Election 2020 today

Well, if you're like me and you feel like your real problem is that you just aren't experiencing *enough* anxiety, I'll be updating here from time to time throughout tonight. I won't be watching full time, but I'll be updating here with my thoughts, fears, and what I see so far of the election results. If you have favorite links, anything you wanna share, or whatever, feel free to chime in.

Also, if you just wanna troll, or be an asshole gloating about how you're gonna "own the libs" or whatever, do it somewhere else. I'll just delete your comment and block you, so whatever.

Also, most likely, this is what I'm going to be doing tonight instead of working on NaNoWriMo. I can't concentrate on that right now. Come back tomorrow for those updates.

I'll probably be watching various news stations' coverage from time to time and reacting to that. For a summary, Google has some early results (in some cases, only 1% reporting in, so it's not anything definite yet.

You can go to it by just googling "Election results" or going to https://www.google.com/search?q=election+results

Some early thoughts:
- Florida has 77% reporting, and Biden is up 2.4%. That's way too little of a margin. Could go either way, and they have 29 electoral votes.
- Google is apparently already calling West Virginia and Kentucky for trump with 4% and 13% of the vote counted. I'm not sure why, with so little, but I'm sure they have their reasons. That's 13 electoral votes for trump.
- They're also calling Vermont and Virginia for Biden, with 10% and 12% of votes in, respectively, for a total of 16 electoral votes for trump.
- And, finally, with 35% of the votes in in Kentucky (How can they have 13% of the votes in for president and 35% in for senate?). At any rate, they're calling the senate race for McConnell, so fuck you, Kentucky voters.

More election

The fact that it's even close is disgusting.

I am horrified that warning that your opponent will listen to scientists is a winning strategy for millions of people.

The very concept that there are people who consider trump some kind of political outsider if ridiculous.

The fact that so many of my fellow Americans consider him a savior is terrifying. There is very much a religious cult around him, with many evangelical self-called "Christians" abandoning their old Jewish messiah for this new antisemitic one.

Texas is still close. Biden was up by 4 points half an hour ago, and now it's even again: 49.4 to 49.3. Wow!

Looks like Florida flipped back to trump. Not surprising, but too bad.
Google has called Virginia with 13 EC votes for Biden, despite at 34% of the results in Trump leads 59 to 39. What? I don't know why. We'll see I guess. Maybe all the counties that haven't reported yet are all democratic-leaning? I don't know.

Still sucks that there's even a question. Given trump's spectacular failures, it's insane how many people love him so much.

Even more election crap.

Looks like Trump is taking Florida (91% reporting). Damn.

But Biden is doing better in North Carolina, strangely enough. According to various people talking on my TV, those are two of the states Biden has to win to win the election. Also, Texas, which is still close with Biden up 1.7% with 47% of the vote reporting in.

ABC has also mentioned a few times a "red mirage". The idea is that smaller rural counties are going to get counted quicker, and they tend to vote republican, so early results are going to seem more red than they really are. I don't know how accurate that is, but it seems reasonable. I don't remember if we saw that in previous elections. (Probably won't affect Florida, though, because it's almot complete)

And more

The big swing states, Texas, Florida, and, I guess North Carolina, are still all neck and neck. Well, not Florida - it looks like trump is taking it by a couple of percent.

It's driving me crazy how close this race is. Not just because there's no sane reason for it to be. One candidate is openly using his office to enrich himself, who's openly committed multiple crimes, and has continued to do so, has lied almost constantly, and often in easily disproven ways. He's admitted responding to a pandemic in a way that he hoped would help his reelection numbers rather than the American people and has therefore cost the lives of a quarter of a million Americans. It goes on and on, and yet he has this cult around him where none of that matters. He keeps saying "Law and Order" after we find out he lied on financial disclosure forms and has a secret Chinese bank account that he never revealed. It's nuts.

I'm on a discord with a bunch of friends. Right now, most people are posting pictures of their pets who are with them while watching. In a few more minutes, a lot of the western states will close polling and start reporting results.

Still more about red mirage. Michigan shows trump way ahead right now, but they haven't started counting the early voting ballots, which is about half of them, and are expected to heavily favor democrats.

Ugh. Nothing I say here means anything. It's just a way to pass the time while biting my nails waiting for election results. Already lost a few people I know to this asshole. Don't wanna lose any more.

Still going.

Looks like Lindsey Graham is keeping his seat, too.
This is disappointing.
I guess there's an advantage to being from the 4th least educated state.
Kentucky is the 5th, thus giving us McConnell over and over as well.

Oregon, Washington, and California results should be coming in by now, but I haven't seen any. I want to know about the ballot measures as well as wanting to be sure DeFazio retained his seat and that the out of state (and out of country) moneyed interests pouring millions in to the new discount Art Robinson campaign didn't work this time.

Might be the last one for a while.

So... West coast states reported in. All four ballot measures in Oregon passed, by a large margin, including legalizing psilocybin therapy, which surprised me.

We also voted to decriminalize all drugs and fund addiction treatment centers. Also, to limit campaign contributions and expenditures, basically overturning Citizens United within Oregon, which will make it much harder for oligarch candidates to even run -- they'll have to have a message of some kind and communicate it on a level playing field instead of just being backed by megachurches and the king the Saudi Arabia.

And Portland is getting a new citizens oversight board for the police, so that's cool.

New Jersey legalized mushrooms for private use as well, apparently.

Overall, it's been good here for progress. The war on drugs was a disaster from the beginning, solving none of the problems that drugs create while creating a whole lot of new problems.

Oregon doesn't have private prisons so other than police unions there're no huge financial incentives to keep the war going. I'm glad we're finally starting to dismantle some of the damage it causes.

I'm not surprised about the police oversight. In a complete betrayal of our founding fathers' ideals, a lot of Oregonians believe that Black Lives Matter.

My representative, Peter DeFazio is up 10 points over the latest Republican offering, which is a relief, but not surprising. Everybody here loves him because he's a damn good representative, and even being outspent ten to one he's still winning by large margins.

Likewise, Senator Merkley is retaining his seat against challenger who the Republicans thought might have a chance because she's a woman, but they were wrong. But at least now they get to say that Democrats are the real misogynists because they voted against her no matter how much Russian money was pumped into her campaign.

Back to Federal elections, it looks like Biden is going to have to pick up votes in at least a few of the states he's currently behind in, or we're going to have trump again. And, once again, the Republicans may end up picking up some seats in the House. Hopefully, it won't be enough to flip it. I'm worried about that, too. I'm still pissed that people were stupid enough to vote for both Graham and McConnell again.

If Biden does pick up votes in contested states, it'll be from absentee votes and mail in votes, which may not be all counted for several days, so look for Trump to declare himself the winner later tonight and then have a ton of lawyers, as he's promised, to put an end to counting any more ballots after that.

So, it may be, once again, days to weeks before we know for sure who the next president is going to be.

Fuck

I just did a spreadsheet with the remaining undecided races. It doesn't look good. The only path to a Biden victory looks like flipping Texas blue, and Biden is now down by 6% in Texas. It was neck and neck earlier.
The "Red mirage" doesn't look like it's a thing, either. So far, it looks like all the red states become more red as more precincts report.

Looks like the republicans are picking up seats in both the House and the Senate as well. McConnell stays in power, and gets more. The House goes Republican.

It's fucking 2016 all over again.

And, I should point out, everything I predicted then happened, only it was even worse than I expected.
Yes, there's a lot of voter suppression, and there's tons of Russian and Saudi and probably Chinese money pouring in through SuperPacs and through huge social media propaganda efforts. But even with all that, it's American voters who own this, and the fact that it's even close, after everything this monster has done, all the lives he's ruined, even before he let a pandemic kill off a quarter million of us, is depressing as hell.

And don't even come at me with "It's just politics". All that means is that you won't be greatly affected one way or another, and you don't give a shit about the people who will be, so fuck you. He's already ruined lives. He's destroyed families. He's disappeared good people. He's sent refugees back to be tortured and killed, and just because you don't personally know any of the people who've suffered doesn't mean they aren't important so fuck you with your "it's just politics" attitude.

Not to mention a quarter million dead, and counting, and soon to be rapidly increasing.

And all trump's blatant corruption, and with McConnell still around to have his back with a willing senate, and possibly the house, there's nothing to stop them continuing their looting of our country, of selling migrant children to sex traffickers (while a bunch of people play alternate reality q-anon games of trump being some kind of undercover anti-government freedom fighter), his proud boys and other white supremacists continuing to be encouraged and going unchecked. And let's not forget the millions who are about to lose their insurance, and the tens of thousands who are going to now suffer and die from treatable conditions because they aren't going to be able to afford treatment. Congratulations on not being among them and convincing yourself that they don't matter. Fuck it. It's too much.

This sucks.

This sucks a lot.

And a bunch of you are gonna read this and laugh and crow about winning because you're too goddamn stupid to realize that you didn't win. Trump won. McConnell won. Putin won. The oligarchs won. You're not one of them and you never will be and you're too goddamn stupid to realize it. Or, maybe you're not stupid. Maybe, like trump and Miller, you're just racist and cruel, and that's not any better.