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.
