Click the map to create your own By Glynn Wilson –
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — It’s the day after Election Day 2020 and there’s still no declared winner in the presidential race, although as the absentee and mail-in votes are counted today and this week in key battleground states, experts are still giving the edge to former Vice President Joe Biden on the strength of record high early vote totals by Democrats.
Of course Republican President Donald Trump tried to claim victory and threatened to take the outcome to the courts, although it is not clear he has any legal leg to stand on to do that, at least not yet. There was also no sign of Steve Bannon’s threatened war that was supposed to start today on Nov. 4.
While many Democrats and journalists, including myself, had hoped for a massive landslide victory on Election Night to prevent any doubt about the outcome that could result in the election dragging out for weeks or even months with court challenges and counter lawsuits like what happened in 2000, it’s still too close to call in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the former Blue Wall that Trump tore down in 2016. And even in the Southern states of North Carolina and Georgia, the race is still too close to call with mail-in votes still being tabulated.
The official results are also not being called in Nevada and Arizona, although it looks good there for Biden.
The Democrats picked up Senate seats in Arizona and Colorado, although it looks like the unpopular Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will hold on to his Republican seat in Kentucky, and Republican Lindsey Graham was declared the winner in South Carolina.
In one of the toughest but fairly predictable losses in the country, it looks like Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama lost his reelection battle with former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, meaning the Democrats will have to pick up one or two more seats to take over a majority in the Senate. The best chances for that appear to be in Georgia, where a Democrat is ahead with 91 percent of precincts reporting, and North Carolina, where the vote is still too close to call.
Gettysburg One More Time
As I told my friends, fans and followers the first thing this morning on Facebook, at least it’s a beautiful, sunny Autumn day in Maryland with an expected high of 65 and a low of 44, where the good people here cast their votes for Democrat Joe Biden, not Republican Donald Trump. Biden won Maryland with 64 percent of the vote to Trump’s 35 percent.
It was also a very nice fall day on Election Day, so I took another drive up to Gettysburg to check out what was going on in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state.
After driving around some parts of the battle fields at Gettysburg National Military Park, where I took in the fading fall color view from atop Little Round Top, I drove further into town and found the headquarters of the Adams County Democratic Executive Committee on Chambersburg Street.
A late fall view of a critical Gettysburg Battlefield from the famous hill called Little Round Top: Glynn Wilson
There I met Marcia Wilson, the chair of the group, who was very optimistic about Biden’s chances of winning Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.
“Yes, it’s looking good in the cities (mainly Philadelphia and Pittsburg),” she said, “as well as the suburbs.”
Not so much in rural areas, she said, like Adams County.
“This is Trump country,” she said. “We just hope to reduce the margin Trump won by here in 2016.”
Marcia Wilson, Adams County Democratic Committee Chair, Gettysburg, Pa.: Glynn Wilson
As we were talking, another party member came in and said he had just gotten off the phone with the Democratic Party chair in Philly, who said everything was looking good.
“He said we should all be able to sleep well tonight,” he said.
So much for that. People on both sides who were worried about the outcome are reporting on social media that they had a hard time sleeping Tuesday night.
When the television news shows switched to reruns of earlier coverage at midnight, and there was no declared winner, I knew better than to stay up hoping for a final outcome. There would be no Election Night landslide after all.
All the trends in the polls and early voting seemed to indicate that people were by and large sick and tired of Trump’s lies and the daily chaos of his administration, with coronavirus cases going up and the economy still teetering on the brink of failure. Older voters seemed to be turning against Trump, and younger voters seemed to be turning out in record numbers.
The disappointment is finding out just how many chaos monkeys, ratfuckers and anarchists there are in the country, ignorant little neo-Nazis still willing to stick with Trump as he threatens to destroy democracy and the planet’s environment with his greedy campaign to become America’s first authoritarian dictator.
It could be that Trump’s messaging against “socialism” worked in some quarters, attacking Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, although they were not on the ballot and Joe Biden has a long record as a moderate Democrat.
We still have a chance to win this Civil War one more time and prevent a new war in this divided country. But the window of opportunity is closing.
We Can End the Civil War Once and For All Time on Tuesday, Nov. 3
More Photos
A street view of the Adams County Democratic Committee headquarters on Chambersburg Street in Gettysburg, Pa.: Glynn Wilson
Biden signs in the window of the Adams County Democratic Committee headquarters in Gettysburg, Pa.: Glynn Wilson
A cannon view of Gettysburg from Little Round Top: Glynn Wilson
Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg: Glynn Wilson
An interesting Uncle Sam sign in the window of the Adams County Democratic Committee headquarters in Gettysburg, Pa.: Glynn Wilson
The Gettysburg Address: Glynn Wilson
Pumpkins and apples galore in rural Maryland near Thurmont: Glynn Wilson
Saw a text to a friend that stated a fact as clear as the nose on our faces: “Stop telling me ‘this is not who we are’ when this is EXACTLY who we are…” Even I, until now, have been hesitant to admit what reality is….