Tag: Joe Biden

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Election Update: November 6, 2020

L-R Donald Trump, Joe Biden (screen capture, campaign photo)
As of 10 am today, this is the state of play in the race for the presidency via the New York Times:

Mr. Biden, who was winning the popular vote by more than four million votes and has already won 253 electoral votes, pulled ahead of Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania by about 12,000 votes on Friday afternoon. If his lead holds — and it is expected to — the state’s 20 electoral votes would vault him past the threshold to win the election.

In Georgia, his lead was so narrow that state officials said a recount was inevitable.

In Arizona, Mr. Biden maintained his lead as election officials continued to plow through tens of thousands of ballots from Phoenix and its sprawling suburbs. His advantage shrank slightly, but not by as much as Republicans had hoped.

In Nevada, Mr. Biden nearly doubled his lead Friday to around 20,000 votes.

Mr. Biden had already begun to project the image of a man preparing to assume the mantle of office on Thursday, meeting with his economic and health advisers to be briefed on the coronavirus pandemic. He also urged the public on Thursday to show a “little patience” as the vote-counting in battleground states continued.

Note – one media outlet, Business Insider (working with Decision Desk HQ) has called the race for Joe Biden.

(graphic via NY Times)
(graphic via NY Times)

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Greetings From Nevada: Biden Expands His Lead Over Trump

New numbers were finally reported today from the presidential race in battleground state Nevada showing former Vice President Joe Biden expanding his lead over Donald Trump. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

In the latest results released by the Secretary of State’s office at 9 a.m. Thursday, Biden built on the 7,600-vote lead he held when counting stopped on Election Night, a 0.6 percentage point advantage over Trump in a race with more than 1.2 million votes cast. Biden now leads Trump by 597,353 votes, 49.50 percent, to Trump’s 585,311 votes, 48.50 percent.

Nevada will continue to count ballots and update at least once daily.

Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, in a statement released late Wednesday, said that the remaining ballots were mail-in ballots received on or after Election Day and ballots from voters who registered at the polls on Election Day, as permitted by state law.

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A Tale Of Two Candidates (In Two Tweets)

L-R President Donald Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden
A tale of two candidates… As Joe Biden called for unity and declaring the office of the presidency “demands a duty of care for all Americans,” Donald Trump was retweeting his demands that states “STOP THE COUNT!”

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News Round-Up: October 26, 2020

Sexy man wearing t-shirt which reads "Say hey if you're gay"

Sexy man wearing t-shirt which reads "Say hey if you're gay" Some news items you might have missed: • Monday Mancrush: Throwing back to the hottie above from this past summer. It turned out he’s a model used by the t-shirt company, but I still like looking 🙂 • Pink News: Despite warnings of a homophobic boycott, Strictly Come Dancing scored its best ratings for a first live show in years this weekend as millions tuned in to see Nicola Adams and her partner Katya Jones make history by becoming the first competitive same-sex couple to take to the Strictly ballroom floor. • Boy Culture: From this weekend’s all-star streaming concert, I Will Vote, Academy Award-winner Cher chirped this lovely rendition of “Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe,” with some specialty lyrics to honor Joe Biden. From the 1943 classic movie, Cabin in the Sky, the Yip Harburg/Harold Arlen tune was nominated for Best Original Song at that year’s Oscars.

• People: Felicity Huffman has completed her full sentence, which included 11 days of jail time, 250 hours of community service, and supervised release for one year. In May, Huffman pleaded guilty to paying disgraced admissions consultant Rick Singer $15,000 to have a proctor change her daughter Sophia’s answers after she took the SAT test. • CBS News: Soldiers and police in Mexico seized an industrial-scale meth and fentanyl lab that was so big it startled investigators. The lab had chemical preparation vats about two stories tall that could process 11,000 pounds of raw material at a time, said Felipe de Jesus Gallo of the federal Attorney General’s Office. • Bear World Magazine: In 2005, I had the absolute pleasure of performing in the Reprise Series’ revival of the musical Applause with the oh-so-talented and woofy Kevin Chamberlin. Fast forward to today, and the 3-time Tony Award nominee is about to appear in the Netflix screen adaptation of the Broadway musical, The Prom, with Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman and Andrew Rannells.

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Joe Biden: ‘Compare Our Physical/Mental Acuity – I’m Happy To Have That Comparison’

While Donald Trump mangles the English language out at his ego-stroke rallies, Joe Biden is clearly sharp as a tack in this clip from 60 Minutes. Biden: “The same guy who thought the 9/11 attack was a 7/11 attack – he’s talking about dementia? Watch me – see what I’ve done, see what I’m going to do, look at me. Compare our physical and mental acuity – I’m happy to have that comparison.” Stop watching Fox News, stop listening to Rush Limbaugh (who has his own serious health issues), and just watch.

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Polls: Biden Won Final Debate By Double-Digits

Donald Trump and Joe Biden (screen capture)
NowThis News serves up the “Top Moments” from the final presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle:

From Donald Trump comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln to Joe Biden blasting the president’s COVID-19 response, here are some of the biggest moments of the final 2020 presidential debate.

The last presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was a lot less chaotic than the first.

Still, there were some big standout moments throughout the night, such as Donald Trump saying he was the ‘least racist person’ in the room and Joe Biden talking about the government’s coronavirus response.

Three quick real-time polls all showed most folks felt Joe Biden, as with the first presidential debate, came out on top. From the NY Times: This time, the instant polls had a consistent and clear story: Mr. Biden won the debate by a double-digit margin. If the results in the chart look familiar, that’s because they’re reminiscent of many national survey results we’ve seen over the last month. You could interpret that to mean that the debate was more or less a draw on the merits, with most Biden supporters concluding that Mr. Biden won, and vice versa for the Trump supporters. Indeed, the CNN/SSRS poll didn’t find that either candidate improved his favorability rating compared with interviews conducted before the debate.

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A Photo Between Father & Son Struck Some As ‘Awkward?’

Hunter Biden with his dad, Joe Biden
Part of what’s wrong with some folks today…I just see a father who loves his son. My dad had no problem telling me he loved me. But apparently, some on Twitter think this is ‘awkward.’ The photo was from an interview feature for Popular Mechanics in 2016 between former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter after the death of the vice president’s other son, Beau, to cancer. Tom Nichols at USA Today gets it right:

It is, in its way, an awkward image. The son looking into the camera, his face calm but haunted. The father’s face is partly hidden, as he embraces his son and puts a kiss on his cheek.

The son is young and strong, and his arms are sturdy as they gently rest around his father. But the father, while old, is even stronger. One arm is in front of his child, the other around the son’s shoulder, as if to hold on to him and to protect him at the same time.

It is a picture of Joe and Hunter Biden, but it would be moving enough were it of any father and son. Even strangers to these men would know what it means. All of us, after all, were once children. (The picture is really a portrait of the son, not the father.)

In this case, to know the circumstances in which it was taken is to know that it is a picture full of pain, love, forgiveness and acceptance, and to look at it for even more than a moment is to experience at least some of those emotions, especially in the memory of our own parents or children.

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Campaign Spot: Let’s Agree We All Love This Country And ‘Go From There’

A new campaign ad for Joe Biden premiered on Tuesday during the first game of the Major League Baseball World Series featuring a voiceover from iconic film actor, Sam Elliott. Titled “Go From There,” the voiceover plays out over a simple piano accompaniment of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The message of the spot: “There is only one America.” “No Democratic rivers, no Republican mountains, just this great land and all that’s possible on it with a fresh start. Cures we can find, futures we can shape, work to reward, dignity to protect.” “There’s so much we can do if we choose to take on problems and not each other.” “Joe Biden doesn’t need everyone in this country to always agree, just to agree we all love this country — and go from there.”

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USA Today Makes First-Ever Presidential Endorsement ‘Elect Joe Biden’

Former Vice President Joe Biden
For the first time since its founding in 1982, the editorial board for USA Today has endorsed a presidential candidate – Joe Biden. An excerpt:

If this were a choice between two capable major party nominees who happened to have opposing ideas, we wouldn’t choose sides. Different voters have different concerns.

But this is not a normal election, and these are not normal times. This year, character, competence and credibility are on the ballot. Given Trump’s refusal to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power if he loses, so, too, is the future of America’s democracy.

For nearly four decades, the Editorial Board has stood for certain core values: truth, accountability, civility in public discourse, opposition to racism, common-ground solutions to the nation’s problems, and steadfast support for First Amendment rights. These aren’t partisan issues, or at least they shouldn’t be.

Donald Trump has trampled each of these principles, making more than 20,000 false or misleading statements, ducking responsibility for his actions, spewing streams of invective at his critics, trafficking in racial fearmongering, governing more as the leader of the red states than of the United States, and relentlessly attacking the free press.

Everything about Biden’s nearly half-century political career suggests he would do a far better job of respecting these values.

Mentioning Biden’s role in the last economic recovery, the editorial board notes that Trump “did no better than the Obama-Biden administration on job creation, the stock market and economic growth.” Also referenced is the national debt which is now $27 trillion, up more than $7 trillion from four years ago. The op-ed closes with this statement: “We may never endorse a presidential nominee again. In fact, we hope we’ll never have to.”

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Biden Campaign: Do Not Rely On Polls, Do Not Become ‘Complacent’ #VOTE

Former Vice President Joe Biden (via Instagram)
The Biden campaign is asking supporters to not let current polling results lull them into a false sense of security that the race is over. From the Washington Post:

In a memo obtained by The Washington Post, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon urged supporters to “campaign like we’re trailing” heading into the final weeks of the election.

“We cannot become complacent because the very searing truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race, and every indication we have shows that this thing is going to come down to the wire,” Dillon wrote.

Dillon encouraged supporters to use 2016 as a reminder that polling can be wrong and that it all comes down to who can secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. While Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, reflecting national polls, Trump won an electoral college victory by winning several Midwestern states that previously had gone to the Democrats. In key battleground states, Dillon wrote, the “race is far closer than some of the punditry we’re seeing on Twitter and on TV would suggest.”