A few thoughts after watching like 27 hours of election coverage:
The Trump campaign plan all along was to deceive, obfuscate, and invagle. He tanked the US Postal Service (and it may have worked in Florida), because he knew Democrats mostly vote by mail. USPS was hamstrung by lack of personnel and 300K legit votes weren't delivered and can no longer count (majority Dem).
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politi...elayed-ballots
The Trump team worked very hard for the past 5 years in Florida to convince Hispanic voters that Joe Biden and the Democrats are straight up communists, and that he will turn the US into Cuba or Venezuela. Their misinformation campaign worked like a charm.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...e-latinos-cuba
The Trump campaign knew there would be a Red mirage (Republican in person voters) followed by a Blue shift. We're seeing that now. Trump wanted to claim victory on election night and encourage his voters to "storm" the polls where votes were still being counted (like they did in Florida in 2000).
Fox News (!) calling Arizona for Biden early, took a lot of that steam out of the Trump sails. He tried to do it anyway... but it lacks the gravitas it would have if he was still rolling with the states he had in 2016.
The media actually did it's job - constantly harping on the fact the votes would take days to count, and that the outstanding ballots in Penn/NC/Georgia were all from heavily Democratic leaning areas (that's the blue shift).
Keep in mind - the reason Penn is so far behind is because the Republican state senate refused to make changes that would have allowed counting before election day. They too wanted to give Trump his red mirage.
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/04/93113...rough-the-week
The hope of taking Texas remains just that - a hope. The progressives are closer than ever before, but still - to the winner goes ALL the spoils.
Arizona flipping is a BIG deal. It'll likely never go back Red, and you can add it to the "Left Coast" that defaults to Democrats. The Hispanics there are not Cubans or Venezuelans, and the demographic shift has been coming for some time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/u...y-mcsally.html
Finally - Racheal Bitecofer was the pollster who predicted the 2018 blue wave in the midterms. Her theory is that the angrier you base is, the more likely you win. Regardless of that (both bases seem angrier than every before), her new position is that basically it's now Urban vs Rural across the US... and basically you can chalk it up to education.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...361704960.html
Quote:
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And education is the mitigating agent or "the cure"[sic] to populism. When you look at the results last night- the places that surged & held the line, it's due to education. That's why you see the urban/suburban divide, education rates are higher in the population centers (bc that's where jobs are!)
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FWIW - Fox News saves the day, it's not as close as it looked but for shenanigans by the GOP, and there is no legal path to SCOTUS currently to contest.