Texas Harris County clerk Chris Hollins announced on Monday night that he would be closing nine out of the 10 drive-thru polling places in the county, which encompasses Houston, out of caution after a federal judge smacked down the state GOP’s efforts to throw out more than 125,000 ballots that voters had dropped off at those polling sites.
Thanks, Folks
As we begin this big, perhaps seemingly endless day, I wanted to thank all our subscribers, more than 34,000 of you. I’m really proud of the job this team has done all year. It’s been a grueling political cycle, compounded by a global pandemic that has had us out of our offices and working remotely since early March. But a through line of consistency we’ve had throughout is a relative financial stability. That’s allowed all of us to keep our heads down and bring you the news. And that is entirely because of you, our subscribers. This isn’t any lofty hocum of ‘we couldn’t have done it without you’. We very literally could not have done any of this without you: your subscription fees make up about three-quarters of our revenue. That support not only makes what we do possible. It also gives us some breathing room and predictability to look a bit over the horizon, to be more creative about how we can improve, how we can up our game. So thanks.
Trump Camp Taunts Biden As He Visits Late Son’s Grave On Election Day
As Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden visited the grave of his son Beau on Tuesday morning, Trump campaign national press secretary Hogan Gidley was asking if the nominee had “called a lid.”
the trump campaign as biden is quite literally praying at his son’s grave: https://t.co/yhVLpIc84c
— David Mack (@davidmackau) November 3, 2020
The abrupt question smacked of insensitivity as Biden began Election Day by attending church with his wife Jill Biden and two of their granddaughters at St. Joseph on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware.
The Trump campaign has often invoked calling a “lid” — a term reporters use when a politician is done traveling for the day — as a way to mock Biden and paint him as a low energy candidate who rarely emerges from his “basement” to campaign.
Biden’s son Beau died of brain cancer five years prior to his run for president and the Democratic nominee often visits the Roman Catholic Church where his son is buried while campaigning.
The Democratic candidate has often said he regretted not running for president in 2016 — a time when the wounds of his son’s death from brain cancer were still quite new — but he also seems to have called on his son’s memory as inspiration as he concludes the 2020 presidential election battle.
The Democratic nominee has lauded his late son — an Iraq War veteran and former Delaware attorney general — as his role model, often invoking Beau’s commitment to public service through his dedicated efforts in the military.
Biden dialed up his criticism of President Trump’s attitude toward service men and women last month, by contrasting the efforts of his son and others who went to war on the nation’s behalf, with President Trump’s apparent disregard for fallen military members, reportedly calling them “suckers” and “losers” during a trip to France in 2018.
Trump Says He’ll Declare Victory ‘Only When There’s Victory’: ‘No Reason To Play Games’
President Donald Trump seemed to deny the notion that he would prematurely declare himself the winner of the election on Tuesday.
Biden Won’t Be Cowed By Post-Election Nonsense From Trump
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has plans to address the nation as its new president-elect if news networks declare him winner, even if President Donald Trump continues to battle the results in court, Axios reported on Tuesday.
Advisers told Axios that if Biden was declared the winner he will quickly begin forming his government and appearing presidential regardless of Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election’s results.
Trump is likely to make a lot of noise about the results if it appears he is losing, but Biden plans to sidestep the President’s nonsense.
Biden would likely begin with senior staff appointments so that officials in each agency are quickly able to begin work, Axios reported.
Biden also has detailed plans for executive orders, including efforts to reverse Trump actions advisers told Axios.
One Biden ally told the publication that Biden hopes to strike “a healing tone,” and spring into battle against the coronavirus by embracing science in a sharp departure from President Trump who threatened to fire leading infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci after Election Day on Sunday.
The news of Biden’s plans to immediately step up if he is declared victor comes as President Trump told reporters on Sunday that he would be armed with lawyers as soon as the election concluded.
“We’re going in the night of — as soon as the election is over — we’re going in with our lawyers,” Trump said.
Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said during a briefing on Monday that “under no scenario will Donald Trump be declared a victor on election night.”
“At the end of the day, we believe we’re going to win this race,” she said. “We believe we’re going to be able to do that with our pathways to victory regardless of what Donald Trump says.”
Per Axios, O’Malley Dillon told reporters on Monday that on election night the campaign would “use our data, our understanding of where this is headed, and make sure that the vice president is addressing the American people.”
Biden would likely be delivering those remarks from Wilmington, Delaware, where he is expected to be spending election night. After cancelling an appearance at an election night party at his Washington hotel, President Trump has plans to watch results roll in from the White House.
President Trump has waged a months-long battle to play up an election marred by fraud. During a campaign rally on Monday night he railed anew saying “bad things will happen” after last week’s Supreme Court decisions that allow battleground North Carolina and Pennsylvania to accept absentee ballots for several days after Election Day. Experts have predicted Biden’s home state of Pennsylvania could be decisive in determining who will be president.
“Tomorrow’s the beginning of a new day,” Biden told supporters at a drive-in rally in the state on Monday night. “The power to change this country is in your hands.”
In Closing Message, Trump Tees Up Challenge To PA Election Results
President Trump spent the eve of Election Day hinting that he and his lawyers are ready to aggressively challenge the election if he loses to Democratic rival Joe Biden, or if the results on Tuesday night are inconclusive, as they may well be.
The President took aim in particular at the Supreme Court’s decision last week allowing absentee ballots in Pennsylvania to be counted after Election Day so long as they are postmarked before, which he baselessly argued will lead to voter fraud.
Although the Court dealt a setback to Republicans in the state who requested that the justices reinstate an Election Day-deadline for absentee ballots to be received, the order only indicated that the court won’t review the case before the election, and left open the possibility of later action by the court.
It’s “a horrible thing,” the President said of the decision during an Election Eve campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He then, without evidence, claimed that the SCOTUS decision on Pennsylvania heightens the risk of voter fraud.
“You know that puts our country in danger. Do you know what can happen during that long period of time, Pennsylvania? Do you know what can happen?” Trump told Fayetteville rally-goers. “Number one: cheating can happen like you’ve never seen. This is their dream. They are known for it. The Philadelphia area is known for it.”
Trump then warned the crowd in North Carolina that “what can happen during that long period of time is a disgrace,” before urging them to get their ballots in before Nov. 3 so that they can be counted before then. (States often take days to count ballots, and allow mail-in ballots that reach officials in the days after Election Day to be tallied so long as they were postmarked by Nov 3.)
The refrain has become a theme for Trump and his allies in the closing days of the campaign. On Sunday, Trump adviser Jason Miller suggested on ABC This Week that Trump would be the winner on election night, but that Democrats would try to “steal” the election in the days after. Axios reported that Trump planned to declare himself winner on election night, and Trump informed reporters that his lawyers were ready to go in “as soon as the election is over.”
Upon arriving in Wisconsin on Monday ahead of his rally in Kenosha, Trump continued to gripe about the Supreme Court ruling in Pennsylvania, telling reporters that he hopes the Supreme Court “has the wisdom” to change its decision to allow ballot counts in Pennsylvania after Election Day.
The President warned reporters that “bad things will happen” if the Supreme Court ruling on Pennsylvania ballots stays in place, referring again to his baseless claim that the order will lead to voter fraud. Moments later, he amped up the fear-mongering with an incendiary tweet predicting violence as a dire consequence of the SCOTUS order in the battleground state.
That prediction landed him a Twitter warning label, which prevents users from retweeting his misleading message.
The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one. It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2020
During his rally in Kenosha, the self-proclaimed president of “law and order” told attendees that there will be “peace and order” on the condition that he wins re-election. He then recycled his gripes from earlier Monday.
“The whole world is waiting to find out and there’s great danger in that. Number one: there’s danger that there’s a lot of shenanigans that go on from that time forth. There’s a lot of shenanigans,” Trump told the Wisconsinites. “And then there’s a lot of bad things that can happen with the streets. You’re going to have a population that’s going to be very angry and you just can’t do that. That is such a dangerous decision. That is such a disappointment.”
In Closing Pitch To Voters, Biden Proposes Human Decency
At the top of his remarks at a get-out-the-vote event in Pittsburgh Monday evening, former Vice President Joe Biden told a nearly 50-year-old story that he said characterized his campaign for the presidency.
Continue reading “In Closing Pitch To Voters, Biden Proposes Human Decency”
A Few Observations #2
A few thoughts again seriatim, in no particular order.
Florida
People, Steve Schale is the Democratic campaign guy I trust more than anyone else to tell me what’s happening on the ground in Florida, how to understand the polls, the turnout data, the results as they come in tomorrow evening. It was Schale looking at the returns in real time and commenting on them on Twitter four years ago that told me something bad was happening. Here’s his final rundown for this cycle on what he’s seeing in his home state.
With A Pre-Election EO, Trump Is Again Pushing For Something He Calls ‘Patriotic Education’
On Election Day Eve, President Donald Trump signed an executive order underlining a central theme of his reelection campaign: Liberals want to indoctrinate America’s children.