I had such high hopes for election day. Polls supposedly showed Joe Biden with at least an 8 point lead nationally, although much narrower in swing states. For Biden backers (or those who simply wanted anyone but Trump) there was this air of “inevitability” that Biden would win the election, since it was assumed that the “suburban white women” and “independents” who had carried Trump to victory in 2016 had learned their lesson; in fact exit polls showed that Biden made significant gains among white men, and actually lost support among white women. “Never Trump” Republicans had already claimed to have cast their votes for Biden, and even the right-leaning Rasmussen polling lent its support of Biden winning the election, with a four-point edge in Pennsylvania. Few people treated it as anything but some kind of demented joke when Trump Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed that Donald Trump was going to win by a “landslide.” Polls could be wrong, but Biden’s numbers were slightly better than Hillary Clinton’s, so there was more room for “error.”
But there was always something gnawing in the back of the mind that something horribly wrong was going to happen. After all, those purposefully ill or uninformed people attending Trump rallies seemed beyond the help of modern medicine, and some sports stars and celebrities provided justifications for voting for Trump that simply did not jibe with the truth, and there were obviously a lot of allegedly “sensible” people who felt Trump was doing a “great” job. I somehow knew the day was jinxed the moment I showed up for work, when an employee was haranguing people how he had “heard” that Biden was winning “by a landslide” before any votes were officially tabulated. This was the same guy who for the past three months was excitedly telling us the “news” that our second stimulus check was practically already in the mail. After the first couple times I just told him that “I’ll believe it when I see it,” and now I found myself wondering the same thing about the election.
Despite having a day job (or rather, a night job), I felt compelled to find the time every day for the past year, after a period of relative hibernation, to post my thoughts on what awful things was happening to this country thanks to a man who is nothing more than a pampered manchild who never learned to discipline his thoughts and actions, who respected no one, had contempt for viewpoints that conflicted with his own, had no use for facts that were obstacles to his whims, and demanded complete loyalty to the fulfillment of his most shameless and shameful impulses, and was persuading many millions of people to join him in his destruction of every moral and ethical principle that made this country truly “great” in comparison to fascist autocracies and tinpot dictatorships. I could only hope that my efforts would not be a complete waste of time, given that I was doing it for nothing.
Expectations (or rather, hopes) seemed to go awry early on. The exit polls by the New York Times claimed that men favored Trump by just 49 to 48, and women favored Biden by a 56 to 43 margin. With more women voting than men, this would suggest at minimum a six-point edge for Biden. But as the vote totals started trickling in, it was clear that some people simply didn’t want to confess that they actually voted for Trump; the mere 50-48 edge Trump supposedly had in Southern states was clearly not accurate. Incredibly, Trump was leading in the popular vote, mainly with the help of the white Southern vote, which of course was a lost cause to begin with, but it was still surprising how support for Trump hadn’t budged at all, including in Tennessee which has been slammed by the COVID-19 in the past month (don’t believe that all “college towns” are havens for “liberal” thought).
By the time all polls closed at 8 PM Pacific Time, I couldn’t help but to observe that according to the Times tracking, Trump had an astonishing 51-47 lead in the popular vote. How could this be? Didn’t at least some people learn anything these past four years? That lead would obviously evaporate once the “Left Coast” votes started coming in, but it was still a disturbing harbinger for something terribly not right. I could see that Florida was out of the picture early, and that while Texas, North Carolina and Ohio seemed promising for an hour or two, it was clear that Trump was going to win those states too. Arizona appeared to be the best chance for a “surprise” flip, and Iowa seemed prepared to do the same. But Michigan and Pennsylvania were concerning from the start, with Trump having sizable leads with half the votes counted. I simply could not believe this. This couldn’t be the “landslide” that McEnany had claimed would happen in Trumpworld’s Fantasy Island, but even if Trump again lost the popular vote, it seemed a strong possibility that he would again easily win the Electoral College unless something changed, and fast.
Although Trump had a slight advantage in Wisconsin, most of Milwaukee County was still out, and it still appeared probable that the state would eventually fall into the Biden column. By 8:30 PM Biden had passed Trump in the popular vote, thanks to California. But Michigan and Pennsylvania continued to be trouble spots. Biden then fell behind in Iowa, and it was now a mystery why Ohio, Texas, Florida and Georgia had not been called at this point and their 103 electoral votes put in the Trump column. Although close, the remaining counties in play favoring Biden in North Carolina would not provide enough votes to prevent its 15 electoral votes from passing to Trump. Counting those states, Trump had a 236-209 lead in the Electoral College. Throw in Montana, Iowa and Alaska, that was another 12 votes and a 248-209 lead for Trump. Minnesota now appeared safe for Biden and that made it 248-219. If Biden held onto Nevada and Hawaii, and flipped Arizona, which seemed a strong possibility, that would be a 248-240. With a likely win in Maine, that made it even closer, at 248-244..
That meant the election would come down to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and by 9 PM Biden was still trailing by disturbingly high margins. Pennsylvania at first seemed the most important state in this equation; Biden had to win this state, or it was over, and he was just falling further and further behind. With 58 percent of precincts reporting, Biden was a shocking 600,000 votes behind in a state that Hillary Clinton lost by just 44,000 votes. The outstanding votes, mainly mail ballots from Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties, were the only hope, and even if they did come up big, it was still nothing to feel comfortable about. Things were looking quite sad in Michigan too; in no county with significant precincts still to report did Biden seem to hold a significant enough edge to add enough for a significant swing to overcome a 10-point deficit. And now Wisconsin was suddenly uncertain, with Milwaukee County not looking as if it could overcome a six-figure deficit.
A day that began so promisingly when most polls seemed to show Biden with a seemingly insurmountable lead nationally with plenty of room for “error,” seemed again to turn out to be so wrong, even more wrong than in 2016. People who hate Trump and cannot fathom how anyone could find this man anything but detestable as a human being were left uncomprehending upon the reality. This wasn’t about being a “liberal”; this was about being confronted by a man whose very being oozes the character traits most thinking people regard as repulsive. A Trump victory would be the most soul-destroying result imaginable.
But the “dream” was not completely over, not yet. Fanatical Trump supporters had unfortunately come out like flies attracted to Trump’s dung pile, but as the night wore on the no-more-Trump voters who voted early through mail-in ballots were starting to tip the scale just enough to shed a candle light of hope at the end of the tunnel. Biden might not get the 75 percent of the remaining vote in Pennsylvania to win the state, but the new math made Pennsylvania less essential; holding on in Arizona and Nevada, and hoping that Wisconsin and Michigan could still be won, would be enough for 270 Electoral votes. By 2 AM when the counting for the night ended, Biden was ahead in Wisconsin and headed for the lead in Michigan.
Trump, of course, is now behaving like someone who cannot accept even the possibility of rejection, as he has rejected so many others; he is doing his Third World dictator bit, first claiming “victory” before all the votes were in, but since the numbers started to turn on him he has spent his time claiming “fraud,” threatening lawsuits to invalidate ballots or halt vote counting. What we see here is that just getting a little taste of his own medicine is clearly not enough for this man who needed a thrashing from voters to convince him that his time was done and relegated to the history books, allowing scholars to mull over what is probably the most morally and ethically corrupt presidency in this nation’s history, surpassing even that of the Nixon presidency.
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