We are here, after Election Day without knowing who our president is. But unlike 2000, we all kind of expected this.
What We Know:
- This race was much closer than the big newsrooms had it. The predictions of landslides on either side fell flat.
- Polling sucks. That Biden was up 17% is a joke. Every key state that President Trump won, pollsters had him down just a few days ago.
- We need a better way to count absentee ballots. It took 19 hours in Milwaukee to count the votes. This is sad, and it creates more problems than it solves.
- We need to be clear about counting votes. We are heading into a lawsuit because Pennsylvania wanted to extend Election Day. The battle over that state alone will leave people with a distaste and distrust of the electoral process in this country.
- We know there is a lot more support for President Trump than first thought. With almost half the country, and half the states going for Trump we can see the idea that he is universally hated is off.
- We know that Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate for president ever. Look at how many more votes Biden got last night. Look at the states he won, or is close in, compared to her performance. Perhaps Democrats can now speak the truth.
- We know that, by and large, elections still work. We saw near record turnout. For all of the anger, the bluster, and the divisiveness, people in America still believe that their vote counts. That is wonderful.
- We know that 24/7 cable news coverage is mostly B.S. The biggest takeaway from watching last night is that no one knows anything. It is boring, and counter productive, to watch people guessing about math for hours on end. Hopeful this will stop.
- We should know soon who wins, but it may take the rest of the week. We either need to acknowledge that this is the new norm, or we need to fix this and get a winner before breakfast.
What We Don’t Know
- We don’t know just who won. We are headed for another uncertain election because of all of the differences between states, vote counts, deadlines, and court rulings, I DO NOT want a national standard for counting votes. But we must accept that we may never know who actually won.
- We don’t know why they stopped counting in Georgia and Pennsylvania. If I saw one tweet about voter fraud last night, I saw a hundred. It is telling that they stopped counting while President Trump was ahead by hundreds of thousands of votes.
- We don’t know how the Left will react. There was some violence last night, most notably in Portland, But there is a building sense that the violence will come only if President Trump wins. That shows me this was never about Democracy, but about the hate for President Trump.
- We don’t know what’s going to happen next. This is the biggest. Uncertainty is upsetting, and uncertainty over the presidential race is upsetting to all. This is very likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps by Thanksgiving. Imagine what this country will be like if we have to wait almost another month to finish off this race.