The show from December 17, 2020, featured guest host, Jennifer Smith.
Editor comment: The video of the Olympia, Washington protest has the wrong date on it of December 10, 2020. The correct date is December 12, 2020. We apologize for the error.
Chris Rojas, our partners at Converge Media, and Concrete Reporting contributed to this program
As the reality of the 2020 election results start to solidify, violence from far-right extremists is increasing across the country including a police officer run over by anti-masker in New York and a shooting in Olympia, Washington.
Kesha Rodgers started The Ally League with her friend Sara So to help promote and support Black businesses and dismantle systemic racism. The events of 2020, including the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement and the disproportionate impact of COVID on the BIPOC community, created opportunity and hardship. As working moms, Rodgers and So realized that people wanted to support the Black community but didn’t have the time or resources to engage actively. The mission of The Ally League is to promote and support Black-owned businesses while enabling allies to learn about the available products. In this second part of our interview, Kesha and Sara talk about cancel culture and the need for patience.
After a tumultuous year, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has announced that she will not be seeking re-election. Amid multiple calls for her resignation, she has seen her support wane, both inside and out of city hall. While enjoying some early successes, such as negotiating to bring the NHL back to Seattle, the mayor also faced challenges that many felt she was not up to handling.
The 2020 presidential election trajectory hasn’t revealed too many surprises when you look back at our final election forecast. We predicted an outcome of 290-248 and that Joe Biden would become the 46th President of the United States. As I write this, we have the election at 264-213, with Biden leading. Nevada would represent six electoral votes and push Biden to the required 270 electoral votes. Pennsylvania would add 20 more, 290.
We are keeping a close eye on Georgia, and our analysis indicates that Joe Biden will win, but with a margin of victory of 2,000 to 4,000 votes – total. That also assumes that the current county-by-county leads in Georgia for President Trump and Biden don’t change significantly. Simply put, I wouldn’t bet against a Trump win in Georgia.
By Friday, we are in a likely scenario that Trump’s lawyers will have to invalidate tens or hundreds of thousands of votes in multiple states to declare themselves victorious. In a statement last night, Trump said they would go to the Supreme Court to stop vote counts, but the function of holding elections and certifying election results belong to the states (and the District of Columbia), not the federal government.
In running possible election result models, I had come up with a scenario where Biden could become president without Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, or North Carolina. That path was through Arizona and scooping up either Nebraska District 2 or Maine District 2. Even if Trump could somehow stop the Pennsylvania vote count, cling to Georgia and win North Carolina, he still can’t win it all. Additionally, the margin of victory in Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin, are not circa 2000 Florida thin, where less than 300 votes decided the presidency.
Mitch McConnell has “committed to the peaceful transfer of power” before the election, but McConnell has a long history of going back on his positions if it politically benefits him. There is no simple way to put it; the Democrats got their asses handed to them last night when it came to Senate races, where Republicans maintain control.
The Constitution provides no provision to move or alter the date of the transfer of power to a new president. So President Trump’s options dwindle as we move closer to inauguration day and the battle drags out.
If the last event were to happen, the nation would have to rely on the 25th Amendment and Congress to remove President Trump. This scenario is highly unlikely given who sits in the president’s cabinet and who controls the senate.
I am not saying this will happen; only it could happen. Democracy is fragile. If we can learn anything from the last four years, the Republic’s future is on dangerous ground.
The first in-person election day polls will open in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, in seven hours. With over 92-million early and mail-in ballots already submitted, 67% of all the votes of 2016, it is likely that in-person voting will play a smaller role in 2020.
Reading the polls feels like a fool’s errand this year due to a litany of variables. A record number of new voters, young voters, and voters participating in the general election that did not participate in the primaries make identifying trends harder. Earlier voters cast their ballots when polls showed a wider race, so it is hard to gauge how much impact the tightening polls have.
Trump is the first President in modern history to never have his approval rating go above 50%, sans one day in 2017, where he polled at 50.1%. Biden has never tracked under 50% support in any poll going back to hypothetical Trump v Biden surveys 19 months ago. Although the race is tightening, it isn’t close to 2016; no third-party candidates are tracking 5% to 7% support, and undecideds are less than 4% of all voters. The day of exit polls will be problematic because so many people have already voted. Then there are the Trafalgar polls, which show a Trump win. Does anyone remember Zogby and their forecast for a Bush (43) win?
In our analysis of all available data, we continue to forecast that Trump has a narrow path to the White House, but it will be like trying to thread a needle with your eyes closed. Donald Trump has to win Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Without all four of these states, he has no clear path to the White House.
If we look at these four states, Trump will likely win Georgia and Florida, and has a better than a coin toss chance of winning North Carolina. If we apply a Hilary Clinton 2016 grade polling error in Pennsylvania, Trump still can’t win. If we use a Hilary Clinton 2016 grade polling error in Pennsylvania and say Trump’s lawyers throw out one-percent of all ballots (a significant number), and all of them are Biden ballots, Trump still can’t win. The same goes for Wisconsin. If we apply a Hilary Clinton grade polling error and throw out 1% of all Biden votes, Trump still can’t win.
I don’t consider Nevada a battleground, as this is behind Biden’s firewall. Biden will win the following battleground states/districts:
Trump will win the following battleground states/districts:
In our final assessment, we believe Joe Biden will become the 46th President of the United States, with a 290 – 248 victory.
