Manafort, the Republican strategist who was Mr Trump’s campaign chairman during the last election before he was convicted of fraud, had also worked for Mr Firtash, who hired him to help with the campaign for Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president. Mr Yanukovych was overthrown in 2014 and has since lived in Russia. He has links to President Putin.

Mr Firtash also hired two lawyers with links to Mr Trump to present his case to William Barr, the US attorney-general.

That process was halted when the Ukraine inquiry began and Mr Trump was impeached.

The attacks on Hunter Biden’s business dealings took centre stage in Mr Trump’s re-election campaign. However, Mr Youssef said that the election had no bearing on his decision to talk about his own experience of how evidence against Hunter was collected in Ukraine.

Instead it was a report published by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project this week that carried evidence from leaked bank records showing Mr Youssef’s investment in mbloom, he said.

Not having learned their lesson yet about involving themselves and their party in the Trump crime operation, Republican aspirants for the 2024 Republican nomination are backing Trump's election fraud lies. In his New York Magazine column this afternoon, Jonathan Chait noted that "watching the Republican Party absorb Trump’s ludicrous accusations has been depressingly instructive. It replicates the process by which Republicans accepted Trump in the first place. It also reflects, in miniature, the process by which the party has surrendered to kookery over several generations... The most revealing responses came from the pool of prospective 2024 presidential nominees. Hopefuls like Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Ron DeSantis, and Josh Hawley endorsed various groundless charges of mass voter fraud gloated by Trump. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem forcefully rejected the premise that Republican secretaries of State have testified to the legitimacy of their election processes. 'The media can project an election winner, but they don’t get to decide if claims of broken election laws & irregularities are true,' tweeted Marco Rubio. Lindsey Graham proclaimed, 'Philadelphia elections are crooked as a snake,' and went so far as to suggest legislators in states won by Biden nullify the vote and appoint pro-Trump electors. 'This is a contested election,' Graham announced on Fox News, adding, 'President Trump should not concede.' 'Every time they close the doors and shut out the lights, they always find more Democratic votes,' declared Cruz-- even though the doors were in fact open to Republican observers and the lights in fact on."

America's Biggest Loser

 

This morning, between reports that Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump congressional lapdog Matt Gaetz both have COVID-19, CNN reported that 2 heavily armed men from Chesapeake, Virginia were arrested Thursday outside the Philadelphia Convention Center, where ballots are being counted. They were "coming to deliver a truck full of fake ballots." Both of the right-wing terrorists are Trumpist Q-Anon Republicans.

Since then, CNN, AP and NBC have called the election for President-elect Biden. Even Murdoch-owned media outlets are getting their right-wing viewers and readers ready to understand that the party's over for this round of fascism, shifting their messaging in what looks like a coordinated effort to pop the bubble of unreality. Laura Ingraham urged him to accept defeat with "grace and composure." As if!

This morning, before Trump was declared the loser, the editors of the Wall Street Journal published The Presidential Endgame, urging "whoever wins needs the other to concede to be able to govern. The result Americans on both political sides should want is one that most people think was decided fairly."

They explained that "Trump has every right to demand recounts if state votes are close, and to go to the courts for relief if there is evidence of fraud... [T]he Trump campaign will have to prove [fraud] to prevail in court. It won’t be enough to charge that Philadelphia is historically corrupt, though it is, or that state election officials are partisan. The Georgia secretary of state is a Republican, by the way, contrary to Mr. Trump’s remarks Thursday night. The vote counting in Arizona and Georgia has seemed professional and transparent... Pat Toomey, the GOP Senator from the Keystone State, says he has seen no evidence of fraud in his state’s counting. We’ve also seen no concrete evidence... If Mr. Biden has 270 Electoral College votes at the end of the counting and litigation, President Trump will have a decision to make. We hope in that event he would concede gracefully. " And now the bullshit you can always expect from the Journal editorial page:

Trump can rightly say that he helped the GOP save its Senate majority, gain seats in the House, and save the country from a radical progressive agenda. The election results show he has also broadened the GOP appeal to minorities and across middle-class America. His policies broadened prosperity to a forgotten group of Americans, and his willingness to buck conventional wisdom led to a diplomatic breakthrough in the Middle East. His judicial appointments have reshaped the federal courts and will echo through the law for years.

This is a considerable achievement, and it may look even better once Mr. Biden attempts to govern with an angry, impatient left. But Mr. Trump’s legacy will be diminished greatly if his final act is a bitter refusal to accept a legitimate defeat. Republican officials will turn away, and eventually so will the American public that wants to see the election resolved.

Mr. Trump hates to lose, and no doubt he will fight to the end. But if defeat comes, he will serve himself and his country best by honoring America’s democratic traditions and leaving office with dignity.

Dignity? Donald Trump? Where have they been for the last 40 years? Right after Biden became President-elect Trump said his campaign would begin challenging U.S. election results in court next week, saying "this election is far from over... We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed."

The Fat Lady Is Singing But Trump Refuses To Hear Her

 

Although Twitter hid Trump's 2:22 AM brain fart-- "Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process"-- it isn't hard for anyone to access: "I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST. The OBSERVERS were not allowed, in any way, shape, or form, to do their job and therefore, votes accepted during this period must be determined to be ILLEGAL VOTES. U.S. Supreme Court should decide!"

This morning Axios' Jonathan Swan was writing that "Senior White House and Trump campaign officials are complaining bitterly about poor internal communication, blaming colleagues, pondering what jobs they might try to get next year, and lashing out at their new enemy: Fox News. Aides told Axios they're dreading the prospect of Fox calling Pennsylvania for Joe Biden, which could make the conservative network the first to give Biden 270 electoral votes. A Trump campaign official said the internal view was that it's essential to keep the race 'optically' alive, and that if Fox were to call it, it would severely harm their efforts to support President Trump's (false) claims that he'd already won."

He reported that, "The incandescent anger at Fox within Trumpworld is hard to overstate." They're still furious that Fox called Arizona for Biden and have been unsuccessfully trying to get Fox to rescind the call ever since. And there was some gallows humor:

A senior administration official said: "When Bush had this issue they tapped arguably the pre-eminent statesman of his generation, James Baker, to spearhead their legal and PR efforts, to great effect. ... We rolled out Rudy Giuliani, Corey Lewandowski and Pam Bondi. You can draw your own conclusions."

Maybe that's because Trump's inner circle has been busy revving up violence. This morning Tony Romm and Isaac Stanley-Becker reported at the Washington Post that last night a Republican campaign firm, OpnSesame, run by Gary Coby, the digital director for Trump’s 2020 campaign, sent unmarked texts urging supporters in Philly area to attack the city's voting counting center:

ALERT: Radical Liberals & Dems are trying to steal this election from Trump! We need YOU! Show your support at the corner of 12th St. & Arch St. in Philadelphia.

Gary Coby wants to take his unfortunate existence out on America

Two two reporters wrote that "The text messages reflect the Trump campaign’s heightened efforts to harness digital channels, and sow distrust about the 2020 election’s results, as Biden approaches the threshold needed to win the race. The campaign has sent millions of emails and texts in recent days that similarly claim without evidence that Democrats are trying to steal the election, including a new blast of text messages late Thursday asking for donations to help Trump initiate legal challenges in key battleground states... The tactics illustrate potential vulnerabilities in the country’s communications systems, exposing the extent to which a wide array of sophisticated actors can use tools, including text messages, to spread falsehoods or stoke fear with little public oversight. Earlier this week, Americans nationwide were bombarded with unidentifiable robocalls telling them to “stay home,” a campaign some feared might deter people from casting their votes. On Election Day, officials in Michigan warned local voters about another slew of robocalls and texts that seemed to discourage voting."

The texts to Philadelphia numbers only instructed people to show up at the site where ballot tabulation was occurring. By baselessly raising the specter of electoral theft, however, they fit a pattern of messaging by the president, his children, top campaign aides and their allies in right-wing media. The rallying cry they settled on was #stopthesteal, which they pushed on Twitter, Facebook and other social media in an effort to spark nationwide street protests over counts that showed Trump trailing Biden.

The efforts, via text and online channels, were aimed specifically at vote-counting centers. A Facebook group called “STOP THE STEAL”-- sponsored by the co-founder of Women for Trump, among others-- promoted a slew of events aimed at delegitimizing the count.

The group gained 360,000 members before Facebook took it offline Thursday. “The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group,” said a Facebook spokesman, Andy Stone.

A few Republicans-- very few-- are beginning to speak up about Trump's tactics and baseless claims of fraud and vote theft. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) said that "If the president’s legal team has real evidence, they need to present it immediately to both the public and the courts. In the meantime, all legal votes need to be counted." Susan Collins (R-ME) went a little further: "States have the authority to determine the specific rules of elections. Every valid vote under a state’s law should be counted. Allegations of irregularities can be adjudicated by the courts. We must all respect the outcome of elections." Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) told Trump to STFU, stop whining and take his complaints to court and demanded he "STOP Spreading debunked misinformation... This is getting insane." Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) spoke for most Americans, regardless of party, when he said said that Trump's bullshit is "very hard to watch" and that his allegations "are just not substantiated."

Unless Alaska flips, this is probably the final 2020 election map

Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Señor Trumpanzee"is wrong to say that the election was rigged, corrupt or stolen-- doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destruction and dangerous passions."

Miss McConnell doesn't want to get any of the blame if the violent Trumpists start rioting. He tweeted this out early this morning:

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), on the other hand, ever the faithful Trump lapdog, ran to Fox to claim that "Trump won this election... So everyone who is listening, do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes."

President-elect Byeden will address the nation tonight.

And let's give the ghost of John McCain the last word: "I prefer people who don't lose reelections." Or Green Day:

Folie à Millions-- Nearly Half The Voters Looked At The Last 4 Years And Decided They Want More Of The Same

 

The Sound Of Music Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

As Charlies Pierce noted in his Esquire column on Wednesday, "He Got More Votes Than Last Time. Almost half of the country looked at the way Donald Trump has functioned as president since 2017 and said, definitively, that they wanted four more years of it. Yesterday, while writing about Kushner and other predatory landlords working towards evicting hundreds of families in the middle of a pandemic, I stumbled across a horrifying pattern of statistics: Trump's support had grown over the last 4 years, at least in the 13 states with the worst COVID caseloads per capita.

This morning I decided to see if that was holding up in other states as well. Obviously, as the vote counting continues, there will be changes, especially since many of the votes coming in are absentee ballots that are overwhelmingly Democratic. Maybe we'll have to look at this again in a couple of weeks when the dust has settled. But here's what we have so far just as Biden is about to be named president-elect. (I'm only including states where at least three-quarters of the vote-- 75%-- is already counted, so no Alaska, Maryland or New Jersey).

• Alabama- 62.3%, down from 62.8%
• Arizona- 48.5%, down 48.7%
• Arkansas- 62.7%, up from 60.6%
• California- 33.0%, up from 31.6%
• Colorado- 42.2%, down from 43.2%
• Delaware- 39.8%, down from 41.7%
• Florida- 51.2%, up from 49.0%
• Georgia- 49.4%, down from 50.8%
• Hawaii- 34.3%, up from 30.0%
• Idaho- 63.7%, up from 59.3%
• Illinois- 43.0%, up from 38.8%
• Indiana- 57.0%, up from 56.8%
• Iowa- 53.1%, up from 51.1%
• Kansas- 56.7%, up from 56.6%
• Kentucky- 62.7%, up from 62.5%
• Louisiana- 58.5%, up from 58.1%
• Maine- 43.3%, down from 44.9%
• Massachusetts- 32.4%, down from 32.8%
• Michigan- 47.9%, up from 47.5%
• Minnesota- 45.4%, down from 44.9%
• Mississippi- 59.7%, up from 57.9%
• Missouri- 56.9%, up from 56.8%
• Montana- 56.7%, up from 56.2%
• Nebraska- 58.7%, same as 2016
• Nevada- 48.5%, up from 45.5%
• New Hampshire- 45.4%, down from 46.6%
• New Mexico- 43.6%, up from 40.0%
• New York- 40.4%, up from 36.5%
• North Carolina- 50.0%, up from 49.8%
• North Dakota- 65.0% up from 63.0%)
• Ohio- 53.3%, up from 51.7%
• Oklahoma- 65.4%, up from 65.3%
• Oregon- 40.3%, up from 39.1%
• Pennsylvania- 49.3%, up from 48.2%
• Rhode Island- 39.2%, up from 38.9%
• South Carolina- 55.1%, up from 54.9%
• South Dakota- 61.8%, up from 61.5%
• Tennessee- 60.7%, same as 2016
• Texas- 52.2%, same as 2016
• Utah- 58.5%, up from 45.5%
• Vermont- 31.7%, up from 30.3%
• Virginia- 44.5%, up from 44.4%
• Washington- 38.0%, up from 36.8%
• West Virginia- 68.6%, up from 68.5%
• Wisconsin- 48.8%, up from 47.2%
• Wyoming- 70.0%, up from 67.4%

Only 9 states saw Trump's proportion of the vote go down: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Hampshire. This is generally a function of less interest this year in third party candidates. But, look at Texas (where 97% of the votes are counted). Trump got 5,876,777 votes do far. His total in 2016 was 4,685,047. Or take Vermont, where 95% of the vote is counted. In 2016 Trump got 95,369 votes. This year he got 111,131 votes. Read 'em and weep.

Yesterday, John Pavlovitz spoke for many people when he wrote, "The fact that it was even close, the fact that more people voted for him a second time, the fact that a higher number of white women inexplicably affirmed him-- it is all confirmation that whether we remove the very visible, unsightly symptom or not, the pervasive disease is still horribly afflicting us... I was certain we were better than him, but we are not."

Numbed by a cocktail of optimism and ignorance, many of us imagined this was a sick, momentary aberration; a temporary glitch in the system that would surely be remedied: after so much ugliness, such open disregard for people of color, such inhumanity toward migrant children, such a sickening failure in the face of this pandemic-- sanity would surely come to the rescue.

We were certain that we would collectively course-correct; that the pendulum that had so wildly swung toward inhumanity would come roaring back to decency in these days; that we would presently be basking in the glory of a radiant dawn referendum on all this bloated bigotry.

We thought we would be dancing on the grave of fascism.

We thought, of course the good people of this nation would come to their collective senses, leaving behind political affiliations and superficial preferences and ceremonial ties, to rescue us from a malevolence that had proven itself unworthy of its position and toxic to its people.

We were certain there would be a mass repudiation of the racism that this man has revealed and the violence he’s nurtured, because for all its flaws we really believed America was better than this.

We were wrong.

...We believed the best about this nation and we were mistaken.

To many oppressed and vulnerable communities, to people who have long known the depth of America’s sickness because they have experienced it in traffic stops and workplace mistreatment and opportunity inequity and the bitter words of strangers-- this may be less shocking news than it is to those of us with greater privilege and more buffers to adversity and the luxury of naiveté.

But this is the sober spot in which we stand now: realizing that our optimism about the whole of this nation was misplaced,
our prayers for the better angels of so many white Christians were unanswered, our childish illusions that people were indeed basically good and decent, seared away in their reaffirmation of something that the rest of the watching world finds reprehensible.

Brandy X Lee is an author and psychiatrist working at Yale, a specialist in violence prevention. Yesterday, writing for Raw Story, she predicted that "The coming weeks and months will be the most dangerous period of this presidency" and noted that there's a sickness in America that goes beyond just Trump. "'What is wrong with 68 million Americans?' is a question many are asking the day after the election. Why should the race even be close? Why did 48% of voting adults choose to remain with a president who leaves a trail of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, the nation bankrupt, children in cages, and our natural habitat under existential threat? It makes no rational sense-- unless we correctly identify the problem. For almost four years, mental health professionals have been urging the nation to bring a mental health perspective to a mental health problem, instead of assuming that everything is political. All substitute approachess have failed, just as the best pandemic control comes from infectious disease specialists, not from a radiologist or economists. We have also anticipated the current situation as a product of having mental pathology in power for a prolonged period.

In mental pathology, where higher functions are impaired, an individual taps more easily into “the primitive brain,” which is irrational but very powerful, as it is survival-driven. Illegitimate power is like oxygen to the narcissistically- or sociopathically-disordered mind, and such a person would be driven to do anything-- including annihilate himself and the world-- for his psychic survival. Losing an election would, therefore, not at all be like a healthy person’s experience of defeat. In fact, we know how much Donald Trump fears it through his readiness to call others “losers” and “suckers”, in order to separate himself and to disavow qualities he cannot tolerate.

Many of his followers will equally experience his downfall as a life-or-death matter, since he has conditioned this into them. Their bond is pathological to start, based on developmental wounds or regression to an earlier stage of development under stress, which led them to seeking a parental figure. They are thus vulnerable to someone manipulative and exploitative enough to say he will take care of them and protect them in unrealistic ways that defy reality. And once they do,  they often give up their agency and rationality. Recent footage of his followers chanting, “Fire Fauci!” is disturbing in its depiction of their conformity, loss of personality, and alignment with Donald Trump’s thinking-- to suggest proactively that he remove the reminder of his unwanted reality: the pandemic. Delusions, paranoia, and violence-proneness are among the most contagious symptoms, and we see all these tendencies in his followers.

Under these emotional bonds, his followers will likely experience any threat to his position as an existential threat to themselves, which is why negative facts about him only activate defensive denial and disavowal, rather than abandonment. Abused children rather blame themselves than the parent as a survival impulse, for the parent is their lifeline, and it is easier to believe that he or she could never do wrong-- and the more untrue this belief, the more insistently they cling to it.

“Shared psychosis” or “folie à millions” (madness by the millions) has been well-documented by renowned mental health experts such as Carl Jung and Erich Fromm. This contagion of symptoms dissipates when exposure to the primary person is reduced, which is why Donald Trump holds rallies as if his life depended on them-- psychically, it does. It is also the reason why he cannot leave the presidency-- in addition to the possibility of prosecution.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

So pathetic. Apparently in Republican World, "Stop counting the votes. You're making me lose!" is the new "We only have COVID cases because we do testing!" Meanwhile battalions of Repug Party lawyers are tucking in their shirts and marching to the courts with their briefs in hand. I await the moment where Trump tells us that one day, his defeat "will disappear like a miracle" and he's "turned the corner on winning, so much winning." Prepare for so much whining.

It's time to call in the international observers. What our treasonous White House and their Republican enablers are doing is the stuff of scumbag 3rd world dictators in Nigeria, Bolivia, or some unstable former part of the Soviet Union. What else did you expect? We built this Frankenstein. He was the inevitable construction that crawled out of the American Korporate cesspool. That tilted, stumbling gait. That "hair." That orange clay face. That damaged brain. A hideous freak, incapable of emotional stability, turned loose. Hellbent on fashioning society into the ultimate likeness of himself.

Sorry To Have Been Such A Downer Today-- After All Trump Did Lose

 

YR FIRED! by Nancy Ohanian

Biden, you've no doubt read today, won more votes than any presidential candidate in history. Conservative"safeguards" keep that from determining if winners can take office or not. To win the electoral college vote, Biden's task is to win all the Hillary states and then to flip 3 traditional blue states she botched, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Other states Trump won looked alluring-- particularly Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, + NE-02 and ME-02 (each with one electoral vote) and maybe even Texas, though that was always fool's gold. It looks like Biden managed to win all the Hillary states with only Nevada hanging in the balance. Official results won't be released until tomorrow when mail ballots received yesterday, provisional ballots and mail ballots coming in today are counted. Right now Biden leads with 588,252 (49.3%) to 580,605 (48.7%). In 2016 Washoe County (Reno) went 46.4% (97,032) to 45.2% (94,529) for Hillary. This year Washoe was much friendlier to Biden and with 89% of their vote counted, he has 117,699 (50.8%) to Trump's 107,925 (46.6%). So far (84% of the vote counted) Clark County is more of a mixed bag than it was in 2016. Hillary won it with 401,068 (52.4%) to Trump's 319,571 votes (41.8%). So far Biden has 422,762 votes (52.9%) and Trump has 362,573 (45.4%). The rest of the state is a crazy red hellhole, but not many people live there.
In terms of the states Hillary lost, Biden is looking good in:

• Wisconsin (99% counted)-- 1,630,389 (49.4%) for Biden and 1,609,879 (48.8%) for Trump
• Michigan (94% counted)-- 2,622,108 (49.6%) for Biden and 2,577,192 (48.7%) for Trump with most of the outstanding votes in blue areas (Wayne and Kalamazoo counties) and Trump only likely to get any significant increase in one county, Kent (Grand Rapids).
• Pennsylvania (80% counted)-- 3,063,634 (53.4%) for Trump and 2,599,924 (45.3%) for Biden. But the outstanding votes are blue votes-- lots of them. Only 61.5% of Philly has been counted, 72.8% of Alleghany (Pittsburgh) and 73.7% of Delaware County. That should be enough votes for Biden to catch up and win Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes.

Meanwhile, Biden is ahead in Arizona (with 86% of the vote counted)-- 1,410,977 (51%) to 1,317,468 (47.6%), so that's 11 electoral votes and he won NE-02 (but probably lost ME-02). North Carolina and Georgia are still too close to call. But even if Biden loses both states and ME-02 (which is how I configured this map), he still wins the electoral college 290 to 248. Pennsylvania sure is important this time!

Public Opinion Strategies is a Republican Party polling firm. Yesterday they conducted two national surveys of people who had already voted (1,600 people combined). These were their main conclusions:

• Trump won the 30% who voted on Election Day by 26 points (59% for Trump/33% for Biden).
• Late deciders broke heavily towards Trump. Among voters who decided in October or later (11% of the electorate), Trump won by 16 points (51% Trump/35% Biden/14% third party candidate).
• Trump continued to enjoy crushing margins among non-college white men (67% Trump/27% Biden).
• Biden won seniors, but by just one point (48% Trump/49% Biden).
• There were more "shy Trump voters" than "shy Biden voters." 19% of Trump voters said they kept their support for Trump a secret from most of their friends, compared to just 8% of Biden voters.

If There's Even One Republican Left In Office Tomorrow, We Haven't Done Enough

 

Any time I've ever seen Ben Ginsburg's name in the media, it's always been bad news. He's a right-wing, shark-like political lawyer, first at Patton Boggs and more recently at Jones Day, the two sleaziest legal firms in DC. He was counsel for the NRC, the NRSC, the NRCC, the RGA and for the Bush Cheney campaign. If there's one person tp blame the corrupted 2000 Florida recount on, it's Ben Ginsburg. That and the GOP gerrymandering in 1990 and 2000, two vicious assaults on American democracy.

Over the weekend, though, Ginsburg closed a Washington Post OpEd, My Party Is Destroying Itself On The Alter Of Trump with this plea: "My fellow Republicans, look what we’ve become. It is we who must fix this. Trump should not be reelected. Vote, but not for him."

Long before there was a Trump, there was a Ginsburg, laying the groundwork for a Trump. who now worries the GOP is making itself into "a permanent minority." He admits he's a scumbag: "I spent four decades in the Republican trenches, representing GOP presidential and congressional campaigns, working on Election Day operations, recounts, redistricting and other issues, including trying to lift the consent decree. Nearly every Election Day since 1984 I’ve worked with Republican poll watchers, observers and lawyers to record and litigate any fraud or election irregularities discovered. The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist."

And now he wants to blame Trump? "As he confronts losing," Ginsburg opined, "Trump has devoted his campaign and the Republican Party to this myth of voter fraud. Absent being able to articulate a cogent plan for a second term or find an attack against Joe Biden that will stick, disenfranchising enough voters has become key to his reelection strategy. Perhaps this was the plan all along. The president’s unsubstantiated talk about 'rigged' elections caused by absentee ballot 'fraud' and 'cheating' has been around since 2016; it’s just increased in recent weeks. Trump has enlisted a compliant Republican Party in this shameful effort. The Trump campaign and Republican entities engaged in more than 40 voting and ballot court cases around the country this year. In exactly none-- zero-- are they trying to make it easier for citizens to vote. In many, they are seeking to erect barriers... This attempted disenfranchisement of voters cannot be justified by the unproven Republican dogma about widespread fraud. Challenging voters at the polls or disputing the legitimacy of mail-in ballots isn’t about fraud. Rather than producing conservative policies that appeal to suburban women, young voters or racial minorities, Republicans are trying to exclude their votes."

This is obviously all part of an elaborate negotiation strategy for Trump, the "deal maker." Foremost in his reptilian mind is the idea of prison-- for himself and his family and perhaps some associates, though he's not been known to care much about any associates. He'll agree to leave the White House peacefully if and only if Biden promises him and his crooked family blanket pardons. Watch.





Let's go forth and start today with a few words from William Steding at Americtecture. He starts by comparing today to Yeats' 1919 The Second Coming, which was written in the context of the Irish War of Independence and the Spanish flu, of which Yeats' pregnant wife nearly died just before he wrote the poem. Yeats wrote that we deserved the "rough beast, its hour come 'round at last' that slithered into Washington decimating democratic institutions at home and American credibility throughout the world. Trump simply poured gasoline on the fire we had already started to destroy traditional American values after the end of the Cold War, then capped the ash heap with a dumpster-load of diabolical cruelty and stupefying incompetence. He has been a wake-up call we will forever condemn, and yet, tragically deserved. For those of you wringing your hands over the results we are about to witness, continue wringing them. But, not for the actual votes cast-- Biden will win that battle-- rather, for the nefarious acts currently underway by the Trump campaign and our illegitimate Justice Department that are contriving incidents and arguments for our now-illegitimate Supreme Court to assure power remains in Trumplican hands."

He closed with a message of hope, that "We must shine the mighty light of the good to disinfect the bad. We must look into the eyes of our children and grandchildren and assure them, with sincerity equal to their innocence, that we’ve got this; that their lives will be as safe and prosperous as ours have been. We must hand them a torch worth carrying forth. Reason and science and humanism must return to the alter of American discourse. We have saved America from its enemies in the past, now we must save it from ourselves. We can do this. After all, we are (still) Americans."

There was some good news yesterday: a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that support for Trump in 12 battleground states has remained unchanged last week-- so no last minute shift Trump has been counting on. Trump is losing 51-46% in those dozen states. "With the election one day away, the number of undecided voters in swing states in this election cycle is small. Just 1% of voters in the new poll said they were not sure for whom they would vote. And most voters’ opinions are set in stone. Only 1% of Trump supporters and 1% of Biden supporters in the swing states said there was a fair chance they would change their minds and support the other candidate, a rock-bottom figure that echoes previous polls.

Trump Will Lose Tomorrow-- And It Won't Be Close

 

Red America by Nancy Ohanian

The foundation to any Republican presidential victory is Texas. Bottom line: if Trump loses Texas and its 38 electoral votes tomorrow, game over. But he's not likely to lose the state. It's still just too red. But the fact that Trump looks so weak in recent polls-- ahead of a nothing like Biden by just 2.3 points according to the most recent Real Clear Politics average-- is a testament to what a disastrous presidency he's presided over. And while those weak numbers may not deny Trump Texas' 38 electoral votes, they may well presage half a dozen or more GOP congressional losses in "safe" red districts. It's likely that TX-10 (McCaul), TX-21 (Roy), TX-22 (Olson), TX-23 (Hurd), TX-24 (Marchant), TX-25 (Williams) could all flip blue tomorrow.

Over the weekend, one of the Mike Siegel campaigners told me that 366,000 people had already voted early in TX-10, more people than had ever voted in an election in that district totally. Black voters, Asian voters, first-time voters and young voters all set new participation records. (301,200 voters participated in the TX-10 congressional race in 2018.) Siegel is expecting a big turnout tomorrow as well. Big turnouts are not what Republicans encourage. And those new voters and young voters and voters of color are not who Trump is trying to appeal to now.

In fact, Toluse Olorunnipa and Josh Dawsey reported for the Washington Post that Trump's madcap super-spreader rallies are focusing exclusively on his base of uneducated white racists. They wrote about episodes likely to turn off swing voters but enthuse his beloved "poorly educated," noting that in a frenzied burst of campaigning in the last days of the presidential race, Señor Trumpanzee has "accused doctors of fabricating coronavirus deaths for money, pantomimed a physical fight with Democratic rival Joe Biden, mocked a Fox News host for wearing a mask and celebrated his supporters for using pickup trucks to ambush a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway... [H]is closing message is a classic display of the kind of red meat tailored specifically to animate his most faithful supporters. Convinced that it’s too late to change the minds of voters who are not yet sold on Trump, the president’s advisers are intensely focused on turning out those who are. Trump’s decision to forgo a broad, unifying closing message and instead double down on appealing to a narrow but enthusiastic slice of the electorate is a gamble. Whether it pays off or becomes a cautionary tale will not be known until the polls close Tuesday and the votes are counted."

It doesn't look good for Trump. His polling numbers are falling and COVID-19 infections are rising, particularly ones that are tied specifically to his super-spreader rallies, which caused at least 700 deaths, not counting Herman Cain. Yesterday 71,321 new cases were reported, bringing the U.S. total to 9,473,911-- as well as 399 new reported deaths for a total of 236,471. Swing states, many with Republican governors and or legislatures who have followed Trump's anti-science line, are being hammered. Yesterday's swing state new cases (with number of cases per million residents):

• Texas +4,193 (33,140 cases per million residents)
• Florida +4,865 (37,593 cases per million residents)
• Wisconsin +3,493 (39,307 cases per million residents)
• Ohio +3,319 (18,738 cases per million residents)
• Iowa +2,394 (41,320 cases per million residents)
• Minnesota +2,200 (26,717 cases per million residents)
• North Carolina +2,057 (26,382 cases per million residents)
• Pennsylvania +1,684 (16,755 cases per million residents)
• Arizona +1,527 (34,000 cases per million residents)
• Georgia +1,192 (34,093 cases per million residents)

Trump is in his own fantasy world though, gaslighting his rallies 'til the very end. He spread COVID to his Pennsylvania supporters in 4 rallies on Saturday. The first was on Newton where he told the crowd, "A great red wave is forming. As sure as we’re here together, that wave is forming. And they see it, they see it on all sides and there’s not a thing they can do about it."

In front of large crowds that defied public health guidelines in the middle of a pandemic, Trump offered a defiant closing message about the forces he battled during his first term, claiming that his willingness to fight them is one reason he deserves a second term.

“We did not come this far and fight this hard only to surrender our country back to the Washington swamp,” Trump said Friday in Waterford Township, Mich.

That event kicked off a four-day stretch of rallies taking him to Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Wisconsin. By the time he holds his final rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Monday night, Trump will have given his stump speech to tens of thousands of potential voters.

The president’s allies say he is smart to make a bet on rallying his troops at this stage of the campaign, with few undecided voters left and more to be gained from juicing turnout than from winning converts.

“The weekend before election, you’re not changing minds,” said Bryan Lanza, an adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign and transition. “You’re not IDing supporters, you’re just turning them out. That’s where we are. Persuasion is done. He’s got to turn out what’s there.”

Trump is under more pressure to turn out his base voters in the last days of the race due to the unprecedented partisan split between Americans who vote early and those voting on Election Day.

More than 90 million Americans have already voted early or by absentee ballot, according to data maintained by the U.S. Elections Project, a nonpartisan early-voting tracker. Democrats have an edge over Republicans in several swing states, and Trump has explicitly told his supporters to cast their votes in person on Tuesday.

...The president’s strategy carries risks. His embrace of the conspiracy theories spread by his most ardent supporters about the coronavirus pandemic has driven away potential supporters, according to polls.

Trump has increasingly used his rallies to promote misinformation about the deadly virus, downplaying it and bemoaning the fact that it continues to dominate news coverage. He has told supporters that the country was “rounding the turn” on the virus even as the case count soars to record levels, and claimed without evidence that a vaccine has been held up until after the election due to politics. On Friday, he mocked Fox News host Laura Ingraham for wearing a mask to his crowded Michigan rally.

“No way!” he said from the stage. “She’s wearing a mask? She’s being very politically correct!”

During the same rally, Trump made the baseless accusation that doctors are inflating the number of patients who died of covid-19 to “get more money.”

“Now they’ll say, ‘Oh that’s terrible what he said,’ but that’s true,” Trump said of his false allegation. “It’s like $2,000 more, so you get more money.”

The American Medical Association called the claim “malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided” in a statement Friday, without naming Trump.

Trump’s conspiratorial approach to the pandemic comes as the number of Americans dying each day has begun to increase, along with the rising caseload and hospitalizations.

More than 230,000 Americans have died of covid-19, and more than 9 million have been infected.

...[H]e has veered away from his prepared remarks to offer controversial running commentary to his supporters. He has fed off crowds chanting “Lock him up!” about Biden and “Superman!” about him. Shortly before his fourth rally of the day in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump tweeted a video of several of his supporters forming an intimidating vehicle caravan around a Biden campaign bus as it attempted to drive down a Texas highway.

“I LOVE TEXAS!” the president wrote.

On Saturday, Keith Collins, Trip Gabriel and Stephanie Saul took NY Times readers on a trip into the 20 Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin counties across the country where they claim, inaccurately, that the battle for their states' electoral votes are fiercest. Let's follow along anyway:

Miami-Dade, FL-- A Democratic stronghold, it is not a county Mr. Trump would hope to win. But this majority-Hispanic county was a disappointment for Democrats in 2018, especially in heavily Cuban-American precincts. Younger Cuban voters have started identifying as Trump Republican here.

Disappointment in 2018? The Democrats targeted 2 congressional seats in Miami-Dade and won both. Gillum won with 59.9% and Nelson won with 60.6%

Pinellas County, FL-- Perhaps the biggest swing county in the state, which backed Mr. Trump after twice backing Barack Obama, it is a Florida microcosm: solid Democrats in St. Petersburg and Midwestern retirees elsewhere.

2018 was good for Dems in Pinellas-- Gillum won with 50.7%, Nelson won with 52.6% and Charlie Crist was reelected with 57.6%

Osceola County, FL-- Part of the greater Orlando area, it is increasingly Hispanic. Conservative retirees have been joined by hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans, who did not register in expected numbers to give Democrats an advantage in 2018, and so far, are lagging behind other groups in early voting.

Osceola was another good county for Dems in 2018-- Gillum 58.4%, Nelson 59.7%, and it performed for mediocre Rep. Darren Soto D+26. It would have been way more interesting to include Polk County  

Union County, NC-- In 2016, Mr. Trump easily won this suburban Republican bastion near Charlotte. Republicans remain dominant, but signs of disaffection with the president, along with an upswing in “unaffiliated” voters, give Democrats hope they can trim Mr. Trump’s margin.

Union is one of those counties where Republicans routinely steal votes

Wake County, NC-- One of the nation’s fastest-growing counties, Wake has shifted steadily leftward over the past 20 years, supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 by more than 100,000 votes. An influx of out-of-staters since then stands to boost the Democrats even more, potentially offsetting high Republican numbers in rural areas.

Robeson County, NC-- A former Democratic stronghold, this economically depressed county went for Mr. Trump in 2016. The prize will likely go to the candidate most popular among the Lumbee Indians, the county’s largest group. Mr. Trump held a rally here in October, and both campaigns pledged to support the tribe’s quest for federal recognition.

Robeson delivered for Democrat Dan McCready in 2018 (D+15)

Westmoreland County, PA-- Typical of other counties where Mr. Trump outperformed with white working-class voters four years ago, this area near Pittsburgh is where he must win even bigger margins to counter a likely Democratic surge in the suburbs.

Hillary screwed the pooch but 2 years later Tom Wolf took 46.4% and Bob Casey took 43.9%-- which is all Biden needs to do there and in places like it to be sure of winning Pennsylvania

Chester County, PA-- Democrats must continue their 2018 midterm surge in this suburban Philadelphia county, especially with college-educated women, or Mr. Trump could carry Pennsylvania again.

In 2018 Dems all did better than Hillary had-- Casey drew 59.2%, Wolf took 61.3% and the county performed as a D+18 for Democrat Chrissy Houlahan 

Erie County, PA-- One of three counties in the state that Mr. Trump flipped in 2016, its mix of a working-class post-industrial economy and rural towns makes it “the oracle of Pennsylvania,” in the words of a Democratic strategist.

Erie Co. regretted going for Trump in 2016 and made up for it 2 years later-- Bob Casey 55.7%, Tom Wolf 59.8 and the county is the biggest one in PA-16 and performed at a D+20 level for Democrat Ron DiNicola

Philadelphia County, PA-- The big question here is whether Mr. Biden can re-energize Black voters-- Democrats’ core supporters-- after Hillary Clinton’s lackluster showing in 2016. Mr. Biden will have to boost the numbers to counter Mr. Trump’s margins with rural white voters. The Trump campaign has taken on aggressive tactics, like videotaping voters at ballot drop boxes.

Macomb County, MI-- Heavily unionized and mostly white, the state’s third largest county has picked the statewide winner in the last seven elections for governor and president.

In 2018 Stabenow did 8 points better than Hillary and Whitmer did slightly better than Stabenow. The county performed at a D+19 level for Andy Levin

Oakland County, MI-- Once solidly Republican, it is a more affluent neighbor of Macomb County and has been trending Democratic. It is a prime example of the changes that are taking place in many of the nation’s suburbs. In 2018, it gave Gov. Gretchen Whitmer the biggest margin for a Democrat in 20 years.

Oakland was good for all the Dems running in 2018 and will be for Biden tomorrow

Kent County, MI-- This traditional Republican stronghold-- home to Grand Rapids, where President Gerald Ford was raised-- has moved away from the Republican Party in the Trump era.

Mentioning Ford is the most hawkish possible thing to say about Kent. He served from 1949 to 1973-- 100% irrelevant. Maybe they should have mentioned current Rep. Justin Amash. Stabenow and Whitmer both won the county in 2018

Brown County, WI-- Among the top counties that will decide the state’s winner is the home of vote-rich Green Bay. It’s a swing county that in 2018 voted for the Republican candidate for governor, Scott Walker, and the Democrat for Senate, Tammy Baldwin. Mr. Trump won blowout margins here compared with Mitt Romney in 2012.

Waukesha County, WI-- It is the largest of Milwaukee’s suburban counties. Long a Republican stronghold, the county underperformed for Mr. Trump in 2016. Mr. Biden has forged inroads here, but it’s not clear how deep they are.

Don't get excited; Biden has not forged any inroads in Waukesha. The writers had nothing so say so they made it up

Dane County, WI-- This is home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it’s where Democrats surged in an April 2020 race for the State Supreme Court. Nearly as many votes were cast here as in Milwaukee County, even though Dane has less than 60 percent of Milwaukee’s population. Heavy turnout in early voting suggests Mr. Biden is claiming those votes.

Grant County, WI-- Emblematic of southwest Wisconsin, it is one of the state’s swingiest regions, where weak partisan identity saw voters shift from Mr. Obama to Mr. Trump.

In 2018 it swung back blue-- Tony Evers beat Scott Walker by about a point and Tammy Baldwin beta her GOP opponent by 9 points

Maricopa County, AZ-- Home to Phoenix and more than 60 percent of the state’s electorate, it is Arizona’s most important county. It went narrowly for Mr. Trump in 2016, but two years later supported a Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema, for senator. The question is whether the county’s changing demographics will tip the state to a Democratic president for the first time since 1996.

Pima County, AZ-- The home of Tucson, Democrats typically run up the score here.

Pinal County, AZ-- The state’s third-largest county is a Republican redoubt. Mr. Trump will have to turn out enough rural white voters to help protect the 3.5-point margin he won the state with in 2016.