Wednesday, November 04, 2020

The Polls Were Off Again

Biden was supposed to have had a 10 point lead nationally. That was a recipe for a landslide. Instead, one day later, we are looking at a nailbiter. The polls were off again. Looks like they are not designed to reach the core of Trump voters. 

The bigger news, though, is that the country is as divided as ever, and the Covid catastrophe does not seem to have budged the country much. It is the same old, same old. America has the political equivalent of a lifestyle disease. 

Biden will squeak through, but there is no landslide. 



America Is Eerily Retracing Rome’s Steps to a Fall. Will It Turn Around Before It’s Too Late? Two thousand years ago, the famous Republic had a chance to reject a dangerous populist. It failed, and the rest is history.

Can Biden Still Win? Can Trump Still Win? Yes. Here Are the Remaining Paths. The president was able to close off several avenues to an early Biden win, but the former vice president still has a number of options.

What’s Left in the Seven States That Will Decide the Race Though they’re still too close to call, there are some indications of which way things might go...... If Mr. Biden did carry Georgia, along with the other states mentioned so far, he’d win more than 300 electoral votes. 

Democrats Battle for Senate Control as They Maintain Grip on House Majority The two parties grappled for advantage in the fight for the Senate majority as Democrats aimed to add to their majority in the House. ....... That left both sides closely watching Maine, North Carolina and Georgia, where partial returns showed exceedingly tight races between Republican incumbents and their Democratic challengers........... At least one Senate race taking place in Georgia, an unexpectedly competitive battleground this year, was headed for a winner-takes-all January runoff that could decide the balance of the Senate only weeks before Inauguration Day if Tuesday’s contests did not. The state’s other race could also end up in a runoff, but it was too early to be certain.......  while strategists in both parties had said a second blue wave could wash out 10 to 20 Republicans, by Wednesday morning, returns indicated that no such sweep had materialized ..... Worried about Mr. Trump’s chances, though, many Republicans closed their campaigns with warnings to voters of the risks posed by putting the White House and Congress under full Democratic control.........  If Democrats were able to grab control of the House, Senate and White House at once for the first time since 2010, they could abolish the legislative filibuster — the last major vestige of minority rights in the Senate — and push through an ambitious slate of bills on voting rights, gun safety, policing and prescription drug prices. They would most likely reserve much of their political capital for expanding the Affordable Care Act and raising taxes on the wealthy to offset that and other new programs.........  Facing a Senate led by Mr. McConnell, Mr. Biden could even have an uphill battle winning its approval to fill his cabinet, and he would certainly face opposition to liberal nominees to the federal courts. 

2020 Should Be the Last Time We Vote Like This Turnout was inspiring, but our voting system is badly flawed....... Set against so many less important transactions in American life — ordering a complicated coffee from a national chain, or finding the best sushi place in a town you’ve never visited before — the simple act of casting a ballot is laughably antiquated. ....... In many countries, elections are administered by nonpartisan agencies that set rules for the entire nation. In the United States, elections are often run by elected officials — Republican or Democratic secretaries of state, for instance — and rules about who gets to vote and how they do so differ from state to state.

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