Category Archives: Politics

#USElection2020 | So Long Donald Trump, You F%&?#! Maniac

November 16, 2020PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

In 65 days from today, the monstrous narcissist that is Donald Trump will no longer be President of the United States, a position he never should have ascended to in the first place, and despite the 73 million wrong-headed, Mussolini-lovin’, cult-like votes he managed to secure earlier this month from the American electorate, Donald Trump remains a blight on the social and political landscape of the U.S., and everywhere across the globe.
No one, ten years from now, will ever admit to having voted for this sociopathic, hate-filled traitor — any support for him will have long been repudiated by the vast majority of Republicans, and the U.S. electorate.

In the meantime, Donald Trump refuses to concede, to conduct himself as a responsible citizen, and to co-operate with an orderly transition of power — thereby causing the United States, and all of us, to find ourselves in a precarious state of a lack of security to fight those who would do us harm. No surprise there, of course — it’s just par for the course for Donald Trump, apt phraseology given Trump’s love for spending time on the golf course.
For months before the election, political analysts and worried members of the public wondered what would happen if Donald Trump refused to concede after losing to Joe Biden. With Trump’s fetish for autocratic power, inability to accept negative consequences, and lack of apparent tether to democratic norms, the prospect of his outright ignoring an election defeat seemed all but certain. No one who’s been watching Trump in horror for the past four years should be surprised by his unhinged obfuscatory tactics.

While it’s true that no modern U.S. presidential candidate has refused to concede, and while American history’s most contentious presidential races have also ended in admissions of defeat, if not an expressed concession outright, and there are no legal consequences should Trump continue to refuse to concede, the transition team President-elect Joseph R. Biden has put in place has already addressed the matter of concession, issuing a statement that reads, in part, “the U.S. government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House, if such becomes necessary.”
John R. Vile, dean of political science at Middle Tennessee State University, who has written about the history of concession speeches, argues that it matters for presidential candidates to concede even if it doesn’t have legal consequences, because words matter.

“Adherence to established electoral norms has helped shore up U.S. democracy even in the midst of its most chaotic and divisive elections,” Vile has written. “When it comes down to it, it’s not the Army or the Navy that keeps the United States together. It’s the notion that we are bound together by certain great principles and that our similarities are more binding than our differences are.”

On Monday, December 14th, the U.S. College of Electors will meet to acknowledge that having won 306 electoral college votes, Joseph R. Biden will become the 46th President of the United States, a fact that will be further amplified by a meeting of the U.S. Congress on Wednesday, January 6th, creating the conditions for the Inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to be sworn into office, and officially become the President and Vice President of the United States.

In an article in Politico, David A. Bell, a professor of history at Princeton University and author, most recently, of Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution argues that whether or not Trump concedes, come January 20, he will be looking for a new job.

“Trump is undoubtedly tempted to remain as much as possible in the public eye, rage-tweeting against the Biden administration,” Bell writes, “and possibly starting up a new cable TV network. But he also has to worry about criminal investigations, and about defaulting on his considerable debt now that he can no longer use the presidency to drive business to his hotels and resort properties.”

Which is to say, Trump’s post-presidency will hardly be a bed of roses.
VanRamblings would argue that unless, as has been rumoured, tough guy New York Governor Andrew Cuomo becomes the next U.S. Attorney General and orders the prosecutors in the southern district of New York state to cease all investigatory work pertaining to Trump, the 24 credible cases of sexual assault that have been lodged against Trump will move forward through the courts, in all probability leading to a conviction on most, if not all, of the allegations — leaving Donald Trump to experience a penury not dissimilar to that of Harvey Weinstein, and a multiple year prison sentence.

And that’s not all. Trump faces incoming fire from three different directions in his native New York, his odds of escaping unscathed long indeed. New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed motions revealing that her office too is on Trump’s trail, arising from a long-standing civil investigation into whether the Trump Organization improperly inflated its assets to get loans and obtain tax benefits, a practice that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen told Congress was routine. The release of Trump’s eight years of unreleased tax records could very well trigger action by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to file criminal charges.
If Trump were to issue himself a pardon, or resign his office in January and have a lame duck Mike Pence as president for 10 days issue a pardon of Trump, such a pardon would preempt federal prosecution, but it would not stand in the way of state-initiated action by James and Vance in New York.

Slate Political Gabest co-hosts David Plotz, Emily Bazelon & John Dickerson weigh in on Trump’s failure to concede, transition planning by the incoming Biden administration, and the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare.

Trump has proved himself a prolific escape artist during his presidency, using delay, subterfuge and political muscle to push back against any number of potentially mortal lies, gaffes and legal threats. But his very success in doing so has inspired many powerful actors in the legal profession to want to hold him, finally, to account after he leaves office.

As VanRamblings writes this, more than 251 million Americans have lost their lives to COVID-19. As is the case in Canada, many American children have lost months of school. Soon, a huge part of America will lose any semblance of Thanksgiving, the most important of American holidays.
Because of the Trump administration’s barbaric family separation policy, 545 children may be lost to their parents forever. America has lost its status as a leading democracy. More people have lost their jobs under Trump than under any president since World War II.
A perpetual state of emergency proved so unhealthy for many Americans, and so unsustainable that a record 78,764,266 Democratic voters made it to the polls, even amidst a pandemic, to reclaim their country and end the tenure of the panic-inducing Trump administration that blocked out the sun and all but eradicated hope in a United States that became near unrecognizable to many citizens of conscience living across our Earth.

But soon, a new day will dawn. Only when Donald Trump has gone will all of us come to see how much we’ve been missing these past four years.
Bill Maher | Farewell to the Douchebags in the Trump Administration

#USElection2020 | New Prez, Congress + Initiatives, And More

November 9, 2020PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. | 2020 | President-elect | United States of America

Final vote count still to come, from Arizona and Georgia, that will take Joe Biden to 306.

On Saturday afternoon, November 7th, 2020, Joseph R. Biden — a former two-term vice president under Barack Obama, and 36-year veteran of the U.S. Senate — became the 46th president of the United States. His running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, will become the first woman, first African American, and first Indian American to serve as vice president.
The transition process — already planned for months, and underway in earnest today — is too important to be left to Trump’s whims. Fortunately, this isn’t the President-elect’s first rodeo. Having been an essential part of the incoming Obama administration team that collaborated with George W. Bush’s administration in 2008, Biden knows how a presidential transition is supposed to work. Unfortunately, the U.S. has never had a departing president like Donald J. Trump, who has yet to accept reality, and concede.

Nonetheless, President-elect Joe Biden signalled on Sunday he plans to move quickly to build out his government, focusing first on the raging pandemic that will likely dominate the early days of his administration, naming former surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy and former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, David Kessler, as co-chairs of a coronavirus working group set to get started; the remaining members of the Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board may be found here.

“People want the country to move forward,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden deputy campaign manager, in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, “and see President-elect Biden & Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris be provided the opportunity to do the work necessary to get the virus under control, and build our economy back to protect the interests of all Americans.”

Joe Biden’s victory has come as a massive relief to many Americans, after four maddening years of a high-octane, anxiety-ridden Trump White House.

For Biden and Harris, their victory marks the end of an unusually low-key, pandemic campaign — but the beginning of a daunting challenge. Biden, who enters the White House as both the chief executive with the most experience in public service in U.S. history and the oldest man to assume the presidency, will take on his duties amid an historic crisis, a pandemic that has already claimed more American lives than World War I, the Korean War, and Vietnam War combined, producing the highest U.S. jobless rates since the brutal, agonizing years of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

VanRamblings will continue to provide coverage of the Biden-Harris transition — and events as they unfold, through the transition period — up until Inauguration Day, on Wednesday, January 20th, 2021.
In this first of many wrap-up columns on the 2020 U.S. election, we’ll leave you with the following peripheral coverage of the Biden-Harris win, and information on the successful and unsuccessful ballot initiatives — but will begin first with coverage of Congress and Senate.

The Democratic Party lost seats in The House on election night, creating tension in the party between centrist Democrats representing conservative districts, and the more progressive congressional representatives from inner city urban districts.

Although Democrats will maintain the majority they won in the blue wave congressional election of 2018 — widely considered to be a repudiation of the policies and the egregious, uncivilized conduct of Donald Trump — the Democrats lost Congressional seats in last week’s U.S. election, as Republican candidates defeated incumbents in conservative-leaning districts in South Carolina, Iowa and New Mexico. Longtime Republicans also held on in Missouri, Michigan and Ohio. The results will mean that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will have the smallest majority in 18 years.
As more centrist members of Congress lashed out at progressive members of Congress, in a post-election interview with the New York Times, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez indicated she might quit politics, depending on the hostility of the Democratic Party towards progressive causes.

“I don’t even know if I want to be in politics,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Times. She said the Democratic party has been hostile to progressive causes, like Medicare for All and the Movement for Black Lives.

“I don’t even know if I want to be in politics. You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I didn’t even know if I was going to run for re-election this year.”

“It’s the incoming. It’s the stress. It’s the violence. It’s the lack of support from your own party. It’s your own party thinking you’re the enemy. When your own colleagues talk anonymously in the press and then turn around and say you’re bad because you actually append your name to your opinion.”

“I chose to run for re-election because I felt like I had to prove that this is real. That this movement was real. That I wasn’t a fluke. That people really want guaranteed health care and that people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them.”

“But I’m serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they’re probably the same.”

The interview occurred Saturday, shortly after major news networks called the election for President-elect Joe Biden, and after some Democrats blamed progressive messaging for party losses down-ticket.

John Briggs of Black Hawk, Colo., drops off his presidential ballot, and his negative response to a Colorado ballot initiative, as he rejected a 22-week abortion ban.

In U.S. politics, the process of initiatives and referendums allow citizens of many U.S. states to place new legislation on a popular ballot, or to place legislation that has recently been passed by a legislature on a ballot for a popular vote, a signature reform of the Progressive Era.

New York Times’ indispensable The Daily, on how Americans are absorbing the election

Initiatives and referendums, along with recall elections and popular primary elections, are signature reforms of the Progressive Era; they are written into several state constitutions, particularly in the West.

Arising from successful ballot initiatives, marijuana is legal in 36 states across the U.S.

Even as Americans grow more divided politically, marjuana continues to gain ground with every election cycle — 5 states legalized weed in 2020, for recreational use, including Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota. The number of states where recreational use is now permitted:15; cannabis (as opposed to THC-free CBD) is still wholly illegal in 14 states. Every other state falls somewhere in-between.

In Florida, a state that voted for Donald Trump 51.2% to Joe Biden’s 47.8%, in a surprising — although, perhaps, not so surprising — development, Floridians approved a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15. The current minimum wage in Florida is $8.56. The minimum wage in Florida will be raised to $15 an hour over the next six years.
In California, the state’s citizens voted on 12 expensive and important ballot propositions …

Proposition 17, which will give people who are on parole for felony convictions the right to vote, passed, and Proposition 20, which would have increased penalties for some kinds of misdemeanors, failed;

Although homelessness and housing instability were dominant issues facing the state even before the pandemic made them worse, voters soundly rejected Proposition 21, which would have expanded cities’ ability to implement rent control.

Initiatives supported by Governor Gavin Newsom and the state’s Democratic Party, Proposition 19 would give Californians 55 or older a big property tax break when buying a new home. To fund that new tax break, it would curtail a separate tax break Californians may receive on homes inherited from parents and grandparents; and Proposition 15, the complicated, seemingly mundane, but ultimately very consequential measure on Californians’ ballots, if it passes would be one of the biggest tax increases in state history, so that alone is a big deal.

Otherwise, Colorado voters struck down Proposition 115, a measure that sought to ban abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy. About 60% of state residents voted against the measure. Meanwhile, in a regressive move, more than 62% of Louisiana voters supported an amendment to the state constitution that would limit abortion protections.

Voters in California sided with companies such as Uber and Lyft to prevent the state from enacting a local labour law that would have forced companies to provide basic benefits — such as health insurance, minimum wage, overtime and reimbursement for expenses — to independent contractors. Fifty-eight percent of voters approved Proposition 22.

Voters in Mississippi approved the design of a new state flag, which will include an image of a magnolia, the state flower, and the phrase “In God We Trust.” The previous state flag featured the Confederate Battle Cross. It was retired in June as protests against racial injustice were held nationwide. A majority of voters opted to keep the flag in 2001.

VanRamblings will be back later in the week with more on the U.S. election: Donald Trump’s refusal to concede; that Democrat battle to win the two Georgia Senate seats now up for grabs; and answers (or not) on whether Melania is leaving the Orange One, how long it may be before Drumpf is behind bars; whether the Trumpster will resign his office in December, with a newly-installed Prez Pence pardoning ‘The Beast’ for all past wrongdoings (‘cept, that won’t protect him from New York state prosecutors); and which country will offer Trump asylum when the judicial hammer comes down.
Don’t you just love politics? No? See you back here later this week.
First, though, we’ll leave you with a story, and the accompanying video:
Last month, Academy award-winner and everyone’s best friend, Jennifer Lawrence — now a proud Democrat — revealed Trump made her reconsider political views, admitting she was formerly “a little Republican” and voted for John McCain in her first election. “I grew up Republican. My first time voting, I voted for John McCain. I was a little Republican,” she said during an appearance on Dear Media’s Absolutely Not podcast. But soon, she “changed her politics” after Donald Trump was elected president.

“This is an impeached president who’s broken many laws and has refused to condemn white supremacy, and it feels like there has been a line drawn in the sand. I don’t think it’s right,” she said. “It just changes things for me. I don’t want to support a president who supports white supremacists.”

Following the Democratic convention in August, Lawrence publicly endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, explaining her reasoning thusly …

“I’m voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris this year because Donald Trump has and will continue to put himself before the safety and well-being of America. He does not represent my values as an American, and most importantly as a human being.”

Here’s Ms. Lawrence outside her home, running through the streets in her pyjamas, screaming and dancing around, celebrating the Biden-Harris win.

#USElection2020 | Elections Are Consequential | Broken America

November 5, 2020PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

As the mail-in and others votes not yet talled is completed and reported out on in Georgia & Nevada, most likely later today — with the likelihood that the vote count in Pennsylvania will not be completed until Friday, November 6th, or later — VanRamblings will update the graphic above, and reflect on the meaning of the changed vote count.

The fivethirtyeight.com video was recorded at 2:42pm Eastern Standard Time. As a new, updated fivethirtyeight.com video appears, VanRamblings will replace the video above.

All elections, including the one that is concluding in the United States, determine the character of the country for the next four years. And they have a lot to say about what the world will feel like too — that’s what it means to be a superpower, which is how many in the U.S. see the country. But this election may determine the flavour of the next four millennia — maybe the next forty, as VanRamblings will express in the words below.
That’s because time is the one thing we’ve just about run out of in the climate fight. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2018 report made it clear that we had until 2030 to make fundamental transformations in our energy system — which they defined as cutting by half the amount of carbon that we pour into the atmosphere.
Just yesterday, on Wednesday, November 4th, the United States officially became the only country in the world refusing to participate in global climate efforts, as Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, an international pact to try to avert dangerous temperature increases that are already leading to more extreme weather and threaten to shrink world food supplies, force millions to flee their homes and deprive many of basic human rights. Trump set the U.S. exit in motion one year ago, but it didn’t automatically take effect until yesterday, November 4th.
Joe Biden would rejoin the accord and push lawmakers to spend big on green infrastructure to reverse the economic downturn from the pandemic.

Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it. https://t.co/L8UJimS6v2

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 5, 2020

The mail-in ballot count goes on in Philadelphia & Pittburgh, Thursday, Nov. 5th, 2020

When all the votes are counted, the presidential election may deliver defeat for Donald Trump. But it did not deliver defeat for Trumpism. Democrats had hoped that four years of turmoil, attacks on norms and institutions and mendacity — plus a pandemic that cost 234,000 lives, so far — would result in a quick, clean and overwhelming repudiation of the 45th president.

That would have been clarifying about the direction of the country, a warning to the Republican party that it must take its 2013 “autopsy” report off the shelf and reinvent itself. But on a miserable Tuesday night for pollsters, and for many of us who are progressives, it did not turn out that way. Trump proved resilient and increased his vote in Florida, Texas and other states. He found even more white working-class voters than last time and chipped away at Democratic support among Latinos. His cult-of-personality campaign rallies were as enthusiastic and rambunctious as ever.

“Sadly, the voters who said in 2016 that they chose Trump because they thought he was “just like them” turned out to be right. Now, by picking him again, those voters are showing that they are just like him: angry, spoiled, racially resentful, aggrieved, and willing to die rather than ever admit that they were wrong.” Tom Nichols, The Atlantic

As it turns out, Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, was no fluke attributable to Vladimir Putin or James Comey. In 2020 his sexism, racism and lie-telling have been legitimized and emboldened. When some Americans protested “This is not who we are”, Trump voters replied: “This is exactly who we are — and we’re not going anywhere.”

Eddie Glaude, Princeton professor, and Democracy in Black author …

In light of this, whether Biden wins or not, we have to acknowledge that our country is broke. 2/

— Eddie S. Glaude Jr. (@esglaude) November 4, 2020

On December 14, 2020, when the College of Electors meet to determine who the next President will be, if Joe Biden emerges as the winner, his achievement — toppling an incumbent who manipulated the levers of government to try to gain an advantage, and made voter suppression a core campaign strategy — shouldn’t be discounted. Whoever takes the oath of office on January 20, 2021 will be tested by an historic set of challenges.
The COVID-19 pandemic will have continued its rampage across America virtually unchecked. The economic fallout from COVID-19 will have continued unabated, without benefit of federal aid. If Joe Biden does take office, he will confront a set of challenges like few Presidents before him.

“There was a substantial political divide in this country before Donald Trump was elected,” says Tom Ridge, former GOP Pennsylvania governor and Homeland Security Secretary, who endorsed Biden. “His presidency has exacerbated that divide to an almost unimaginable degree. But that did not begin with Donald Trump, and it will not end with him, either.”

Whatever the ultimate result, the 2020 U.S. election has exposed the shaky edifice of American democracy. From the antiquated governing institutions that increasingly reward the tyranny of minority rule, to the badly wounded norms surrounding the independent administration of justice, to the flimsy protections of alleged universal suffrage, to America’s underfunded and fractious election infrastructure, the presidency of Donald Trump has laid bare the weaknesses of American democracy, and system of governance.

#USElection2020 | Joe Biden Set to Become 46th U.S. President

November 4, 2020PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Earlier today, Joe Biden flipped the critical Northern state of Wisconsin as several other key battlegrounds remained too close to call. Even before a winner was declared in Wisconsin, the Trump campaign said it would request a recount. Senator Susan Collins of Maine was re-elected, dimming Democratic hopes of winning control of the Senate.
Trump’s Path To Re-election Narrows With Key Victory in Wisconsin

Update, as of 3:30pm. AP declares Michigan for Biden, who is 7 seats away from victory

The lingering uncertainty of the 2020 campaign is perhaps unsurprising in an election with record-breaking turnout where most ballots were cast before Election Day, but many could not be counted until afterward.
Mr. Trump’s chances of winning a second term depended on his ability to carry more of the undecided states, including several battleground Great Lakes states that he won in 2016 where Mr. Biden is now holding leads.

Donna Akers, left, of Grand Prairie, Lucy Cantu of Grand Prairie, center, and her sister Guadalupe Neidigh of Georgetown, Texas, participate in protest organized by Dallas Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression outside Dallas City Hall. The results of the presidential election are not yet complete and they wanted to voice their concerns that every vote be counted. Photograph: Tom Fox/AP

With millions of votes yet to be counted across several key states — there is a reason that news organizations and other usually impatient actors were waiting to declare victors — Mr. Biden has held narrow leads in Arizona, Nevada and Michigan. If Mr. Biden can hold all those states, the former vice president could win the election even without Pennsylvania, which has long been viewed as a must-have battleground state.

“We feel good about where we are,” Mr. Biden told rattled supporters early Wednesday morning. “I’m here to tell you tonight we believe we’re on track to win this election. I’m optimistic about this outcome.”

Michigan now tied and there's every reason to think the remaining votes will be pretty blue. https://t.co/yYGNcrd0AZ

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 4, 2020

As of 3pm, with the vote in the city of Detroit still to be counted, where the urban vote — and, most particularly, the black vote — of Michigan’s largest city is expected to be blue, before the end of the day, Michigan will be placed in Joe Biden’s column, moving him even closer to the 270 College of Electors vote count he’ll need to become the 46th U.S. President.
Update | 7:48pm | Biden Inching Ever Closer to Victory
Paths to victory remain in the U.S. presidential race for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, but Biden has more ways to win and appears to be running stronger state to state, based on the places — cities, mainly — where large absentee votes have yet to be counted.

Biden leads the electoral college vote tally 264 - 214 after he was declared the winner in Michigan and Wisconsin midday Wednesday, and Trump gained one vote in Maine. Adding Alaska for Trump — which had not been called but where the result is not in doubt — gives the president 217.
From there, four states remained to be called as Wednesday evening approached in the U.S.: Nevada — where the final vote tally will be released on Thursday; North Carolina, Georgia — expected to complete a final vote count late on Wednesday night; and Pennsylvania, where the vote tally of mail-in ballots coming in from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh has Joe Biden inching ever closer to declaring victory in the state.
Update | 3:20pm | Biden Flips Michigan

It’s official: the AP has declared Joe Biden to be the winner of Michigan and its 16 electoral votes, flipping another “blue wall” state away from Donald Trump. Biden remains achingly close to a win in Georgia, while Nevada remains up for grabs. Stay tuned for further updates.

Not only will Joe Biden be declared the 46th U.S. President this upcoming Friday — if not sooner — California senator Kamala Harris will become the first woman vice-president of the United States, an historic achievement for a nation riven with division, offering hope not just for Americans, but for all of us, and most particularly our daughters and granddaughters, who will know that the highest and hardest glass ceiling has finally been shattered.

Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden Jr. started election night with many paths to 270 electoral votes, but by Wednesday morning Mr. Trump had won Florida, Ohio and Texas and was within striking distance of winning North Carolina. While the number of winning scenarios for Biden diminished on Tuesday, it was the former vice president, and not the president, who was on offence early Wednesday in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the once-reliable “blue wall” states, thanks to his big pre-election effort to encourage mail-in balloting and early voting. At noon today, Mr. Biden won Wisconsin and was tied in Michigan, with the largely Democratic vote in Detroit yet to be counted, giving him the edge to achieve the 270 College of Electors votes he’ll need to become the 46th U.S. President.

Update | 3:30pm | College of Electors map has changed: Biden = 264 votes, Trump = 214

What follows are the top scenarios remaining for Joe Biden to win the 2020 election. Political strategists predict that Biden will win Nevada, a blue state where he remains narrowly ahead. At this writing, the remaining mail-in ballot vote in Pennsylvania is trending heavily & overwhelmingly for Biden.

Georgia mail-in ballot count continues Wed., Nov. 4. Final results expected by midnight.

One path involves Mr. Biden winning both Arizona and Georgia, Sun Belt states where he appears competitive with tens of thousands of votes left to be counted. Mr. Biden has the edge in Arizona, and a win there would take some pressure off him to rely entirely on the blue-wall states. He can afford to lose Pennsylvania (unlikely) if he wins Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin — he’s already won the latter, and appears on track to win the two others. If Mr. Biden prevails in Georgia and Arizona, he can reach 270 electoral votes — while losing Pennsylvania and either Michigan or Wisconsin, where as we write above, he’s already won, or is guaranteed to emerge as victor.

“Joe Biden’s path is largely unchanged since he entered this race,” Guy Cecil, the chairman of Priorities USA, a leading Democratic super PAC, said ony Wednesday. “There are still at least five competitive states giving him multiple paths to 270. It may take a couple of days to count the votes, and we may need to fight the Trump campaign in court, but Joe Biden remains the favourite.”

Meanwhile, in battleground Georgia, 100,000 votes remain to be counted.

Tomorrow’s VanRamblings’ coverage of #USElection2020 will focus on the Senate, and what a probable Republican Mitch McConnell majority will mean for the incoming Democratic President and Vice-President.
For today, though, we’ll leave you with this bit of heartening news …

The 2018 U.S. election marked the beginning of a progressive movement that has shaken up the U.S. Congress. The outcome resulted in more than 100 women serving in the House of Representatives, an historic number. Throughout this last congressional term, four of the newly-elected women have attracted a great deal of attention: known as The Squad, representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) became the nucleus of a burgeoning progressive electoral movement across the United States.
Readers will be heartened to know that all four progressive Congresswomen were handily re-elected to Congress, and have added to their numbers …

Thank you @BET! Cori Bush Wins House Seat, Becomes First Black Woman To Rep Missouri In Congress https://t.co/16XTg4ikD0

— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) November 4, 2020

Cori Bush. Set to become the first Black woman to represent Missouri’s first district in Congress, Bush — a nurse and Black Lives Matter activist who organized protests after the killing of Mike Brown — disrupted a 50-year family hold on the seat this year after losing her bid for seat in the 2018 Democratic primary.

Marie Newman. In Illinois, the AP and The New York Times projected that Marie Newman will win the third district. Newman beat a conservative, anti-abortion Democrat in her primary earlier this year and defeated Republican Mike Fricilone in the general.

I am beyond honored to be elected as the next representative for #IL03.

We couldn’t have done this without our amazing district-wide coalition. We will continue to build bridges and fight for a just country and economy for working families.

It’s a #NewDayinIL03.

— Marie Newman (@Marie4Congress) November 4, 2020

Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), a former Bronx middle school principal, defeated a 16-term incumbent to win the Democratic primary. The progressive Congressman had a lot of support from young people, with the youth-led Sunrise Movement making 65% of the 1.3 million calls made for Bowman’s campaign. Bowman’s primary victory in July set the stage for Tuesday, which saw the AP and The New York Times project he’d win his race.

Wow. I’m so humbled to be the next Representative of #NY16. Thank you so much.

I’m ready to get to work to disrupt the status quo and deliver for our families.

Hold me accountable. Push me and my colleagues. I’m going to need you in Congress with me. There’s so much work to do. pic.twitter.com/xBEWcwxKSb

— Jamaal Bowman (@JamaalBowmanNY) November 4, 2020

Let us not forget, either, the adjunct members of the U.S. Congress: Deb Haaland (D-NM) became one of the first two Native American women to serve in Congress when she won in 2018; Representative Sharice Davids (D-KS) joined Haaland in becoming one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress. Davids, a member of the Wisconsin-based Ho-Chunk Nation, is also the first openly gay congressperson from her state.

Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) may be best known for her viral exchanges during congressional hearings featuring her whiteboard. More than just shareable videos, her determination convinced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in March to agree to pay for coronavirus testing. Porter dominated California’s “jungle primary” for her seat this year, and the AP and The New York Times projected that she’ll keep her seat; Veronica Escobar (D-TX) who, alongside Sylvia Garcia was one of the first Latinas to represent Texas in the House. She’ll be back in the next Congress, the AP projected Tuesday night, and The New York Times projected early Wednesday morning.
VanRamblings will continue to update today’s post thru midnight tonight.