https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw8g1reI1Xs&ab_channel=TheHumanistReport
Friday, November 6, 2020
JOE BIDEN WINS - KYLE’S LIVE REACTION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPuavuTQav4&ab_channel=SecularTalk
US votes by income level
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/06/pers-n06.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
Goodbye and good riddance to the orange narcissist
https://results.decisiondeskhq.com/
(270 electoral votes needed to win)
Biden now has 273 electoral votes, 73,663,922 popular votes (50%)
Trump now has 214 electoral votes, 69,811,810 popular votes (48%)
Goodbye orange narcissist
A Hallmark of the Trump Campaign’s Final Days: News Conferences Without Questions
The president took no questions from reporters because his bogus claims of mass vote fraud evaporate under scrutiny.
Robert Mackey
November 6 2020, 4:30 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2020/11/06/hallmark-trump-campaigns-final-days-news-conferences-without-questions/
THE ACTING PRESIDENT, Donald Trump, called reporters into the White House briefing room on Thursday to listen as he whined and spread lies about the counting of votes in the election he is on track to lose to former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump claimed that his likely defeat in the electoral college was part of a plot by elected officials in Detroit and Philadelphia — choosing to mention two cities with large Black populations — who were, he said, conspiring to defeat him by counting what he called “illegal votes” for his rival.
Then, having lied non-stop for 17 minutes, Trump concluded with the words, “there’s been a lot of shenanigans and we can’t stand for that in our country,” thanked the assembled press for their attention and left the room without taking a single question.
Before the president had even completed his dishonest presentation, the three broadcast networks not owned by Rupert Murdoch had all cut away to explain to viewers that there was absolutely no evidence for Trump’s racist conspiracy theory or his claims of mass election fraud.
Even Fox News, which carried the president’s complete remarks without interruption, had anchor Martha MacCallum point out immediately after he finished that Trump had not yet produced any actual evidence of fraud.
MacCallum’s co-host, Bret Baier, stuck to summarizing the president’s unhinged accusations as if they were routine, although he did later retweet the instant debunking of the president carried out by ABC News.
The White House event was at least the third time in two days that the Trump campaign had staged a news conference to present unsubstantiated claims of fraud at which reporters were not permitted to ask questions.
At the end of a Trump campaign “press conference” in Philadelphia on Wednesday, one reporter tried to question the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who had lied that Republican observers were being kept out of counting rooms by “the crooks that run the Democrat Party.” However Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, stepped in and immediately cut him off, saying, “No questions, right now, thank you guys.”
On Thursday evening, a Fox News correspondent in Philadelphia, Eric Shawn, debunked Giuliani’s claim — which was also the basis for a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign — by reporting that Republican poll watchers were indeed inside the counting room and had even provided him with photographic evidence.
Shawn’s intervention on the side of reality was one of several times this week that the ultraconservative network’s reporters and election analysts have undercut wild claims by the president and his campaign with actual facts. Every night, however, the shouting heads who anchor Fox’s primetime opinion shows take over the airwaves and amplify many of the same false claims.
On Thursday night, hours after the president endorsed Giuliani’s irresponsible complaint that the vote count in Philadelphia was “totally illegitimate,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that police might have foiled a plot to attack the city’s main election site.
Officers had received a tip that three people armed with AR-15 rifles had traveled to the city in a Hummer with Virginia license plates and planned to attack the vote center, the paper reported. The police then discovered a truck matching that description, emblazoned with decals associated with the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy movement, parked near the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where ballot counting was underway, and detained two men and were searching for a third suspect.
At another Trump campaign press event in Las Vegas on Thursday, Ric Grenell, a veteran Republican operative who served as Trump’s acting director of national intelligence earlier this year and U.S. ambassador to Germany before that, railed against supposed fraud and then made way for Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union. When reporters asked Schlapp to say his name, Grenell scolded them. “Listen, you’re here to take in information, okay?” he said. “Do your job, it’s pretty easy.”
When Grenell then asked Jill Stokke, a woman who claimed that someone had stolen her absentee ballot, signed it and voted in her place, to step forward, he reiterated, “we won’t take any questions.”
A reporter later asked the Clark County registrar of voters, Joe Gloria, about the woman’s claim at an actual news conference. “I personally dealt with Ms. Stokke,” Gloria said. “She brought her claim to me. We reviewed her ballot, and in our opinion, it is her signature,” he added. “We also gave her an opportunity to provide a statement, if she wanted to object to that, and provide a challenge to that. She refused to do so.”
Gloria also said that an investigator from the office of Nevada’s Republican secretary of state, Barbara Cegavske, had already interviewed Stokke, “and they had no issue with the assistance we tried to give her.”
Grenell’s unwillingness to provide any evidence for the claims of fraud in Nevada, a state where Biden has a small but growing lead, infuriated a Fox News reporter on the scene, Jonathan Hunt. “If somebody is making claims that will affect the democratic process of the presidential election, then we also are going to ask those people to provide evidence for those claims rather than just throwing theories out there,” Hunt said in a live report from Las Vegas on Thursday. “The Trump campaign declined, specifically, to give us any of that evidence today.”
In what seemed like a sign that Fox is preparing its viewers for a Biden presidency, Neil Cavuto, the anchor Hunt reported back to in New York, agreed. “You have to prove what you’re saying, you have to have evidence of what you’re saying,” Cavuto said.
On Thursday afternoon, Grenell admitted to Lou Dobbs that the Trump campaign had delayed filing a lawsuit that cited Stokke’s story — as well as the claim that over 3,000 people who had moved out of state had voted illegally in Nevada — because he thought it was more important for him to go on Fox and describe the fraud claim to the network’s viewers.
The lawsuit was filed late Thursday, but Grenell choosing to go on Fox before appealing to a judge suggested to some observers that he might not have compelling evidence to back his claims. “Usually if you’ve got good claims, you go straight into court,” Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney told MSNBC. “You don’t,” she added, “roam around announcing claims that can’t be backed up.”
The Trump campaign also claimed in a letter sent to Attorney General Bill Barr Thursday night that 3,062 Nevada voters who had filed change-of-address forms before election day, suggesting that they had moved out of state, should be prosecuted.
That the Trump campaign prioritized Grenell’s appearance on Fox over immediately filing the lawsuit (as Grenell admitted to Dobbs they had) suggests that they are seeking ways to air the allegations, and sow doubt about the results of the election, without facing real scrutiny of whatever evidence they actually have.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, lambasted the president and his campaign for this on Thursday. “We want every vote counted, yes every legal vote (of course),” Kinzinger wrote on Twitter in response to Trump’s White House statement. “But, if you have legit concerns about fraud present EVIDENCE and take it to court. STOP Spreading debunked misinformation… This is getting insane.”
Joe Biden has won. Here’s what comes next.
[THIS ARTICLE IS LIBERAL BULLSHIT: THE HEADLINE IS THE IMPORTANT PART. NOW PROGRESSIVES MUST FORCE BIDEN TO THE LEFT.]
Biden will have to overcome a surging pandemic, an economic crisis, and a hostile Republican Party.
By Dylan Matthewsdylan@vox.com Nov 6, 2020, 8:53am EST
https://www.vox.com/2020/11/6/21534594/joe-biden-wins-2020-presidential-election
Joe Biden — a former two-term vice president under Barack Obama and 36-year Senate veteran — will be 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 Democratic nominee is the projected winner in enough states to win 270 electoral votes. The state of Pennsylvania, which Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, was called for Biden just before 9 am ET on November 6, clinching the electoral win in a tightly contested vote that drew historic turnout.
The victory comes as a massive relief to Biden’s supporters after an anxiety-ridden few days during which a record amount of mail-in ballots were tallied. It also serves as a promise — though certainly not a guarantee — that the high-octane drama of the Trump years might finally be coming to an end.
Trump, for his part, has signaled he may not go quietly, calling into question the legitimacy of the late-counted votes that arrived by mail in the states that clinched it for Biden.
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Kamala Harris makes history as the first woman to become vice president
For Biden and Harris, the victory marks the end of the campaign — but the beginning of an even more daunting challenge. Biden, who enters the White House as both the chief executive with the most experience in public service in US history and the oldest man to assume the presidency, will assume his duties amid a historic crisis, a pandemic that has already claimed more American lives than World War I, Korea, and Vietnam combined and has produced the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression.And Biden and Harris may have to take power with a Republican Senate. As of this writing, the small chance of a Democratic Senate hinges on runoff elections in Georgia in January and uncalled races in North Carolina and Alaska. A slight majority for Republicans is very likely. A Democratic failure to take the upper house — even if they hang on to the House of Representatives as expected — could effectively end Biden’s agenda before it has a chance to take form.
Biden won the presidency by partially rebuilding the so-called “blue wall” for Democrats — the industrial Midwestern states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. He also planted a Democratic flag in the Sunbelt, with Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina all still in play (Biden leads in the first two and is behind in the third). As of this writing, he has amassed 73.7 million votes to Trump’s 69.6 million — a spread of 50.5 percent to 47.7 percent — and can lay claim to the record for most votes in US history.
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As the scale of the pandemic and its economic damage started becoming clear earlier this year, the Biden campaign signaled that the candidate wanted an “FDR-sized” administration. He touted a plan to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic by expanding testing, fostering better coordination between states, and organizing rapid development and deployment of a vaccine. He put forward a program to fight the economic crisis created by Covid-19, including funding for states and localities, cash and unemployment insurance for individuals and households, and grants and loans to small businesses like bars and restaurants.
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All that seems fairly doable under unified Democratic control — but much, much harder if McConnell keeps the Senate. In 2009, McConnell decided that a posture of absolute obstruction, meant to block any and all Obama legislation meant to rescue or reform the economy, was the best approach for Senate Republicans. At that time, his Republicans were in the minority, so total obstruction was harder. This time, he may have a Senate majority — and he is likely to take that posture again.
Without the Senate, Biden’s ability to enact his agenda will be severely constrained, even if there are executive actions he can take to move the ball on a few fronts. He will have a little more latitude in foreign affairs, where he’ll seek to undo Trump’s reversal of the Obama-Biden foreign policy by re-engaging with Cuba and Iran, negotiating a new arms control deal with Russia, and addressing the threat North Korea poses to South Korea and Japan.
Biden will also have to decide how to handle the legacy of his predecessor: whether to let bygones be bygones, as was the Obama-Biden attitude toward George W. Bush, or to seek to prosecute, or at least investigate wrongdoing from the Trump years under a new attorney general.All these questions will have to wait until we know the outcome in the Senate. For now, at least, Democrats can celebrate winning the presidency.
Trump’s defeat comes as an enormous relief to the majority who voted against Trump four years ago, to those harmed by his policies from forced family separation to the botched Covid-19 response, and to the many who worried Trump harbored dangerous autocratic tendencies. To the Americans who elected Biden, it feels like the ending of a dark chapter in our nation’s history, and potentially the beginning of a moment of great opportunity.
But for that opportunity to be fulfilled, Biden and Harris will need to work fast — and we won’t know if they’ll be able to do that until we know the results in the Senate.
The Biden-Harris agenda
At stake is an agenda that rivals any previous Democratic president’s program.
Biden’s plan to respond to the Covid-19 disaster is called “Build Back Better.” It doesn’t have quite the same ring as “New Deal” or “Great Society,” but it captures what Biden is aiming to do: rebuild from the wreckage left by the Trump administration’s failure to contain the virus and willingness to let it spread to 9 million cases and over 230,000 deaths.
That failure has led to the highest unemployment since the Great Depression (14.7 percent in April; and 7.9 percent in September) and surging poverty. Meanwhile, as the pandemic raged, the Trump administration responded to protests for racial equality in about the worst and most divisive way imaginable.
That’s the baseline, and the Biden-Harris team has committed to massive spending programs, both on Covid-19 and other challenges from climate to caregiving, to rebuild from it.
To tackle Covid-19, Biden has promised nationwide testing, a 100,000-person Public Health Jobs Corps, hazard pay for essential workers, massive vaccine stockpiles produced ahead of approval for the speediest deployment, and much more.
On the economy, Biden is proposing a bevy of plans that collectively amount to the most ambitious agenda for a Democratic candidate in decades. The plans are oriented in particular around rebuilding (green) manufacturing in the US, building on the safety net expansions made by Obama, and dramatically expanding access to child, disabled, and elder care services.
His economic recovery plan to address the Covid-19 downturn would pay health insurance costs for newly unemployed people, offer middle-class parents and caretakers $8,000 a year for child or long-term care support, spend $700 billion on manufacturing and R&D to expand jobs in those sectors, and make it easier to organize unions.His climate plan features $2 trillion in investments in clean energy and a clean electricity standard mandating that electricity production in the US not produce any carbon by the year 2035.
But even if Democrats end up taking the Senate, the path ahead for the Biden-Harris agenda remains tricky. A GOP in the Senate minority led by Mitch McConnell would likely repeat McConnell’s 2009-2011 strategy of attempting to block every one of the new Democratic administration’s initiatives. That strategy meant the Obama-Biden administration and its allies in Congress were forced to compromise on elements of financial reform, abandon a public option for health care, and dramatically shrink a major stimulus package, prolonging the Great Recession as a consequence.
To prevent repeating that fate, Biden and a hypothetical Democratic Senate majority would have to abolish the filibuster, as former President Obama and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have strongly urged. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has been very clear that abolishing the filibuster is “on the table” in the new Congress.
Biden will also have to deal with a hostile Supreme Court, especially now that Amy Coney Barrett has been confirmed to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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Things look even worse for Biden if Republicans keep the Senate. Much of his agenda is likely to be dead on arrival. In that case, Biden will have to decide how to use what little leverage he has, like the ability to force a government shutdown, to pressure McConnell, and he will have to decide which issues he will use that pressure to push.
Biden will also lean on his reputation as a moderate, bipartisan dealmaker to get things out of Congress. When I spoke to Biden economic adviser Benjamin Harris, he explained that Biden plans to leverage his relationships in the Senate to pass his agenda with bipartisan support.
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What Biden can do to fix Trump’s Covid-19 mess
“I’ve spent a lot of time in the vice president’s office when he was vice president. I sat there when he called Democratic members, and I sat there when he called Republican members,” Harris recalled. “That’s what happens when you spend so many decades in the Senate is you build these friendships and you build these relationships and you build this credibility.”
In that scenario, McConnell will also have to decide just how obstructionist his Senate GOP caucus can be without incurring public blame for inaction. Given the narrow margin, and the fact that 21 Republican seats and only 13 Democratic ones are up for election in 2022, Senate Republicans will also need to put together a defensible record of governance if they hold the body.
Bringing the curtain down on the Trump presidency
Joe Biden has won the presidency, but it’s far from clear if he will be able to form a government, in the sense of commanding enough legislative votes to regularly pass budgets and other essential legislation. He will likely also face Senate obstruction with his picks for key Cabinet positions necessary to run the government effectively.
This is an unusual situation in most rich countries, which typically use a parliamentary system where a failure to assemble a governing coalition triggers new elections. In America, however, over the past 30 years, the same party has controlled the House, Senate, and presidency only one-third of the time. This dysfunctional system gets defended as Americans wisely preferring divided government (only a small minority of Americans actually do).But our system has tremendous costs. It brought the US to the brink of default in 2011, because neither Obama nor House Republicans had the capacity to simply enact their agendas. While the parties were able, remarkably, to come together and pass a massive stimulus in March, they’ve failed to renew it since August, at immense human cost. Both parties have plans, but a divided government has meant none of them get passed. If Biden and McConnell are forced to negotiate the next stimulus package, a similar stalemate might ensue.
But that’s all still ahead of us. For now, Americans can mark the end of a vicious and interminable campaign — and a presidency that a majority of the country has rejected.
The last four years have been consequential for the lives of Americans, from policy changes in the normal range of Republican presidencies (like Trump moving the Supreme Court markedly rightward and curtailing environmental and public safety regulations) to ones well outside it (like Trump’s enormous crackdown on legal immigration and his failed pandemic response).
The public has also endured truly unprecedented levels of executive branch corruption and arguably criminality, not to mention a historic presidential impeachment.
Biden’s victory is America’s first step away from those changes and the crew who made them. But it’s only a first step. It won’t instantly clean up the wreckage of the Trump administration, let alone the problems that enabled Trump to win and thrive in the first place. And the scale of his achievement will depend entirely on the Senate outcome in a handful of states.
Biden and Harris supporters are entitled to celebrate. Americans traumatized by the Trump presidency can breathe a sigh of relief. Then it’s time for them, and the new president, to get to work.
Joe Biden WINS 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION after taking lead in Pennsylvania; TRUMP DEFEATED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da_SnADgZ5k&ab_channel=ChristoAivalis
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