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I can’t tell you who is going to win the presidential race or even what happens next with any specificity.
Sorry.
Here’s what I can offer, which I think makes sense as I write it now on 20 minutes sleep before heading back on TV – and which I hope can stand up during the day Wednesday, amidst the twists and turns.
1. I think that there is a better than 65% chance that the candidate who “deserves” to win under our standard customs, laws, and rules of casting and counting will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021.
2. As the winners of the remaining states are determined, we are going to find casting and counting errors; we will likely also find such errors in states whose winners have already been decreed by the media.
3. The standards used by the news organizations that “project” winners of electoral votes have always been opaque, but you would have to know nothing about the past customs and practices of these organizations to fail to understand why the president is ticked off about how Tuesday evening proceeded.
4. From an optics point of view, there is no city in America we are worse off having at the center of a controversy involving the counting of votes than Philadelphia, which the president has been unhelpfully warning about for many days.
5. It is easy to say “every vote should count,” or to fuzz up the difference between “every vote should count” and “every vote that is correctly cast should count” but difficult to take a principled and fair stance on the difference between those points of view. If things go badly for America, the issues embedded in this item could become the source of debate, rage, and worse in the coming days and weeks.
6. We are really lucky that there were not more Election Day casting and counting controversies.
7. It is bad for the president himself and for the country for Donald Trump to engage in charged rhetoric as he did in his late-night White House remarks and as in this late-night campaign email:
8. Please, please don’t make the mistake that was made four years ago and say that the polling was wrong and that this is a crisis for the polling industrial complex. Yes, the national poll number was off as in a few states, but the problem with most of the state polls was not with the data but, as in 2016, with the interpretation of the data. As I tried to make clear here for about a week, the president was as Election Day approached well within the margin of error in enough states to win and was closing the gap over the last week.
9. Even many of the president’s advisers were surprised that Michigan and Wisconsin turned out to be in play.
10. I beg the nation’s governors of both parties to be as adult, civic minded and non-partisan as possible in the coming days.
11. The worse possible resolution of all this, besides violence, would be for the Supreme Court to determine who prevails, as in Bush vs. Gore, with the Justices all voting in a completely results-oriented manner (or, even, all but John Roberts voting that way).
12. I listened to about 30 minutes of anti-Trump cable news in the post-midnight, pre-dawn hours and it was horrifying. Still no apparent awareness of the role the on-air folks at these networks played in helping the president politically, still no appreciation for their failure to try to actually try to understand all of America, still the same repetitive, smug, acidic, childish speeches masquerading as news coverage. Like Donald Trump himself: shocking but not surprising.
13. Once again, too many of you forgot Halperin’s First Rule of Senate Races: It is very hard to beat a well-funded, scandal-free, hardworking incumbent with a B- (or C-) level candidate.
14. Donald Trump is more politically craven, more consistently and egregiously a liar, and less respectful of other people than Joe Biden, and/but they both have a responsibility to do everything possible to bring the country together during a process that is sure to divide us further in many ways.
15. Based on the states currently without a projected winner, and where the vote is out in each of them, I would rate Joe Biden’s chances of winning to be even to or EVER so slightly better than Donald Trump’s. But a projection for Trump in one of the remaining big states would flip those odds.
16. Based on the current facts, Republican elected officials will give the president the loooooong leash they typically afford him as he acts Trumpian in pursuit of his goal.
17. I thought both candidates gave horrible speeches, far too devoted to process. As of now, I can’t imagine either of them giving a gracious concession speech in the mold of Al Gore in 2000 any time soon (in the case of one) or EVER (in the case of the other).
18. As I suggested here before, the Biden campaign is likely going to face a choice about whether to start challenging ballots it thinks it is in their interest to challenge or to try to stay “pure” and challenge nothing.
19. Biden has on his side Ron Klain, who faced off against James Baker on behalf of Al Gore in the 2000 Florida recount. Both campaigns can choose to have commanders in chief for their efforts – or try to get all this done by committee. A big daily decision for both camps: what public events or tweeting should their candidates do (if any)?
20. The biggest lesson of George W. Bush’s success in the 2000 recount is to always be on offense, always project that you are manifestly ahead, and fight like heck on every front. Both Team Trump and Team Biden have already made plain that they plan to be guided by this lesson.
21. This fight is on track to be much more complicated than 2000 since there are multiple states involved – and now there is Twitter.
22. This fight is destined to be three-dimensional chess: political, PR, and legal. Few analysts and journalists are going to be able to keep up on all fronts with the expertise and experience required.
23. Although it happens every four years, please don’t treat the exit poll demographic data as gospel truth.
24. We are still just counting; things will get more complicated if we head towards requested or mandatory recounts or recanvasses.
25. Memo to Bill Barr: please think four times before you say or do anything connected to the election.
26. If you are a Trump hater and ignore the dimensions of and reasons for the president’s overwhelming victory in Florida, you are not doing yourself or America any favors. That includes Team Bloomberg.
If you want to hear more of what I think and know during the morning Wednesday, I will be on Newsmax TV during the 7am to 9am ET hours; on with Michael Smerconish at 10am ET; and back on Newsmax in the noon hour.
We can do this, America.
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If you would like to participate in a focus group I will conduct Thursday early evening, please send an email to focusgroup@walkingduck.