zzrmark

Just think of that puzzlement as a good thing, it means your brain is functioning fairly well...

Lion in Winter

They aren't really calling the shots. They are just reporting based on the inevitability of the maths. They aren't providing the final counts, because they don't know them obviously. They call it when there is no longer a mathematical path to victory for one of the candidates. There is a lot of voter suppression that still happens, and a lot of disconnection from the political process so that, with the exception of this year, turnout is generally pretty low. But the actual mechanisms are pretty sound and the vote is well-protected once cast. Over 140 million votes have been processed in just a few days. Pretty good going.

The whole show and giant inauguration ceremony is to do with being a Republic and the elections being bound up with the US myth, imo, in a way that an election in the UK never will be. Not much of the UK's self identity is bound up with who is PM, but the identity of the US's president means a lot more to them. Hence the inauguration is more like our trooping the colour or something.

The amount of money spent on it by the candidates is obscene, however.

UkWinds5353

Thanks

That amount of canvassing is definitely better suited for younger legs. I feel like my wife & I walked 1000 miles knocking on doors. Instead my walk pedometer says we walked about 400 miles and boy do we feel it. We both actually lost weight in that two month period.

dakota44

Look at it this way. Their campaign had turned to shit. Shit is fertilizer. Ergo...Garden Center...very appropriate for a shit show.

zzrmark

Speaking of shit, has anyone noticed how Ted Cruz is starting to look like Don Jr? Does your DNA get infected if you shove your nose up someone's arsehole for four years?

Maya1000

Biden has said that he wants to lower the Medicare age from 65 to 60. With the results of Congress and the Senate, how likely is this to happen?

zzrmark

There's a greater chance of me becoming the KKK's next Grand Vizier, with Sultan as my number two.

dakota44

We will not have the full results of the Senate until after the runoffs in Georgia are counted. If both go blue, which is highly possible, Senate control will be in the hands of the Dems.

HDWill

This is kind of fascinating; Biden might win Arizona by 1,000 votes or something. I feel bad for the Fox News analyst who called Arizona for Biden late Tuesday night. I guess they were assuming mail-in ballots were going to be majority Democratic like most of the country, whereas in Maricopa County they are still leaning Trump?

Steerpike

The next significant step may be the approval by the GSA for the Biden campaign to access resources required to effect the transition. This article covers it:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/1...den-win-435203

Pressure mounts on federal agency to affirm Biden victory

"Until the General Services Administration determines Biden is the president-elect, his transition team cannot access government funds or communicate with federal agencies."

"“While there will be legal disputes requiring adjudication, the outcome is sufficiently clear that the transition process must now begin,” the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition wrote in a letter exclusively obtained by POLITICO"

scrubbedexpat091

Would be nice if they didn't need fancy inauguration and if it could be done sooner, but the system just isn't set up that way, and would require constitutional amendments to change, and good luck with that.

Steerpike

Another 27,000 votes have now been counted since my earlier update, and now the margin is down to 17,000. By my calculations, Trump would now need to win 64% of all remaining ballots to win. I calculate about 66k votes remain to be counted. In other words ...
66,000 votes remain to be counted. Of these 66k votes, just over
42,000 needed by Trump to win;
only just over
24,000 needed by Biden to hold on.

Associated Press have now called AZ for Biden.
New York Times is now the LAST mainstream organization that I'm aware of who have NOT called AZ yet!

Note - my number of 66,000 votes remaining is based on the fact that we are told 98% of votes are counted, and thus 2% remain. These are probably shady figures ('2%' could be 1.6%, 2.0%, 2.4% ...)

dakota44

That is pretty close to real numbers. No way Trump is going to suddenly get 60% of the votes remaining.

Leslie

Ted Cruz started out as shit.

scrubbedexpat091

He did back in 2016 or within that time frame.

Now Andrew Scheer, the former Canadian conservative leader, was going to renounce his USC, but then after his party didn't win enough seats to form government and he was no longer going to be leader of the party, he decided to keep his USC in the end.