[guest post by JVW]

UPDATE 2:32 pm: A little bit of needed levity:

Even the looters don’t know what to do now.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) November 4, 2020

UPDATE 2:15 pm: Michigan has been called for Joe Biden. We’re closing in on a final result, barring a switch in Arizona, or if Nevada ends up in the Trump column.

UPDATE 12:20 pm: Maine’s Second District has been called for Trump, giving him one more electoral vote. My hopes of a 269-269 tie with Trump winning NV and MI and Biden winning WI, PA, and AZ are dashed. Drat. Back to the drawing board.

——–

So, I woke up today and was flabbergasted. Trump cruises in Ohio but loses Arizona? Imagine the irony if it is the state of John McCain and John Kyl Jeff Flake that denies him a second term (and yes, I’ve read the part about how the GOP expects to win by 30,000 votes once the counting is done).

Nevada, which I had earlier written off as a service union-dominated blue state, is still in play? I think that might be due to the COVID shutdowns absolutely hammering Las Vegas. The unionized hotel and casino workers might be otherwise inclined to vote for Biden, but when he’s out there talking about extending shutdowns while Trump seems to be prioritizing re-openings, well, all politics is local I suppose.

And of course the pollsters — or at least 95% of them — should all be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. The breaking news is from Maine where Sara Giddeon has conceded the Senate race to Susan Collins. Incredible. Exactly zero pollsters on the Real Clear Politics list had Senator Collins retaining her seat, yet she’s going to end up winning with an 8% margin of victory:

Literally not a single poll in the RCP average had Susan Collins winning Maine.

Quinnipiac had Gideon at +12 pic.twitter.com/I9tOfqPtGr

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 4, 2020

Another epic failure from our media elites, who no longer deserve even the smallest bit of deference to their myopic punditry.

Discuss what you would like. I am still crossing my fingers that John James pulls off the upset of the evening and beats Gary Peters for the Senate seat in Michigan. Having 53 Republican Senators would be a very welcome check on President Joe Biden.

– JVW

The Failing New York Times says things still look positive for Biden:

Even though victory remained far from certain on Wednesday morning, those states began to come to life for him, one by one, like lights flickering back on under the power of a backup generator. By around 9:10 a.m. Eastern time, Mr. Biden was leading in enough states that, if he won them, would give him 270 electoral votes.

I can’t say I’m optimistic. I can easily see the generator sputtering and dying. It might have something to do with the experts having assured us that Biden was crushing Trump nationwide by ten points or so.

Meanwhile, Trump gonna be Trump:

With no winner declared in the 2020 presidential race, President Trump appeared in the White House just after 2 a.m. on Wednesday to brazenly claim he had already won the election — and to insist that votes stop being counted even though the ballots of millions of Americans had yet to be tallied.

Speaking with a mix of defiance, anger and wonder that the election had not yet been called in his favor, the president recounted his standing in an array of battleground states before falsely declaring: “Frankly, we did win this election.”

No news organizations declared a winner between Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr., and a number of closely contested states still had millions of mail-in ballots to count, in part because state and local Republican officials had insisted that they not be counted until Election Day.

Mr. Trump said, without offering any explanation, that “we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court,” and added: “We want all voting to stop.”

Um, OK.

Meanwhile, it looks like I will have a new boss. So: the nation has failed to repudiate Trump, but my county repudiated the best choice for District Attorney.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change . . .

Happy Wednesday!

P.S. If Biden pulls this off, it may mean that only one of my predictions will come true: that “in coming days and weeks, there will be a test of loyalty: are you willing to loudly declare that Donald Trump was defrauded out of the presidency?”

I’m seeing hints of it already.