Election Day has come and gone, and the battle for the next president of the United States is coming down to a handful of razor-tight races in key battleground states.
As of Wednesday night, former Vice President Joe Biden has earned 264 Electoral College votes, placing him six votes shy of victory. President Donald Trump has earned 214.
Nevada, Alaska, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia are the last five states to be called.
Currently, Biden leads the vote count in Nevada, while Trump leads in the remaining four states.
So let’s play out this scenario: Biden clings to his one lead and Trump to his four.
It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win, and if Biden can hold on to Nevada, he will earn exactly 270 and become the next president.
If the presidential race unfolds this way, it will mirror the historic 2000 election between former President George W. Bush and Al Gore. Bush won 271 electoral college votes after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to grant him Florida.
As someone who begrudgingly voted for Biden because the alternative was far too horrifying to stomach, I really hope he can pull this thing off.
I’m encouraged by how close Biden is, but I’m also embarrassed for him and the entire Democratic Party for allowing this race to be as tight as it was.
Think about it.
The Democratic Party is the same party that, in 2016, lost to a bumbling racist who played rich on reality television.
Now in 2020, Democrats could possibly lose again to the same bumbling racist who let more than 230,000 Americans die from the coronavirus.
Trump has failed in every way imaginable — even by the standards of his own supporters.
He promised to “build a wall” and wanted Hillary Clinton in jail. Yet, near the end of his term, we still have no border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and Clinton is free.
He claimed he would bring manufacturing jobs back to the industrial Midwest, yet an industry boom is nowhere to be found. In fact, the tariffs he imposed on foreign steel imports and aluminum only accelerated job losses in the sector.
Trump even said he would “drain the swamp” of Washington D.C., then proceeded to use the presidential office as a means to generate wealth and power for himself and his political allies.
I could go on and on about the ways Trump has failed Americans, including his own supporters, but it would be pointless.
The stage was perfectly set for a landslide Biden victory, yet the race has tightened in ways the polls didn’t predict.
Biden and the Democrats ran a campaign centered on restoring the “soul of America,” not one of policy or concrete plans.
The Democratic National Convention highlighted unity — with Republicans, to be specific — as well as how evil and corrupt Trump is.
What was said about Trump is true. He is horrible, and his administration is known for atrocious rhetoric and rules.
But apparently the Democrats learned nothing from 2016. Voters seem to care more about policy — whether they are properly educated and informed on those policies is a question for another day — than they do about the “soul of our nation.” Who could have guessed?
I maintain that this race did not have to be this close.
If Biden’s campaign devoted even a quarter of the time it spent talking about restoring the soul of our nation to the policies and strategies they plan to implement, this race would have been a landslide for Biden.
Dear Gabriella,
Nice article! I’m not even American and yet I am anxiously waiting and refreshing the NYT to see if anything has changed. Although I respect the opinions of others, it baffles me to see that there are so many Trump supporters after all he has done (or not done) for your country. He has pushed for schools to reopen in the midst of COVID, has had a zero tolerance policy for immigration (and created horrible detention centers), withdrew from the Paris Agreement and went against background check bills for guns. He is also against abortion and has no feasible plan for fighting off the pandemic.. I would love to hear the arguments of those who voted for him.