Attention to the Unseen

Fred Kaplan writes: The election has left many Democrats in a turbid pool of dread, a daze of disappointment, a gnawing ache of incompletion. Yes, Joe Biden won the presidency, but the Republicans are likely to retain control of the Senate, and that means … hey, now, wait a minute, the complainers are burying the lede! Let’s put it up top: Joe Biden is going to be president. Before tallying the grim implications of the Senate contests, focus for a…

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Bill McKibben writes: Joe Biden has reached two hundred and seventy votes in the Electoral College, and getting him there was hard as hell—harder than anyone who’d been reading the polls or, for that matter, just reading the tweets of the debased incumbent had expected. It barely happened: Wisconsin, where one poll had Biden up seventeen points, was decided by 20,534 votes—a scant half a per cent. Had just a few of other similar close calls broken in the other…

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Edward-Isaac Dovere writes: For half a century, across three presidential runs he made and three more he thought about making, Joe Biden had never won a single primary delegate before his South Carolina romp in February catapulted him to the Democratic nomination. But his strategy never changed. Biden won the White House the same way he won his first race, for New Castle County council in 1970: by being himself. He won while giving the same speeches, and telling literally…

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Zeynep Tufekci writes: Now that Joe Biden has won the presidency, we can expect debates over whether Donald Trump was an aberration (“not who we are!”) or another instantiation of America’s pathologies and sins. One can reasonably make a case for his deep-rootedness in American traditions, while also noticing the anomalies: the early-morning tweeting, the fondness for mixing personal and government business, the obsession with ratings befitting a reality-TV star—the one job he was good at. From an international perspective,…

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Yascha Mounk writes: As president, Donald Trump has caused needless suffering on a staggering scale and subjected the country’s democratic institutions to their most serious test in more than a century. They survived that test. Joe Biden has narrowly defeated Trump, putting an end to the nightmare of the past four years. A competent and humane administration is now preparing to enter the White House. Although the nation’s deep problems won’t vanish, the 46th president of the United States will…

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Deutsche Welle reports: An international election observer mission to the US has concluded there was no evidence of election fraud and Tuesday’s presidential vote was “competitive and well managed,” despite “logistical challenges” as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) noted statements made by President Donald Trump about deficiencies within the country’s electoral system were baseless and eroded trust in democracy. “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including…

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The Washington Post reports: A Republican firm run by a top aide to President Trump’s 2020 campaign appears to have helped send unmarked text messages on Thursday that urged supporters in Philadelphia to converge outside a building where local election officials were counting votes. “ALERT: Radical Liberals & Dems are trying to steal this election from Trump!” began the short text, sent in the hours before former vice president Joe Biden took the lead in the state. “We need YOU!…

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The Daily Beast reports: Local Republican officials were recruiting volunteers on Thursday to call Pennsylvania voters and urge them to send in their ballots—two full days after Election Day. This plea was emailed out just hours before President Donald Trump went on national television Thursday to declare the inherent illegitimacy of ballots received after Nov. 3. The request, election lawyers say, appears to flagrantly run afoul of state law. Under Pennsylvania law and a recent state Supreme Court decision, absentee…

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The New York Times reports: Stephen K. Bannon, the former adviser to President Trump who is known for his right-wing extremism, suggested on Thursday that the F.B.I. director and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci should be beheaded, and Twitter responded by banning one of his accounts. On Friday, a prominent lawyer who was defending Mr. Bannon against fraud charges in federal court in Manhattan abruptly moved to drop him as a client, one person familiar with the matter said. “Mr. Bannon…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump is racing to raise money for an “official election defense fund.” But the fine print on the solicitations tells a different story: Half — or more — of any contribution will be used to retire debt from his re-election campaign. With Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead in several battleground states as the vote count continues, the Trump campaign is filing lawsuits in at least four states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania. Starting early Wednesday,…

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Politico reports: Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel did not present concrete examples of alleged voter fraud in her home state of Michigan and elsewhere when pressed by Fox News anchors on Friday, instead urging Americans to “give us time” to produce evidence of irregularities. Asked about President Donald Trump’s remaining path to victory with Democratic nominee Joe Biden now leading Trump in three key uncalled swing states — any of which could put him over the 270 electoral vote…

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Jamelle Bouie writes: The liberal hope for the 2020 presidential election was a decisive repudiation of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. This is no longer on the table. A Joe Biden win, if it happens, will be as narrow an Electoral College win as Trump’s was in 2016. Biden won the national popular vote — which matters for popular legitimacy, even if it doesn’t weigh on the outcome — but Trump outperformed his job approval, winning more total votes…

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Politico reports: President Donald Trump has struggled to convince the country he already won the election. So he’s just going to do the next best thing: Act like he’s starting his second term early. Trump and his aides have settled on a plan for him to take full advantage of his existing perch at the White House to look as presidential as possible, according to three people briefed on the strategy. He may fire a few Cabinet members and top…

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