On Friday morning, Joe Biden is leading in Pennsylvania, and in Georgia, and in Nevada. There is no reason to think that any of those states will go back to Trump. That’s 295 electoral votes even without Arizona … and Biden is still likely to take Arizona. This isn’t going to be a narrow victory. It’s also not going to be a victory where a court challenge in a single state might reverse the outcome. Biden is going to win handily—while also piling up the largest vote total any candidate has ever received and scoring a greater popular vote edge than Hillary Clinton.
The only thing more certain than Biden’s victory at this point is that Donald Trump will continue to throw a tantrum, undermine democracy, and refuse to admit that he’s been soundly beaten. On Thursday evening, a thoroughly downbeat Trump appeared behind a White House podium to deliver an unbroken stream of lies, false claims, and plain old whining. It was a speech so completely laced with misinformation, so completely corrosive to the machinery of democracy, that every broadcast network cut away before Trump was done. Even NPR cut him off. On Friday morning, Trump’s team has issued a new statement complaining about “the false projection of Joe Biden as the winner” before either the AP or any network has actually projected Biden as a winner. The statement only confirms what we already knew: Donald Trump will not go quietly. But he will go.
In 2000, the election came down to a single state and to a margin of just 540 votes. To reverse Biden’s pending victory, Trump would need to turn back the numbers in at least four states. In Georgia, the Biden margin is going to be in the thousands. In all the remaining states, it’s likely to be in the tens of thousands. Even if the remaining ballots in Arizona somehow put Trump in the lead, and he holds on to both North Carolina and Alaska, the race will finish with 295 electoral votes for Biden, and 243 for Trump. That is his best possible outcome.
“This election is not over," says the statement from his campaign. But … the election was actually over on Tuesday. No one is still voting, they’re just counting ballots that were already inked before the deadline. Those votes say Trump is the loser.
It’s clear that Trump will continue to dispatch the crack team of Rudy Giuliani, Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski, and Ric Grenell to all points of the nation so they can file universally rejected complaints, seek supporters willing to wave guns at officials, and find members of his death cult who are willing to make it astoundingly clear that Trump is their second chance to be a Manson girl.
As USA Today notes, there’s no law that forces Trump to concede. The fact that every other losing candidate has done so is a matter of simple dignity and a minimum degree of decency. It’s one of those traditions that helps the country move along smoothly, put the election at its back, and look forward to change. So it shouldn’t be a shocker that Trump is refusing.
On this occasion, Nancy Pelosi may have put it best. “Joe Biden will be inaugurated as president of the United States on Jan. 20,” said Pelosi said. “I don’t have any anticipation that [Trump] will act in a way that is, for the first time, presidential. And why would I care?” When it comes to any race, a loser doesn’t have to admit they lost to be a loser. They just have to lose. Trump already did that.
Trump doesn’t have to call Biden and be gracious. He doesn’t even have to call Biden and be ungracious. He doesn’t have to call. Trump can go right on pretending that he won, right until January. Then he simply has to get out.
Well, Trump may try that “going boneless” thing that toddlers do when they don’t want to get taken to bed. And that could present quite a challenge … but it will be overcome.
Friday, Nov 6, 2020 · 3:18:12 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
The Biden campaign has provided a statement directly to this point:
“As we said on July 19th, the American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”