As I predicted, the 2020 presidential election was much closer than the Biden landslide anticipated by corporate media. Not only did former vice president Joe Biden underperform due to an enthusiasm gap the MSM pretended did not exist, he does not appear to have had any meaningful down-ballot coattails.
What happens next? Exactly what I predicted would happen.
As of this writing two key battleground states in the upper Midwest — Wisconsin and Michigan — plus Pennsylvania are still counting mail-in ballots.
With 95% of the vote in, Biden leads in Wisconsin by a razor-thin 49.6% to 48.9%.
With 94% of the vote in, Biden leads in Michigan by another thin margin, 49.4% to 49.1%.
Pennsylvania only has 64% of the vote in. Trump leads 54.8% of 44.7%.
I believe the uncounted mail ballots from the Detroit and Philadelphia metro areas will push Michigan and Pennsylvania into the Biden column—Michigan with a comfortable margin, Pennsylvania just barely. Under normal circumstances, any two of these three states would tip Biden over 270 electoral votes and hand him the White House.
These are not normal times.
As Greg Palast has written, mail-in ballots are subject to a 22% rejection rate on technicalities. In a close race where 50% of ballots were cast by mail, that will make an enormous difference. Republican attorneys are now going to swarm metro Detroit, Philadelphia, and courthouses in Harrisburg and Lansing to get as many of those votes as possible thrown out. In addition to getting votes thrown out, they are going to drag their feet in order to try to avoid allowing the states, as well as others, from certifying their electoral votes by the December 14 deadline.
GOP lawyers won’t get any help from the three states’ Democratic governors in terms of foot-dragging. That goes triple for Michigan, where Governor Gretchen Whitmer must still be sore under the collar for that plot to kidnap her, which was tacitly approved of by President Donald Trump. You can’t make this stuff up!
American courthouses are giant mechanisms of delay. Motions for continuances, requests for additional hearings, recount of recounts you name it, the Republicans are going to throw everything they can add to this challenge.
You saw last night that Donald Trump semi-declared victory. This is just the beginning of a long month or two in a major crisis of electoral democracy. The odds of the 12th Amendment scenario remain high. In that scenario, the House of Representatives will select the president. Since there wasn’t a blue wave, the incoming House of Representatives will have more than 26 Republican delegations, which means Donald Trump would win.
4 Comments.
The QAnon people will eat up that it looks like Biden could win this 270-268, literally the smallest possible margin and thus proof that this was all rigged, possibly from the secret lair where Hillary returned to after murdering Vince Foster. And we haven’t even gotten to the faithless electors yet.
Land of the free, home of the brave….
Henri
In most (all?) other countries a successful contestation of an election triggers a repeat-election. I appreciate Ted educating us about the arcane ways this is handled in the US instead.
Dragging things out a whole month indeed seems the only “path to victory” for Trump barring an awful lot of dice all coming up his way (which happened before though ;-).
I think the only way this could possibly work out for the Rs is that they
(1) demand painstaking recounts,
(2) which peskily turn up a lot more Biden votes [which the Rs had initially suppressed]!
(3) => The very discovery of those initially suppressed votes serves as “proof” that the Ds manufacture votes out of thin air.
Difficult to pull off 😉
Greg Palast’s site lists three ways the Republicans can steal the election. It’s a lot of wonkery, but one way boils down to this: State legislatures are the ones who appoint their state’s Electors. A state that Biden won, but which has a Republican legislature, Michigan and Wisconsin fit the bill, could send Trump Electors. If the final tally after all the states are done counting is Biden 278, Trump 260, for example? Wisconsin could pull that stunt. FInal tally? 270-268 for Trump.
And as before, remember: this is all Hillary Clinton’s doing. She lost to Trump after she rigged the primary. Trump would have lost, we’d all have healthcare, and Pres. Sanders would be starting his second term in a few weeks.