A TPM reader in DC:
I’m a civil servant. Joe Biden’s victory feels like a war-time liberation.
Joe Biden had one job: to get 270 electoral votes. He did it. Nothing succeeds like success and really nothing matters but success. Not margins or coalitions or really anything but the fact that he got it done. Excuses would be meaningless if he hadn’t; second-guessing and potshots from the bleachers are equally so.
This isn’t the end of anything. We can see from the results even of this victorious election what just some of those challenges will be. What this is is an opportunity to stop the knifing attacks on the body politic, the fabric of our government and our almost quarter millennium old republic. How much we can repair, how much we can shift the trajectory of the country away from the decay and opaque transformations that made Trump possible … that’s all in front of us and unknown.
Here’s what you’re experiencing:
From North Carolina:
Walking to the Farmer’s market in Durham NC and we hear screaming and cheers from 2 blocks away. I start crying because I know what it means. Everyone wants to hug but everyone is staying COVID happy. ♥️♥️♥️
From Buffalo, NY:
Send us your reactions and accounts of the celebrations where you are. And thank you. We couldn’t have made it through the last four years without you. You stood tall. You persevered. There is much work to do now. Celebrate now. Get busy tomorrow. Cheers!
Trump supporters in eastern Pennsylvania have been receiving what amount to anonymous incitement messages via text telling them the race is being stolen from President Trump and urging them to converge on the Philadelphia Convention Center where votes are being counted in Philadelphia. “ALERT: Radical Liberals & Dems are trying to steal this election from Trump! We need YOU!”
This is the same location where local authorities appear to have thwarted a planned terror attack on election workers two nights ago.
Join
Some of them put out statements that alluded, vaguely, to some adherence to precedent in allowing votes to be counted. Some remained silent.
Join
The roiling post-Tuesday debate about polling and polling errors is almost all heat and no light. It’s mostly emotionalism from people who are mad that the result wasn’t precisely as they’d seen predicted or been told or believed — conflating that with their unhappiness about the result itself. It’s also furious efforts to insist that polls being off confirmed their preexisting critiques of Biden or BLM or the left or the establishment or whatever. But there’s one thing I’ve heard over the last 72 hours that strikes me as real and meaningful and connects the largely meaningless debate about polling accuracy with quite critical questions about what is animating politics itself. And that is trust.
JoinThat’s it, folks. Joe Biden of Delaware will be the next President of the United States. Kamala Harris of California will be the next Vice President of the United States. January 20, 2021. The law is coming.
Our map won’t say it until the Associated Press gives the word. It shouldn’t be long. But it’s done.
I assume you saw the President’s comments. It’s just a disgrace. An absolute disgrace. You know that. It’s not surprising. I’m going to take a bit of time to share some considered thoughts. But what we saw looked to me like a televised psychological collapse. We know that weakness, losing, humiliation are like searing agony for him, his own personal kryptonite. And now he is there with it, alone. This will get brutal and ugly and stupid. But it’s out of his control. He’s being abandoned by the key political and institutional locuses of power. It’s ugly. It will get uglier. But it’s ending.