We just need to play this out. From what I can tell the numbers in Pennsylvania not only point to a Biden win but possibly a relatively comfortable one. If that is true Arizona and Nevada and Georgia don’t matter, though Biden now seems more likely than not to win all three. Again, this is just based on reviewing the analyses of the remaining votes from people I trust.

Georgia will be razor thin either way. Almost certainly in recount territory. But again, it probably won’t matter. More significant is that we now seem set to have two senate run-offs in Georgia. This opens at least a theoretical path to Democrats controlling the Senate in January. Likely? No. But if Biden does manage to win Georgia by the slenderest of margins, you simply can’t say it’s impossible. So that means a furious battle against two not terribly popular Senators in what is now at least a swingish state.

Last night was so harrowing because the whipsaw shifts of electoral trends felt so much like the rapid and doomy collapse of Hillary Clinton’s fortunes four years ago. It was wrenching. There’s one more failsafe or firewall and then it fades into nothing. The Senate results were super disappointing too. Unless Dems pull off a miracle in Georgia Joe Biden will face Mitch McConnell running the Senate. Court reform will be off. Any significant progressive legislation is probably off the table for two years. That sucks.

But folks, Joe Biden is on the verge of winning the presidency and making Donald Trump only the fourth President to be rejected by the country in a bid for a second term in office in 108 years. Biden will have a decisive popular vote win and his party will maintain control of the House of Representatives. This is a big fucking deal. And ending Trump’s Presidency is an incredibly important accomplishment for the future of this country. That is something to savor.

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I am a big believer in nuance. Broad strokes are dangerous, limiting and do little to advance productive societal conversations or close gaps or fend off the spread of disinformation.

For the first time Joe Biden now has leads in states which add up to 270 electoral votes (including Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada). And outstanding votes suggest the margins in those states – while still very tight – are likely to grow.

As the morning greets us, there are reasons for cautious optimism that Joe Biden will secure an electoral college victory. It was a very topsy turvy night for those who didn’t stay up for the whole thing. (Quite against my will I am still up from last night. Tried to sleep; failed; pulled out my iPad again to see things shifting around 4 AM.) One of the weird dynamics of the last 12 hours is that there was very little clear analysis of what the initial returns meant. Cable networks treated Ohio as a possible Biden pick up and a harbinger of midwestern strength for Biden. It ended up being a decisive Trump win. Georgia was portrayed as part of the southeastern sweep even though for most of the evening most of metro Atlanta and other urban areas had only reported a comparatively few votes. Biden may have the slightest, slightest of advantages in the remaining counting there now. I’m not entirely sure why this was the case. Going from normal returns counting to layering on uncertain mixes of mail-in, early and election day votes with decisive partisan skews is a bit like going from 3 to 4 dimensions. It’s complicated. Still, in cable network commentary it seemed to go out the window. I stuck to my list of numbers crunchers.

There was so much that was ominous in that brief speech by the President. But here’s maybe the most. This is such a shocking statement that you might think it would be some turning point where President Trump has just gone too far. And yet, this is not surprising. This is not some shocking departure from the President we’ve known for these four years. And yet it’s clear that at least close to enough people voted for his reelection.

President Trump’s statement – still underway – is a disgrace. He’s basically making the argument that we’ve heard predicted for weeks: ‘I was winning and then suddenly something happened and now they’re stealing it from me.’ It’s a pretty close paraphrase.

He’s now openly calling it a fraud and saying he won.

This statement makes me think that the Trump campaign thinks it’s losing.

Okay, my friends, it’s 1 AM on the East Coast. I’ve tried to get as clear a sense as I can of the remaining states or rather the remaining states that will determine the outcome of this election. I’d rather be Joe Biden than Donald Trump.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But the dynamics of pandemic voting have totally upended number-counters’ ability to make sense of the results. In a way it doesn’t matter. In most cases, it doesn’t really matter if there are premature predictions. The results will be what they are. But it is continuing to create all sorts of seesaw, roller-coastering results and non-results, results that turn out not to be results. Ohio and North Carolina were looking good for Democrats until they weren’t. But now North Carolina looks at least a bit less than certain again. For reasons I didn’t quite understand people were giving Trump Georgia — but without waiting for the big cities and especially Atlanta to report. Now Georgia’s back up in the air. Fox News called Arizona for Biden but no one else has followed them. Now that seems less than certain. It’s all over the place. I stick to what I said: patience, count the votes, I’m very cautiously optimistic.

Folks, it’s been a bruising, bruising evening so far. What looked like a possible Biden blowout is certainly not turning out that way. It seems like Florida, Texas and probably North Carolina are all going to President Trump. It feels a lot like 2016. But I want to stress that in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, most of the Democratic votes don’t seem to have been counted yet. At least the particular counties I’m seeing make it look like Biden is in a good position to win these three states. Outside of the Southeast there are many counties across the country where Biden has improved the margins over Clinton in 2016. Meanwhile Biden appears to be winning Arizona, though that’s not quite certain yet.