The Morning After: Day Three

A few random thoughts from bleary eyes after three days of intense, almost all-day election watching.

                                                                             *

Last night, I came across a wonderful comment.  It comes from a tweet which I now officially dearly love.  The person wrote  –

“My friend’s 3 year old daughter asked her mom when she will stop watching the ‘map show’.”

                                                                              *

I believe that many Republicans have gone quite insane.  This is not about just the general public base, which seems to be protesting things they're not quite sure what they're protesting or why.  "Are we for stopping the counting or for it or for it in just some states, but against it in others or what??"  They only seem to know that they think the election is being stolen from Trump without having or offering any actual evidence.  But it's also about high-level Republican figures, like Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson (who both had on-air meltdowns), Steve Bannon (who was so sick that he got himself kicked off Twitter), Lindsey Graham (who made a proposal about replacing Pennsylvania electors that is against federal and state law), and Newt Gingrich (who suggested having state electors arrested and replaced -- clarify for many who he was once censured by the House for ethics violations) and more.  And I'm not even referencing Trump himself, since "going quite insane" has long-since been well-established.

                                                                                *

While I understand it was a risky, controversial decision for MSNBC to cut away from Trump's press conference, I think it was a great idea.  This wasn't a presidential speech.  There is no obligation to cover a candidate's political statement.  And there most especially is no requirement that when a politician or anyone makes a statement whic is blatantly a lie and potentially harmful to the country's well-being, that it must be covered.  MSNBC did report on it, they discussed what he said afterwards, and had footage of it, some of which they showed.  The election is over, so this didn't impact voting.  It was just an editorial decision (which is every news organization's right, something they do on every story) not to cover something live which was untrue and harmful.

                                                                                *

As I watch the Pennsylvania ​mail-in votes pour in and not only turn around what once was a big Trump lead but may be the state that officially wins the election for Joe Biden, one thought keeps cropping up.  Back during the days before the Pennsylvania primary, I recall Republican officials freaking out that Trump was so-heavily slamming mail-in voting.  Their concern was that they were seeing many of their constituents ignoring mail-in voting, which they saw as critical, while Democratic voters were embracing it.  Republican officials in the state were so concerned that they began buying ads to tell their voters that mail-in voting was really okay.  And not only did the message get through, but Pennsylvania state legislature pushed to allow counties to count their mail-in votes last, after in-person ballots cast on Election Day were counted, all in an deceptive PR effort to push Trump's total in the state appear to be stronger than it actually was.  So, if Republicans and Trump especially are going crazy because of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania, they quite literally only have themselves to blame.

                                                                               *

I love watching all the election coverage, even though it is exhausting.  Watching Election Night coverage in any election is, to me, almost like a religious experience.  I've mainly watched MSNBC, because I think Steve Kornacki is wonderful, and I generally like the hosts and analysts they have on.  I have a bunch of complaints, as is only natural, but overall they've done a very respectable job.  My only big complaint is that they almost totally are focusing on the presidential race which, while that’s understandable, the reality is that they have literally 24 hours a day to talk about this, and the results are now coming in SO slow that you’d think they could spend at least a little bit more of time on Senate and House races.

For instance, I came across something last night that I didn’t realize until I read a tweet that the candidate himself posted on Twitter.  It was from the Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska, a good guy named Dr. Al Gross.  A bit of quick background:  on Election Night, I saw he was far behind, and when I didn’t hear that Alaska flipped its senator, I put that race behind me and forgot about it.  That's the background.  It turns out, from his tweet last night, that although he’s still far behind in the race, 61-31%...only 50% of the vote has been counted and most of what’s left is mail-in ballots, which as we’ve seen has heavily favored Democrats.  Dr. Gross says that he belives he can come back from the deficit -- though I don't know if that realistic, or a candidate's wishful thinking talking. But Alaska has a small population, there is a massive number to make up.  The larger point why I bring this is ps that this is the kind of story that has been totally ignored by the TV coverage, and they have plenty of time to report on it and other such races..