One thought on how this race turned out. As far as I know, not a single poll showed Pilip ahead. There were a few at the end that showed it close. But this was yet another race with a lot of junk or what we might call plain wrap polls. There were a couple polls I saw recently that had a modest single-point lead for Suozzi. But at least one of these and I think two also added a tighter screen of voters who were sure they were going to vote — slightly different from a standard “likely voter” screen. Those showed Suozzi moving into double digits. That made me pretty confident Suozzi was going to take this, for obvious reasons. The vibes world picked up a big Pilip surge in the final days. But that didn’t pan out.

Okay, we finally got a first real batch of votes out of Nassau County. They confirm the story out of Queens. See the 9:40 p.m. update below. And now the AP has called it. Not sure where the final numbers will be. Nassau County takes a long time to report. But Suozzi wins this and it looks like it will be by a comfortable and perhaps even big margin.

9:56 p.m.: The best indication I’ve seen so far that Suozzi’s winning this is I’m already seeing the first arguments about how a Suozzi win is probably bad news for the Democrats.

9:40 p.m.: So basically where we are now is that Queens is mostly in and Suozzi has significantly exceeded the benchmarks he needs there. But most of the district is in Nassau County. This is a contiguous district. So it wouldn’t make a lot of sense that one part of it would be dramatically different relative to the baseline than another. But it could be. So we need to see some totals out of parts of Nassau County to really be certain where this is going. But you’d absolutely want to be Suozzi right now rather than Pilip.

9:27 p.m.: Okay, still a ways to go but Suozzi seems to be exceeding the benchmarks he needed in Queens. There’s a lot we haven’t seen. There are very different parts of this district and we’ve got the same day vs early issue. So it’s early but these are some promising early numbers for Suozzi.

9:21 p.m.: You can see topline results on lots of news sites. But I just saw this link to a site by a data guy which is showing the results down at the precinct level, if that’s your thing.

9:20 p.m.: Please note that the early results are showing Democratic parts of Queens and early vote. So don’t put much stock in those early numbers.

9:10 p.m.: The polls just closed in the New York City-area special election to replace expelled congressman and freak George Santos. The district includes part of Queens and adjoining parts of the Nassau County, which makes up the western part of Long Island. As usual, I’m watching the unfolding commentary on my election night analysts Twitter list, which you can find here. (If you’re no longer or not on Twitter, you’re right. Twitter sucks. Don’t know what to tell ya. This is what I use it for these days.) As usual, there’s not much great polling and a ton of “vibes.”

One major wildcard today was that there was a big snowstorm that seemed to put a major dent in turnout for the first part of the day. Put an asterisk on that because people can just decide to show up later. And by most standards it wasn’t a very big storm. Where I live in Manhattan there’s barely any snow left on the ground at all. But early today there was a ton of slush. The relevant point is that Democrats seemed to be banking a lot of early vote. So there’s a chance that Republicans got burned by a knock on turnout from bad weather. The truth is we have no idea. We’ll know more soon enough.

Today we’re publishing the second installment in our series on the Ken Chesebro document trove. Today’s piece provides a detailed look at just where ideas like fake electors and the purportedly central role of then-Vice President Mike Pence came from. And far more than almost anyone seems to have realized they started with Ken Chesebro. Even ideas and strategies associated with the so-called “Eastman Memo” appear to have begun with him. In today’s piece Josh Kovensky provides never-before-reported details on how Chesebro found his way into the Trump orbit in the first days after Biden’s victory and how he became the key idea man behind what we might call Stop The Steal Thought.

This note from TPM Reader JS more or less summarizes my thoughts.

The Boat in the Atlantic. Great metaphor. I don’t know Jon Alter, but I get the feeling that many of the “he’s too old” crowd are just pre-loading “I told you so” ammunition if he loses. There’s no downside to saying what everyone else is saying. I think so many people can’t contemplate a Trump restoration that they have to have some explanation why it happened. Biden was too old. The kids hate Israel. Whatever. Those explanations make sense to these people in a way that “more voters liked Trump” does not. I think they are then living in that world where things will happen as they forecast and it’s more comfortable than just getting your shit together and holding the course on the boat we have.

Chris Christie, after a campaign that was, at least as I understood it, focused on blocking the danger of a second Trump presidency, says he probably would just not vote for President at all. He’ll leave that part of the ballot blank. “I can’t see myself voting for [Biden] because I don’t agree with his policies.” Marco Rubio meanwhile says he has “zero concerns” about Trump’s claim that he’ll encourage Russia to invade NATO allies if they don’t up their defense budgets.

My friend Jon Alter has a piece up about how Biden and his campaign can defuse and limit the damage from concerns about his age and mental acuity. Every point he makes is so on the mark I want you to go read it. The gist is the Biden’s age and occasional brain freezes are obviously a political liability. Jon has known and been interviewing Biden for 35+ years and he says he’s always been that way.

Sure Biden’s slower than he was even a decade ago. But the verbal missteps are same old same old for him. How you address that is leaning into it, getting Biden out in front of the public a lot. Yes, he will swap one name out for another or mangle words sometimes. It is what it is. Even though right wing media will seize on every goof viewers will also see a President who is basically fine, addressing complex issues in able and sophisticated ways. They’re already seizing on every awkward moment. If you keep Biden under wraps that’s all anyone will see.

I wanted to share a note I received from TPM Reader JR and my reply. Helps me refine my understanding of what we see in both Biden and Trump and how they are both perceived.

From TPM Reader JR …

I’m a practicing psychiatrist who has evaluated many people over the years for dementia.

Based on my experience, Josh M is on to something when he wrote about how Trump’s anger makes him seem less cognitively impaired than Biden.