The Election Day Thread

[Arkitect]

I swear cable news channels have some song in a loop in the production control room...

"... and to fill these empty hours... longing for something new...."​

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Came to the realization in the past couple days that perhaps it wasn't the commericals on TV after all which had landed my 13" model in the e-cycle bins a long time ago. It was the cable news shows struggling to fill an infinite news hole with events of even an extraordinary day.

Absolutely!
The endless repeats, the desperate squeezing of sensationalism out of the smallest nugget of news. The banal interviews with whomever they could rustle up on their list of "experts".

The hugely over-paid, Botoxed, painted faces, the sheer loudness. The godawful graphics.

The emptiness of the commentary.


We gave up on a television set a long time ago.

Everything we watch is streamed on to the Mac.

If I need news I read it. And yet some people need that endless chattering in the background.

 

[SuperMatt]

Same with CNN, although the AP did call it. I get the apprehension, those that called it did so with 200,000 still to count in a traditionally red state, that takes a set of balls IMO.

Would you still be watching CNN and MSNBC if they already called the race for Joe? They won’t “call” any race if they can keep getting viewers. Meanwhile, voting in person probably was a super spreader event. Over 100,000 cases of covid yesterday.

 

[Arkitect]

Would you still be watching CNN and MSNBC if they already called the race for Joe? They won’t “call” any race if they can keep getting viewers. Meanwhile, voting in person probably was a super spreader event. Over 100,000 cases of covid yesterday.

Exactly.

And which is why for all their protestations, the Orange Menace is good for their business.

 

[User.45]

Absolutely!
The endless repeats, the desperate squeezing of sensationalism out of the smallest nugget of news. The banal interviews with whomever they could rustle up on their list of "experts".

The Botoxed, overly painted faces, the sheer loudness.

The emptiness of the commentary.


We gave up on a television set a long time ago.

Everything we watch is streamed on to the Mac.

If I need news I read it. And yet some people need that endless chattering in the background.

There's a reason I decided to just do my own projections.They are incentivized to make this look a lot closer than what it is. If they did a decent job showing the data, people wouldn't watch.

 

[SuperMatt]

I hope Georgia releases final results very soon. If Biden wins there, then it’s over. I think PA will take longer to count, but Joe is only 100K votes behind, with 8% of the votes left to count... looks like he will win there too.

 

[SuperMatt]

There's a reason I decided to just do my own projections.They are incentivized to make this look a lot closer than what it is. If they did a decent job showing the data, people wouldn't watch.

I really appreciated those... great data, well presented.

 

[Eric]

Trump's lead in Georgia just shrunk again and it's now almost neck and neck. Can you you imagine a megalomaniac like Trump who thought he breezed through on election night now watching those huge leads being slowly stripped away from him? He must be fuming like never before, if he loses it will be poetic justice.

 

[Eric]

Allegheny county (in PA) has stopped counting because of a legal challenge to 29,000 ballots.

 

[ronntaylor]

I'm not so down on the Senate for Dems. They have a net gain of one as of today -- meaning 48-48 with AK sure to be a GOP next week. They have at least one runoff in Georgia, with the possibility of a 2nd there. And if Cunningham's dumb ass can get a bit more votes, there may be another runoff in NC.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Read an article that said Trumpism isn’t specifically about Trump but more about people who, like Trump, believe they are better, smarter, and more deserving than they actually are and the only thing holding them back is liberal elites. Lying is completely on the table if they feel it serves to support their entitlement or respect of their peers.

So unfortunately Trumpism is going to outlast his Presidency and the Republicans will continue to support it because they already pushed that narrative before Trump. Trump just became its namesake and amplified it.

 

[User.45]

Read an article that said Trumpism isn’t specifically about Trump but more about people who, like Trump, believe they are better, smarter, and more deserving than they actually are and the only thing holding them back is liberal elites. Lying is completely on the table if they feel it serves to support their entitlement or respect of their peers.

So unfortunately Trumpism is going to outlast his Presidency and the Republicans will continue to support it because they already pushed that narrative before Trump. Trump just became its namesake and amplified it.

It's a mixture of Dunning-Kruger effect and narcissism (though DK on its own is about narcissistic tendencies IMHO). What's gonna change is that people will lose the platform that legitimized them. They'll lose their loudspeaker.

 

[ronntaylor]

Expected a big update from NV. They just reported another 1011 votes in Clark County (includes Las Vegas). Biden lead statewide increases slightly to 11,454 votes representing a 1% lead with 87% of the vote counted. Most ballots to be counted are those received on Election Day, those received after Election Day but postmarked by that day, and provisional ballots. Many (most?) of those are from Democratic strongholds.

Nevada officials will give their next update about 9 p.m. EST.

 

[User.45]

Trump's lead in Georgia just shrunk again and it's now almost neck and neck. Can you you imagine a megalomaniac like Trump who thought he breezed through on election night now watching those huge leads being slowly stripped away from him? He must be fuming like never before, if he loses it will be poetic justice.

Not good

(I hid counties with <500 net expected.)

 

[lizkat]

More upside news from Georgia

per NYT's Reid Epstein, in Madison, Wis. 13m ago

David Perdue has fallen under the 50 percent threshold to avoid a runoff in Georgia’s Senate race. He’s at 49.9997 percent — 141 votes short of winning outright with more votes still to be counted from Democratic area.

[ Reid Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining the New York Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. ]

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

 

[User.45]

Not good

View attachment 1174


(I hid counties with <500 net expected.)

More upside news from Georgia

per NYT's Reid Epstein, in Madison, Wis. 13m ago

David Perdue has fallen under the 50 percent threshold to avoid a runoff in Georgia’s Senate race. He’s at 49.9997 percent — 141 votes short of winning outright with more votes still to be counted from Democratic area.

[ Reid Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining the New York Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. ]

If there is a chance to go for a runoff then yeah, it likely will go for that between Perdue and Ossoff.

GA also has ~100K votes to count, Biden has to snatch them 58:42 to win. So not impossible but there remained some Trump strongholds there. SO all we can hope for is a very heavy mail-in effect.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

It's a mixture of Dunning-Kruger effect and narcissism (though DK on its own is about narcissistic tendencies IMHO). What's gonna change is that people will lose the platform that legitimized them. They'll lose their loudspeaker.

Well, unfortunately for them their loudspeaker was either given to or taken up by their most repugnant ranks. If they were hoping to use it to gain sympathetic recognition then they certainly failed.

 

[lizkat]

It's a mixture of Dunning-Kruger effect and narcissism (though DK on its own is about narcissistic tendencies IMHO). What's gonna change is that people will lose the platform that legitimized them. They'll lose their loudspeaker.

Authoritarian followers, Walter Mitty types and even average armchair quarterbacks are unfortunately always ripe for some other loudspeaker when their original icon fails. How else maintain a sense that all would be well with the world if their guy just had a little more running room plus the luck to have world class supporters like them?

I used to dismiss talk about Tucker Carlson making a run in conservative politics. Now I bother to wonder sometimes. I realize my assessment of the low appeal of jackasses is frequently off the mark in today's America.

But yeah, no one in recent times has so far learned to milk celebrity the way Trump has done in terms of being a Pied Piper to so many "instant followers" who ended up including enough fairly conventional movers and shakers to land him in an array of Presidential candidates... and help him win.

To think that in November 2016 post-election, I thought ok well this was certainly a fluke. A terrible fluke, yeah disaster even, but we can dig our way out by midterms. Got that latter part only about 25% right by my current reckoning. Even Biden's likely win now is only a huge cause for joy because of all the gaslighting and federal agency-destructive damage committed over the past four years by Trump and his slimy party. In the next four we're as likely to be damaged by our own impatience as by intransigence on the other side of the aisle.

But time will tell. None of those misgivings will keep me from joy when Biden finally gets to acknowledge his victory. If anyone ever thought their vote didn't matter, here's another lesson that it does, it does.. and matters not only that it gets cast but that it gets counted. I really like the attitude and plain speech and patience of Pennsylvania's Attorney General:

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1324401698379649027/

 

[Apple fanboy]

I am a little lost at this part of the thread. If you are asking if a president ever has served non consecutive terms then yes it has happened with Cleveland. However if you are asking if Trump can come back in 2024, no he will be way too old and in jail.

We can only hope!

 

[ronntaylor]

I just want this to be over with already!
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