On Friday, November 6, by ~1:00 PM ET, Georgia & Pennsylvania had grown to an insurmountable lead for Biden, as the votes continue to be counted. Both states can be called for Joe Biden with 100% certainty, putting him over 270 in the Electoral College. Arizona & Nevada will also go to Biden; with Alaska (for sure) & North Carolina (probably) going to Trump. That’s all that was left in play. It appears the final Electoral College totals will be Biden 306, Trump 232, or somewhere in that vicinity.
In 2016, I titled my election night write-up “Fascism Wins Election 2016.” I prefer this title much better, I must admit. The majority of Americans have wanted to say this to Trump for a long, long time. That’s what’s being celebrated, much more than a Joe Biden victory. Ironically, it was Trump being hospitalized at Walter Reed with Kung Flu that contributed in making him a lame duck. This made Trump appear weak & stupid when he most-needed to project strength & authority.
A huge round of appreciation & recognition is deserved for all the polls workers, ballot counters, etc, who had to do their jobs under the most extraordinary circumstances, including an uncontrolled coronavirus pandemic with intentional political intimidation & shenanigans from the right. The vote counting in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Philadelphia & Atlanta, which took days to complete, swung those states for Biden and determined the election.
ABC, CBS & NBC all cut-away from Trump’s press conference during the evening news Thursday night, another unprecedented episode in these unprecedented times. After tweeting “STOP THE COUNT,” and other cynical messages from his White House bunker, Trump still has lawsuits pending in a few states, and possibly a campaign to pressure electors in the Electoral College to flip to him, a violation of the US Constitution.
Recounts and/or litigation will be going on in Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada & Pennsylvania, so voters will need to keep an eye on all that for themselves, and not trust the Democrats to do it for them.
It was the Trotskyists led by the World Socialist Web Site, who did more than anyone in defending the US Constitution and democratic principles such as free speech during Election 2020. These fundamental democratic rights are still under attack, but now workers & youth are much more aware of them, which is half the battle. This was an ideological struggle where Trotskyists were the most adamant defenders of the right to vote, in an election where their candidates were blacklisted.
Donald Trump took an oath as US President to defend the Constitution, and only the Trotskyists held him to that oath. The Democrats insist only when it’s convenient, such as now. This is how right-wing Democrats flip to appear progressive, as needed. Bernie Sanders is the master of this type of chicanery.
It wasn’t anything close to the Democratic landslide which had been predicted in the fake media, as enthusiasm for the two-party system is flagging, and the slack is being picked-up by the Trotskyists, which MSM can’t acknowledge– out of fear. That’s the issue with all bourgeois political polling, the unacknowledged shift to the left by 90% of the population. This was a dump Trump vote. Nothing in the Biden-Harris campaign has anything progressive for the workers & youth of America which have been devastated by COVID-19 & inequality.
The Trump administration had help in unleashing its back-to-work, and then back-to-school campaigns, under the policy of herd immunity– all during the election. The Democrats rallied with Republicans to bail out ‘too big to fail’ zombies for the last time on March 27, 2020 with the CARES Act. The problem is that they’re bankrupt again already. The free money is gone and they need more, but there is no more. The Fed is tapped out, so it’ll be more money printing with hyper-inflation ahead. That’s when a general strike & educational sickouts will stop everything, and then politics enters the revolutionary domain, where Trotskyists will take the historical stage.
This repudiation of Trump is a devastating blow to the far right, which includes Nazis, white supremacists, Confederates, religious gun nuts & fascists. Their figurehead has been toppled, and more importantly, he’s about to lose his trappings of power. Without Democratic props to hold him up, and all means of violence at his command, Trump is nothing. Fascism has been democratically rejected by the American people, and that has serious implications for the incoming Biden-Harris administration as well. The people have moved far, far to the left.
It was the Trotskyists who warned the working class & youth of the dangers of fascism during this election, from Trump’s coup attempt in calling out the National Guard to suppress protests against police violence, to his plotting with armed militias to kidnapped & kill the governor of Michigan. The World Socialist Web Site led this effort in political educational for the working class & youth. Chaos & violence was the Trump election strategy because they knew he couldn’t win re-election honestly. Never in US history has an incumbent President run such a campaign. As the WSWS pointed out, Trump was running for führer, which is remarkable.
Trump is a sociopath with delusions of grandeur, and this is his Waterloo. Comparisons to Adolph Hitler’s last days in his Berlin bunker may be apt as well. History will tell, but this is what to expect, in one form or another. In 2016, Trump blew up the Republican Party in winning the nomination, then the US Presidency. In the four years since, he has divided Washington, the nation, and the world like no politician since Hitler. The Republican Party became the party of Trump, an elitist fascist gangster. Trump attempted to establish his own personal dictatorship, and failed. He will never get another chance. This is why fascists are so morose right now.
It’s also why the Democrats are trying to fix their relationship with the Republicans. Fox News flipped on Trump, and it was obvious early on election night, which is a huge story. It means Rupert Murdoch is abandoning the alt-right, Breitbart & Q-Anon. These outright fascists had been Republican Party allies, until very recently. The Republican Party has been irrevocably fractured by four years of Trump, and there is no putting Humpty-Dumpty back together.
The most politically far-sighted Democrats, such as Barack Obama, understand this is supposed to be an intramural scrimmage, and they are surely reaching out to Trump (behind closed doors) to be part of an orderly transition-of-power. Trump will acquiesce soon enough, because he’s weak-minded, defeated & hopeless. By February 2021, no one will care about Trump tweets anymore, and that is what kills him politically. Take away his big stage and Trump is nothing more than a blowhard conman. He has no intelligence or resourcefulness to fall back on, and apparently he’s over $400M in debt. All this has political implications.
One final media note, Russia Today (RT) took an openly pro-Trump line early in this election, and it hurt their journalistic credibility irreversibly. RT used to have some reporting, but pro-Trump bias has turned them into an open mouthpiece for reaction, a legacy of their Stalinist roots. Their articles are often lazy, their Op/Eds are all awful, and their commenters are now 90+% fascist trolls. It also needs to be said that since Biden won, there was no ‘Russian interference’ from bots in election 2020, according to the MSM.
Political ‘ground game’ is defined as how you do for your Party, on-the-ground, during election day & the crucial days leading up to it. As a rule, I walk all over people who deserve it, so the following is a sketch of my 2020 ground game.
I’m surviving in a Sanford apartment complex, with lots of people moving in & out during the past six months. I used to be a newbie, but now I’m the grizzled veteran here. That’s COVID-19. The county hospital next door is filling up with ICU cases.
Military jets are doing drills overhead, out of Sanford International Airport, the weekend before election day. They sound like they’re mobilizing for Iwo Jima, with cops all over the place, and rarely with a friendly face. Fire engines & ambulances are drilling & blaring their sirens to whip up support for Trump. It’s a total shitshow at the taxpayers’ expense.
It was the “Lockheed Martin Space and Air Show” at Sanford International Airport, which actually ran three days from Friday, October 30 to Sunday, November 1– a thoroughly Trumpian event. I watched & heard it all, for three days. I had no choice, they flew overhead so many times. Tight triplets strafing is their favorite Thunderbird maneuver. “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed…,” I say out loud in my James Earl Jones voice.
Photographed above are the remains of the vapor trails from the military jets who made a heart symbol, way up in the atmosphere. I call it “Bullet the Blue Sky,” and sang that U2 song on my porch as I observed my tax dollars at work, “Peelin’ off those dollar bills, slappin’ them down, one hundred, two hundred…” I’m a big Brian Eno fan.
Later, in my best redneck voice, “Any one of them F-15 or Blue Angels boys could shoot down any Russian mig, and drop a big enough nuclear payload to light up them Ruskies until Kingdom Come.”
And my final Sanford Military Airshow riff, “Maverick just lost Goose, where are you Iceman?!!”
This was Friday mornin’. They’re either rentin’ or repossessin’. Aaron’s is their big competitor. To be fair to the police, they have a tough job right now. Beyond Trump’s fascist militia supporters in their ranks, there are a few boy scouts (& girl scouts) in law enforcement. I see them here often now, with their ‘community enforcement’ vehicles for domestic incidents. All races & ages are affected. Before coronavirus that almost never happened here. That’s how quickly it’s all collapsed.
Early voting at the public library (pic above) had lines everyday from start to finish. Political signs & lobbying on every street corner of 1st & Palmetto. Strong support for “Dump Trump.” The Democrats had the better music, I told a Trump supporter in his camping chair one afternoon, and he just laughed as I passed by. That’s what is was like downtown.
Sanford city landscaping took out the Coleus and planted these, I don’t know their name, but I think they’re nice– so I snapped a shot. Sanford ‘Parks & Rec’ keeps up with this, so the workers are doing a good job, meaning they aren’t they problem. It’s another class that is the problem. Another point here is to find the beauty where you can and acknowledge it. All this needs to be in your head while doing this, and if you do, you’ll have an unstoppable ground game.
Downtown Sanford, all around.
This is my favorite graffiti art around town. I have no idea who it actually is.
The Sanford Herald published all the local news that’s fit to print.
Wells Fargo are among the institutions which We the People need to directly talk to and demand accountability from. If they can’t deliver, then they must be declared bankrupt and arrested on the spot as criminals. These banks must be seized as public utilities by the workers & youth. Since big banks are transnational, this revolution will be international in character.
Wells Fargo & their cronies got Dems & Reps to unite & bail them out, with trillions of dollars in the CARES Act this past March, the largest swift transfer of wealth, to the extremely wealthy, in human history. Wells Fargo also financed this shitshow called Election 2020.
Other thoughts: How do voters make sure any recounts aren’t stolen? Transparency in the process, along with keeping armed militias & right-wing mobs from interfering, is essential. There can be no tolerance for criminal behavior against the US Constitution. This is how to defeat fascism. Knowledge is power, but it take principles & courage to act appropriately.
On profanity & bad language. Profanity means cognition is inhibited and replaced with emotional rage. That doesn’t help. Vulgarity just drags us down into the mud with Trump & his far-right filth. Get control of these powerful but dangerous emotions, and channel them into Trotskyism, as I did here. This is how a modern artist creates a meaningful political statement from anger.
Fri 06 Nov 2020 11:00 AM EST
I called Georgia for Biden on my Fakebook pages around 10:30 AM ET. Fakebook doesn’t like that. They have been censoring & meddling with everyone’s newsfeed because they hate free speech. When it’s down to a trickle with absentee & military balloting, along with ‘curing’ spoiled ballots, and they’re mostly going for Biden who has an insurmountable lead with well over 99% of the vote counted, you can call it with 100% certainty. That’s 16 Electoral votes for Biden, which put him at 269 or 270 depending on whom you follow.
One thing that needs to be highlighted at that point in time is the archaic nature of the Electoral College, where Nebraska & Maine split their votes for the actual election on December 14, 2020. These electors can be put under extreme political pressure to be ‘unfaithful delegates’ if it ends up 270-268. Or 269-269. There are 14 US states which have laws that allow Electoral College delegates to flip.
Real Clear Politics provides the best online return data for US elections, with 15-second interval updates, which is crazy. This allows anyone with the know-how to be an online expert in real time, from home. I don’t read any of the RCP articles, I just need their data. If you can be good with numbers and understand what they mean, it’s a nice compliment to a strong ground game. This gives you all-around political legitimacy that is hard to beat.
As far as network analysts go, one NBC politico nailed it when he pointed out the number of remaining ballots were all in urban Democratic strongholds, with their current & historical splits– going back to 2008. The splits were holding up, and mostly 70/30, with a few 85/15, for Democrats.
That’s all I needed to know from TV, besides the live reports & video from Maricopa County, Arizona, where Trump supporters descended like locusts on the vote-counting center, after Fox network declared the state (11 electoral votes) for Biden. This was Trump’s reason for wanting to stop the count. What did you expect, for Trump to be a good loser?
Fri 06 Nov 2020 11:30 AM EST
Joe Biden’s lead is increasing with about 350,000 votes to be counted, mostly in overwhelmingly Democrat strongholds.
Pennsylvania 95% Reporting
Biden 49.5% 3,301,186
Trump 49.4% 3,292,153
Biden +9,033
one hour ago:
Pennsylvania 95% Reporting
Biden 49.5% 3,297,614
Trump 49.4% 3,290,788
Biden +6,826
Fri 06 Nov 2020 1:00 PM EST
The Democrats are milking this for all it’s worth, while Trump is in denial– as always. Everyone else wants it to be over. By 1:00 PM ET it’s mathematically over, so I fill in the few remaining blanks in the opening paragraph, and click publish. No more fake media for me. Over & Out
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