Here we are in the final weekend before Election Day and the result in the presidential race will hinge on which candidate wins the key battleground states. There are 50 separate elections as opposed to one national election due to our antiquated system so let's look at just three of the most important ones.
Northwestern journalism professor Doug Foster, who is writing a book on this election cycle in the Midwest, reports: "My own sense of momentum from watching streamed events and talking to my sources in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, show Biden with a considerable lead. The pro-Biden edge is greater than the margin of error in those three states."
If that proves true, Biden's chances are good and Trump's remaining path to victory in the Electoral College would be exceedingly narrow.
Another way to evaluate what is happening is to estimate the scale of Biden's likely victory in the popular vote, as a proxy for the Electoral results. Doug believes Biden's total may reach over 6 million more votes than Trump's. Contrast that to the only two modern elections where the loser of the popular vote won the Electoral College.
In 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by 543,816 votes. In 2016, Trump lost it to Hillary Clinton by 2,868,686 -- less than half of this year's likely margin.
Electoral-Vote.com says this translates into 356 Electoral Votes for Biden, 184 for Trump, with 18 too close to call. That, my friends would be a blue landslide.
Naturally, after the last-minute surge by pro-Trump voters in 2016, which few analysts predicted, everyone is reticent about saying out loud what the evidence is saying in 2020.
So let's just say it and see where that goes.
But first, here are the news summaries:
* Trump changes election night plans, cancels party at Trump International (The Hill)
* Trump says Supreme Court will have aided a Biden win (The Hill)
* Turkish Bank Case Showed Erdogan’s Influence With Trump -- New details of the Justice Department’s handling of the accusations against Halkbank reveal how Turkey’s leader pressured the president, prompting concern from top White House aides. (NYT)
* Polls show that Latinos could be a decisive constituency in battleground states across the country — not only where they are recognized as a burgeoning political force, but also in places like Michigan and North Carolina, where they are a growing part of the electorate. (WashPo)
* Trump is again attacking the news media as “the enemy of the people.” (AP) Someone is projecting. (DW)
* Trump rolled back more than 125 environmental safeguards. (WashPo)
* Trump’s most frequent and most effective lie -- that he built “the greatest economy in history” -- appears to be losing its punch at the worst possible time for him. Trump has never had overall favorability ratings in his entire three years and nine months in office, but for most of that time has enjoyed the perception that he was doing a good job handling the economy. Now, with his election for a second term only days away, just about as many Americans think he is doing a bad job. [HuffPost]
* New Terror Attacks Leave France Embattled at Home and Abroad (NYT)
* Coronavirus cases are on the rise in every swing state (WashPo)
* Returned mail-in ballots in the Bay Area have been pouring in and the amount has been “staggering,” according to election officials. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* Major delays slow mail voting in swing states, USPS data shows, as strict deadlines loom (WashPo)
* Democrats have 77% chance of gaining control of the Senate. (538)
* Biden is pulling away from Trump and now has a 90% chance of winning the election. (538)
* U.S. to Remove Wolves From Protected Species List -- Populations have rebounded in recent decades, but some scientists on the panel that evaluated the proposal said it was deeply flawed. (NYT)
***
Now, back to the most likely scenario:
Joe Biden is going to be the next President.
Trump will protest the results, but as the margin will be overwhelming, he will have no option but to concede, albeit kicking and screaming.
The House will be solidly Democratic and there is a strong probability the Senate will flip to the Dems as well. With their party controlling all three prongs of the executive and legislative branches of the government, Biden and friends will have at least two years to do pretty much whatever they want to do, with the GOP unable to do much but watch.
The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, will act as an occasional check on that power, but only on specific issues, not the overall thrust of the administration, over which it has no jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, led by Bernie Sanders, AOC and others, will emerge as a major pressure point on the moderate wing led by Biden.
Biden will attempt to make deals with Republicans to make things happen, so there may be times the progressive wing feels isolated as a result. They will, in turn, be organizing for 2024.
All of this will be a markedly different set of political realities to those we have endured over the past four years, because there will no longer be a race-baiter and a would-be despot at the top of the heap.
Trump, in all likelihood, will be fighting to stay out of prison, not on federal charges but on state charges. And he can't hope for a pardon from Biden to evade those, as the President has no control over the state courts. The appeals process could theoretically reach the Supreme Court, however.
No President leaving office has ever faced the legal barrage that awaits Trump, due to his reckless personal and business behavior over many years. Justice has a way of catching up with people like him.
For that reason, losing the election will be, for Trump, only the beginning of his problems.
Well, that's where saying out loud what appears to be coming takes us!
“One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.”
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