Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden declared himself the winner in the 2020 contest as votes were still being tallied at a snail's pace in a handful of mostly Democratic Party-controlled states. Legal challenges by the Trump campaign are pressing forward today in the midst of the contentious election.
That's the kind of year 2020 has been. Screwy. Surreal. Tumultuous. Implausible. Hostile.
Democrats and the media cabal branding the president a sore loser have inchworm memories. In the 2000 election, Democrat Al Gore's lawyers were able hold hostage vote certification in Florida for 47 days through legal challenges. Every candidate has a right to demand a fair and full ballot count.
Even vanquished former presidential contender Hillary Clinton warned Democrats in advance of the vote to not concede the election too early. The media in its giddiness over the trends in tabulations anointed Biden the victor despite the fact key states had yet to certify final vote totals.
The media and Democrats were hoping for a clear repudiation of the president. A sweeping landslide that would shame Mr. Trump's supporters, whom the media mocks as Neanderthals. Instead the race was tightly contested in nearly every state, except for the ones that have seemingly outlawed Republicanism.
The latest totals for the popular vote show Biden with a 2.8% edge over the president. Biden captured 50.61% of the ballots cast to 47.73% for Mr. Trump. As the contest inches closer to finality, Biden's vote count stands at 75.2 million to 71 million for the president.
In 15 states, including many battleground states, the victorious candidate's margin was 9% or less. Biden's victory was a narrow escape not a mandate as he and his media allies have contended in their post election euphoria.
In Wisconsin, Biden won by 20,540 votes out of 3.2 million ballots. In Arizona, Biden is currently clinging to a 17,553 vote margin. The Democrat is up 10,196 votes in Georgia out of 4.8 million. Even Nevada, which provided the final electoral votes needed to win, was a 31,464-vote squeaker for Biden.
While vote counting agonizingly proceeds today, it appear pundits will be wrong about the turnout topping 160 million. According to the Associated Press, 146,285,631 million votes have been tallied. Even with more ballots dribbling in, it will be difficult to reach 155 million.
However, one election aspect is already clear. Both Biden and the president eclipsed former president Barrack Obama's record vote total of 69.4 million. Trump managed to pull 8.02 million more votes than he did in 2016, while Biden outperformed Clinton by 9.4 million ballots.
Democrats and Republicans should be embarrassed by the unfathomable delays in vote tabulation. Some states, such as Texas, Florida and California, handled many more ballots than Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada with timely reporting. Why did it take so long in those states and others, such as Georgia?
Democrat apologists blame the influx of mail-in ballots that swamped election officials. That is bogus because virtually every state had more mail-in votes than in-person ballots. In a nation that birthed high tech, it is unconscionable to wait a week until a final vote can be certified. We are not Nigeria.
Three states under the thumb of Democrat governors--Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin--issued orders that thwarted timely reporting of votes. Election officials in those states were not allowed to start tabulating the mail-in ballots until election day or a few hours before.
There were computer glitches in at least two states, Georgia and Michigan. In Michigan, the flaw caused 6,000 votes to be incorrectly given to Biden. After initially blaming the malfunctions on tabulation machines, both states reversed course and attributed the errors to humans. Interesting.
The company that manufacturers the vote tabulating computers is Dominion Voting Systems, which supplied its equipment to 28 states this election. There were no other public reports of mishaps as happened in Michigan. But it fosters conspiracy theories about the fairness of elections.
Even if there was no chicanery involved, the snafu triggered wholesale conjecture about transparency. The mishap fanned conspiracy flames when an enterprising reporter dug up a Washington Post story that said Dominion had donated $25,001 and $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2015.
For the benefit of Democrats shaking their heads, this was verified by liberal fact-checking site Snopes.
There were other oddities. In Wisconsin, nearly every registered voter cast a ballot. The Wisconsin Election Commission reported there were 3,684,726 registered voters. The state tallied 3,296,836 votes in the presidential contest. That's a 90% voter turnout. No other state came close. Hmmmm.
This election also signaled a shift in voting patterns that will likely become the new normal. More voters cast their ballots before election day than in any previous presidential election. By the last count, there were 101 ballots cast in early voting, more than double the number in 2016.
Mail-in voting drew both proponents and critics for increasing turnout. Eight states sent ballots to every registered voter on its rolls. The states were California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, South Dakota and Vermont. Most other states required voters to request a mail-in ballot.
For all the Democrat crowing, the party performed abysmally in state legislatives races in the Sun Belt and Rust Belt, handing Republicans an advantage ahead of redistricting after the Census determines the number of Congressional seats in each state. The defeat came despite Democrats' record fund raising.
The Democrats failed to flip a single statehouse chamber in its favor, including in the key states of Texas, North Carolina and Florida. The GOP appears poised to bolster its number of seats in the House of Representatives and has the prospect of holding the Senate, depending on two Georgia runoffs.
The biggest losers in the 2020 election, however, were the pollsters. Most polling is now designed to suppress an opponent's turnout, inflate candidate spending or deliberately mislead the public. How else can you explain pollsters continuing failure to accurately predict outcomes and margins?
For example, the Real Clear Politics lists of polling results from various research firms showed that Biden would win by a margin of 11-to-7 percent. One pollster had Biden with a 12% blowout. Polling organizations also predicted toss-up races for incumbent Senators Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins.
Both candidates won by comfortable margins, but the polling data incentivized Democrats to pour nearly $200 million into the two races in an effort to flip the Senate seats. This happens too often to be coincidental. Polling data can no longer be trusted to be accurate or authentically researched.
In the absence of demographic voting data, it is too early to critically analyze why Biden won. However, certainly the president's handling of the pandemic was clearly on the minds of voters. Even those who ranked the economy their top issue were worried rising virus cases would trigger shutdowns.
That said, it cannot be disputed that visceral hatred of President Trump, not Biden's appeal, was a deciding factor. Whether Democrats will admit it, they conspired with the media and social platforms to viciously attack Mr. Trump for four years. No president has endured such orchestrated loathing.
A campaign based on searing hatred recalls the ugliness that led to Hitler's rise in Germany. Disagreements on policies, style and personalities are natural, but it undermines democracy when bitter acrimony decides elections. In this corrosive atmosphere, Biden has issued a plea for unity.
Americans want unity and an end to the Washington belligerence. However, name a Democrat who called for cooperation instead of resistance during the past four years? Still waiting. That renders Biden's words hollow, political claptrap.
Let's pray that no matter our political choices Americans can still civilly discuss our differences. We don't banish friends or family members who disagree with us. We don't call dissenting voters miscreants for not seeing the world as we do. Until there is mutual respect, the nation will remain hopelessly alienated.
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