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      'Authoritarian': Trump condemned for falsely claiming election victory

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      [embedded content]
      Donald Trump has confirmed the worst fears of his opponents by making a false declaration of victory in the US presidential election and threatening to plunge the nation into a constitutional crisis.
      Results so far show his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, with an edge in the race to 270 electoral college votes after flipping the state of Arizona, but it could be days before the outcome is known.
      “The president’s statement tonight about trying to shut down the counting of duly cast ballots was outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect,” said the Biden campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, in a statement.
      That Trump had been widely predicted to make a baseless assertion of triumph and resort to the courts to stop votes being counted did not make his 2.21am speech at the White House any less shocking. Some likened the move, unprecedented in American history, to a presidential coup.
      “Once again, the president is lying to the American people and acting like a would-be despot,” tweeted Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee. “We will count every vote. And ignore the noise.”
      Trump spoke in the east room with numerous US flags behind him and flanked by two TV screens, which had been showing Fox News. Around 150 guests were standing with few face masks and little physical distancing. Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and other family members sat in the front row.
      “Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it,” Trump said to whoops and cheers. “We will not stand for it.”
      There is no evidence for Trump’s allegation of disenfranchisement. More

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      OK, America, so what the hell happens now? | Marina Hyde

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      With the future and democratic reputation of the American republic hanging in the balance, this is not an occasion for bombast. Rather it is time to reach humbly in the darkness, seeking only to summon such measured words as convey the intense dignity of this moment. In short, I think we all feel the hand of history on our pussies.Donald Trump, America’s howling id, has not lost this election. Then again, Joe Biden has not won it. Shortly before 6am UK time, Biden addressed a rally – never a better time for one, mate – and told the Delaware crowd he was “optimistic”. In split-screen Trump addressed his Twitter retinue, and told them of “a big WIN”, adding “they are trying to STEAL the election … votes cannot be cast after the Poles are closed.” Expect him to invade Pole-land in the coming days.Still, whatever happens now, no one can argue that a result this close was a repudiation of his way of doing business, so anyone expecting the gibberingly loyal Republican party to tack away from its current psychiatric space for the next couple of decades ought probably to get used to disappointment.Shortly after 7am UK time, Trump addressed the nation with quasi-dictatorial fanfare, falsely claiming victory as well as electoral fraud, and seeking to disenfranchise voters in undeclared states. This was at least predicted. There have long been signs that Trump would not be able to handle even potentially unfavourable election results. After all, just look how he handled male pattern baldness. Contrary to what a lot of people said over the past four years, Trump did eventually manage to build something described as an “unscalable” fence. Unfortunately, he only did it this week, and it now surrounds the White House.Militia fears, a barricaded presidential compound, open calls to disenfranchise voters – it’s a mood very much borrowed from what Trump would call “shithole countries”. As the weeks unfold, please don’t rule out Donald’s two large adult sons – Uday and Schmuday – downing a Black Hawk within the White House autonomous zone. Already, expectations have been so profoundly commuted that if gun-toting convoys of Klansmen aren’t firing celebratory rounds into the sky from vehicle convoys by the time this article is published, it’ll be regarded as a positive.So what in the name of terminal insanity does happen now? I’m encouraged to learn that pathways from here include everything from victory for the orange dopamine-pusher to the most illegitimate or disputed victory in history, with Biden’s likely best-case scenario a narrow win with a Republican senate which would allow him to accomplish even less than he achieved during this campaign. Either way, lockdowns around the globe are sure to be enlivened by rolling coverage of the fallout, possibly in the country’s sarcastically admired court system. Were US lawyers part of the original breakout from Pandora’s box? If not, expect swarms of them to breach its defences in the coming days.Should Biden edge a victory, thanks to the way the self-styled greatest democracy in the world works, we will have months of grimly incendiary Trump claims that it was stolen. Or to put it in terms the rest of the planet would understand: this is like winning the World Cup in November, then having the losing captain use it as a toilet for three months before finally handing the brimming trophy over to you in late January.Elsewhere, what a great night for pollsters and their polls, which seem to have been about as accurate as any Trump statements. Bazillions of dollars have been spent on polling this cycle. Definitely the business to get into when journalism – which did about as badly – goes tits-up.According to the exit poll Trump outperformed his 2016 results with every race and gender – except for white men. In counties with high Covid death rates, Trump performed better this year than he did in 2016. I suppose we have to believe the arc of history bends towards justice, but it certainly takes some incredible hairpin detours.Other assorted lowlights thus far include Lindsey Graham winning again, while some QAnon gorgon is now an actual Georgia congresswoman. The 25-year-old Republican Madison Cawthorn, whose bucket list included a visit to Hitler’s holiday home, is also going to Congress, and announced his victory just as Abraham Lincoln once did – in a tweet reading: “Cry more, lib”. Louisiana voters approved an amendment declaring abortion was not protected by the state’s constitution.Still, let no one suggest a democracy contested by two men in their mid- to late-70s is in some ways beginning to look a little necrotic. Yes, it would have been nice to have at least one candidate who no one had accused of sexual assault – but you had to be deeply comforted that one of the candidates had been accused of literally dozens more sexual assaults than the other one.Of course, the 2020 US presidential election situation is still very much developing, and by the time you read this, there could be a lot of hostages to fortune. Or even just hostages. Rule nothing out. Nothing, perhaps, except moral optimism. People used to say that irony died when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize – but the real victim was actually the Nobel peace prize. It’s hard not to think something of an order of magnitude is now true of the US presidency, which for ever ever this time will be seen as a job that a man of the character of Donald Trump was able to get. Maybe even twice – or as near as dammit.• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

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      Kanye West announces 'Kanye 2024' as he fails to make election impact

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      Kanye West has suggested he will run for president in 2024, following his failed bid this year.
      Alongside a photo of him next to an electoral map filled with Republican and Democrat wins, he tweeted “welp”, an expression of disappointment. He added: “Kanye 2024”.

      ye
      (@kanyewest)
      WELP KANYE 2024 🕊 pic.twitter.com/tJOZcxdArb

      November 4, 2020

      West was a latecomer to the 2020 race, announcing his candidacy in July. Initially focusing on abortion and faith, he later drew up a 10-point platform, calling for support for the environment and arts, an anti-interventionist foreign policy, and reforms to the legal system and policing.
      He struggled to make it to the ballots of many states, including some that legally barred him from appearing, and encouraged supporters to write him on to their ballot papers. Across the 12 states whose ballots he appeared on, he won fewer than 60,000 votes. He found most success in Tennessee, winning more than 10,000 votes, 0.3% of the state’s total.
      As he cast his own vote, West said he had never previously voted in a presidential election. He tweeted: “God is so good. Today I am voting for the first time in my life for the President of the United States, and it’s for someone I truly trust … me.” More

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      US House races: Democrats retain control while facing upsets in key states

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      Democrats, who are still expected to retain control of the House of Representatives, have suffered several stinging losses that have knocked down their hopes of significantly expanding their majority in the House of Representatives.In Florida’s Miami-Dade county, Republicans flipped two Democratic seats in an upset, while Democrats took two Republican seats in North Carolina. But chances that Democrats would gain some of the long-shot seats they were vying for in Texas and Arkansas are on track to remain in Republican hands as early results trickle in.In New Mexico, the Republican Yvette Herrell on Tuesday beat incumbent Democrat Xochitl Torres Small – who had won her red district two years ago by just 3,700 votes. And in South Carolina, the Republican Nancy Mace defeated the incumbent Democrat Joe Cunningham.House leader Nancy Pelosi, who handily won re-election in California, was confident ahead of election night. “Tonight, House Democrats are poised to further strengthen our majority – the biggest, most diverse, most dynamic, women-led House majority in history,” she said.And the Cook Political Report, which provides non-partisan election and political analysis, predicted on Monday that Democrats will gain between 10 and 15 seats in the House, which has 435 members. “A combination of President Trump’s unpopularity in the suburbs, a fundraising disadvantage, and 32 open seats for the GOP to defend (to Democrats’ dozen) has weighed down Republicans’ prospects,” said David Wasserman, of Cook Political Report.Democrats now hold 232 seats, while Republicans have 197. There are five vacancies in the House, and one Libertarian-held seat . The GOP would need 218 seats to gain control. Such an upset is exceedingly unlikely.However, Republicans have chipped away at predictions of Democratic sweeps – having unseated Democrats in red or swing districts.Across the country, Republican candidates have been going after freshman Democrats who won in the 2018 midterms. Meanwhile, Democrats were hoping to land key GOP districts, USA Today explained. Texas, which is an overwhelmingly red state, is key to this battle. Congressman Michael McCaul, whose district spans from Houston’s suburbs to Austin, was thought to be dealing with “real risk of defeat” against Democrat Mike Siegel. But the Associated Press declared victory for McCaul on Tuesday night.In Ohio, Democrats believed that a long-held Republican seat representing Cincinnati-area suburbs has become more competitive. But GOP representative Steve Chabot claimed his 13th term, with an almost 8% lead over Democrat Kate Schroder, a healthcare executive. A congressional race near Atlanta, Georgia, however, may test Democrats’ success in courting suburban voters. The district’s Republican representative, Rob Woodall, is retiring. Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux, who lost to Woodall in 2018, is the 2020 candidate against Republican nominee Rich McCormick. As the district remains conservative, the result will give insight into Democrats’ get-out-the-vote efforts in the state, the Washington Post reported. Bourdeaux was leading by the end of election night by a 1.4% margin. In Florida’s Miami-Dade county, incumbent Debbie Mucarsel-Powell was defeated by Republican Carlos Giménez in the 27th district, and incumbent Donna Shalala of the state’s 26th district lost to Republican Maria Elvira Salazar. Cook Political Report had predicted both seats would remain with Democrats.Giménez, who is the mayor of Miami-Dade, performed a balancing act – welcoming an endorsement from Trump, while gently veering away from the president on public health issues as he led the majority-Black and Latino community he through the coronavirus pandemic. Salazar, formerly a broadcast journalist for Univision, Telemundo and CNN Español, won this year after losing to Shalala in 2018. As a daughter of Cuban refugees, Salazar painted her opponents and Democrats as socialists.Another key congressional race was in South Carolina, where Joe Cunningham, who two years ago was the first Democrat to take a House seat from the GOP in the state since 1986, lost his bid for re-election after acontest that became the most expensive US House race in state history. Cunningham’s fundraising totaled $6m, while his Republican opponent, the state representative Nancy Mace, raised more than $4m between the primary and general elections.In a heated race in the New York district covering Staten Island and southern Brooklyn, Max Rose, the Democratic incumbent, lost to Republican state assembly member Nicole Malliotakis.The bitter race has featured weeks of negative attack ads, with Malliotakis insisting she is the law-and-order candidate. This position, of course, is also touted by Trump – who won Staten Island in 2016. Trump is supporting Malliotakis in the race.Results from Indiana’s fifth district, an open-seat race that speaks to both parties’ fight for the suburbs seemed to remain in Republican control. This district, which covers suburban Indianapolis, marked a major victory for Trump in 2016 – with him beating Hillary Clinton by almost 12 points. Virginia’s fifth district had also attracted attention as a potentially watershed toss-up – in the end wasn’t. Democrat Cameron Webb, a Black physician who served in the Obama administration, was defeated by Bob Good. More

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      TV networks left in limbo as America struggles to decide who won election

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      “This is why elections are fun,” said CNN’s John King, relentlessly jabbing at one of his two giant iPads as the lead in Florida lurched back and forth. Then he said it again. Absolutely no one agreed with him.About an hour and an epoch earlier, the networks and news channels had seemed as interested in their own redemption story as they were in the election itself. They hoped for a do-over of 2016, where every glib presumption would be replaced with a cautionary note, and a radical plan to wait, no matter how long it took, to see what would actually happen.That was temporarily good for democracy, but possibly difficult for television executives, whose solemn duty was to make their product as opaque as reality. “There is no telling when we are going to have a winner,” said Martha MacCallum, introducing Fox’s coverage with something other than a bang. “It could be hours, it could be days, it could possibly take even weeks.” On MSNBC, Brian Williams told viewers: “It’s going to be a night of a lot of math.” It wasn’t a thrilling observation, but it was at least unlikely to be clipped up and played on Twitter’s infinite loop in the days ahead.Of course, there was still the odd hostage to fortune. “Biden is doing much better with white voters, and I think that’s going to be a theme throughout this night,” said David Axelrod, the former Obama adviser, and you wondered if that would ultimately seem too obvious to remember or too idiotic to forget. In those moments, as the words left their mouths, the pundit class seemed like tightrope walkers: foolhardy or brave, one foot in front of another, the weight of history on their backs.Then the numbers came in, and the math went out of the window – or maybe just got more complicated. NBC’s Chuck Todd, swooshing around his own magic map, remarked: “All that tells me is, it’s going to take forever to call Florida.” Twenty minutes later, he said that the state “looked like an uphill climb for Joe Biden”. Half an hour after that, it was firmly in the Trump column.CNN’s entire broadcast, meanwhile, had become brutally compelling, appearing to jettison its ensemble of sedate anchors in favour of King’s one-man dramatic monologue on the Florida county of Miami-Dade. But, other than King’s unusual sense of what constitutes a good time, it wasn’t clear why it was still treating Florida like a toss-up.On the BBC, Andrew Neil and Katty Kay were formidable and austere, with Neil signing off from his perch at the corporation in a mood of magnificent irritation with America for not having made its mind up yet. The static cameras and distinct shortage of pounding theme music set them apart from their excitable US counterparts, which were increasingly difficult to distinguish from each other.CBS had a “what happens if” map; MSNBC had a “what if” map. Every studio adhered to an aesthetic of fluorescent Tetris. Countdown clocks and “key race alerts” with no outcome attached dragged viewers remorselessly from hour to hour. The phrase “blue wall” became ubiquitous, again.At some point , John King’s touchscreen stopped working. “You’re gonna have to come back to me,” he said. Meanwhile, the New York Times’ notorious election needles had swung firmly in Trump’s favour, and the prospect of days more trauma to come.Then one of them swung back again, and Fox News called Arizona for Biden ahead of anybody else. Karl Rove, who when Fox put Ohio in Obama’s column in 2012 had vocally disagreed on air with the station’s decision desk, vocally disagreed on air with the station’s decision desk.The only person who seemed certain of anything was the president himself.Trump tweeted that the Democrats “are trying to STEAL the election” and claimed that “Votes cannot be cast after the Poles are closed!” CNN’s Jake Tapper said that “the fact that the president misspelled ‘polls’ is just ‘chef’s kiss’”, which drew the kind of social media enthusiasm on the left that you might a few hours earlier have imagined would be reserved for a victory in Texas.Instead, the naive prospect of euphoria had been replaced with the desperate urge to stave off despair. In another time, those who found themselves unable to switch off might at least have hoped to absorb their anxiety with a few fellow travellers, and a drinking game or two. This year, the stakes are too vast, the lockdowns too dislocating. Instead, they sat in their bubbles, waiting – and waiting – for the future to burst through.Fun? Trump called it fraud. “We gotta dip in here because there have been several statements that are just frankly not true,” said the NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie, to her and the network’s eternal credit, even as rivals let him lie without interruption. On the BBC, a few hours earlier, the political scientist Larry Sabato had made a more plausible assessment.“We are very, very split,” he said. “This night has just begun.” More

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      Latinos offer lukewarm enthusiasm for Biden after Democrat fails to woo voters

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      [embedded content]
      In battleground states such as Florida and Texas, key communities with large Latino populations showed comparatively lukewarm enthusiasm for the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, after overwhelmingly supporting Hillary Clinton four years ago.
      Ahead of election day, activists, legislators and political operatives had warned the Biden campaign that it wasn’t doing enough to woo Latino voters, a diverse and fundamental constituency for the Democratic party.
      The apparent failure prompted some stern immediate criticism from some of the party’s leading figures.
      “I won’t comment much on tonight’s results as they are evolving and ongoing, but I will say we’ve been sounding the alarm about Dem vulnerabilities w/ Latinos for a long, long time,” tweeted the US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “There is a strategy and a path, but the necessary effort simply hasn’t been put in.”
      As Latinos went to the polls this year, they had three clear priorities: the coronavirus pandemic, healthcare costs, and jobs and the economy, according to the 2020 American election eve poll.
      On Tuesday night, the news wasn’t all bad for Democrats. Biden won Arizona, where Latinos represented a key voter demographic. Overall, around seven in 10 Latinos voted for the former vice-president, polling showed.
      “In some ways, about Latinos, the story of the night is that they made a difference for both candidates,” said Clarissa Martinez, the deputy vice-president of the Latino civil rights and advocacy organization UnidosUS.
      Both presidential nominees had been polling neck-and-neck in Florida. But when Clinton’s nearly 30-point margin of victory in Miami-Dade county slipped to just over seven points for Biden, the coveted swing state threw its 29 electoral college votes behind Donald Trump.
      Trump won a majority of the state’s sizable Cuban-American vote, according to NBC News exit polls, after targeted campaigns painting Biden as a socialist.
      Biden also lost Texas, a reliably red stronghold that Democrats had hoped to turn blue through high voter participation. South Texas’ Nueces county went to Trump by a wider margin than four years ago, after O’Rourke had flipped Corpus Christi and its surroundings in 2018. Whether Republicans regained the south Texas territory because of Latinos voting for Trump or higher turnout by other demographics is unclear at this point, said Juan Carlos Huerta, a professor of political science at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi.
      In the nearby Rio Grande valley, where Clinton dominated in 2016, Biden also lost ground. He’s leading only by a five-point margin in Starr county, which is 96.4% Hispanic or Latino, and which Clinton claimed by a whopping 60 points.
      Meanwhile, he’s up 17 points in neighboring Hidalgo county, which is also majority Latino. That’s still a generous margin, but nothing like Clinton’s 40-point victory in 2016.
      Victoria M DeFrancesco Soto, an assistant dean at the University of Texas’ LBJ school of public affairs, hypothesized that Biden’s underperformance in the border region compared to 2016 could be attributed to two factors: the Clintons’ popularity among Texas Latinos and the fact that grassroots, old school campaigning couldn’t happen amid the pandemic.
      In the valley, it became clear that “the enthusiasm for Biden isn’t what the enthusiasm for Clinton was,” said Manuel Grajeda, the Texas strategist for UnidosUS.
      Both Republicans and Democrats haven’t focused on Latinos there as much as in other major counties, Grajeda said. That was “a missed opportunity” that showed up in the election results, he added.
      The relatively narrow margins for Democrats along the border came even as Latino voters flocked to the polls in Texas. During the incredible turnout in the state for early voting, an estimated 1.9 million Latinos voted, Grajeda said, including around 500,000 first-time voters.
      “The key to success with the Hispanic community in Texas is engagement, and very early on,” said congressman Joaquin Castro, who won re-election Tuesday night. “And making sure that we get to folks who have not participated in the political process before.
      “That continues to be a challenge that we’ve gotta make sure that we meet.” More

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      Trump throws baseless doubt on vote and falsely claims victory – video

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      Donald Trump has made baseless claims of voter ‘fraud’ in the presidential election and declared victory, even as important battleground states remain too close to call. Speaking at the White House the president said: ‘This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country.’ He also threatened to challenge the election results in the supreme court.
      Trump has won the battleground state of Florida, but others including North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania remain too close to call. Election officials are counting ballots in many key states and the process could continue for days
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      Huge turnout, fraying nerves: the story of election night so far

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      After months of nerve-jangling campaigning that at times appeared to be tearing the world’s oldest constitutional democracy apart, the US presidential election finally reached its climax and entered the comfortingly familiar bubble of TV news election night.But there was nothing familiar about this election, not in pandemic 2020.From the start of the night, presenters from CNN to Fox News had two words ringing in their ears as they tried to hold on tight to a long and nail-biting night: patience and caution.Patience because of the vast pile of more than 100m early votes cast and caution because of the unprecedented stakes of the race. “The level of anxiety! The level of emotional fatigue!” said CNN’s Van Jones, expressing the heartfelt yearning of millions of Americans. “If you are a Muslim family, if you are from an immigration community, if you are vulnerable in any way, this has been an horrific four years, so people would vote for Hermit the Frog over Donald Trump at this point.”Fox News recognised the exceptionally twisty nature of the night. “The results as they come in are going to be a little bewildering because we will be looking at a peculiar blend of votes that have and have not been counted,” said the channel’s senior political analyst Brit Hume. “We should prepare our audience to bear with us, because it’s getting very complex.”At least Wolf Blitzer, the CNN anchor whose prime skill is making drying paint sound breathlessly like world-shattering news, kept in character, throwing all caveats to the winds. “It’s a bit of a surprise,” he screeched when results started coming in from Kentucky showing Joe Biden ahead.Blitzer had to be gently nudged by a colleague, who pointed out that only 8% of votes were in at that time. Kentucky was soon after called for Trump, which was not a bit of a surprise – the state has clung to the Republican in every race since 1996.Huge turnoutEven before election night began, the country had witnessed nationwide scenes of determined voting at astonishing levels. The sleeping giant of the US electorate – traditionally among the most laggardly at voting among the developed countries – had suddenly stirred.From the critical swing state of Florida, through the rust belt states that in no small part delivered Trump his victory four years ago, amid a snow squall in New Hampshire, and right across to the vast Democratic stronghold of California, Americans turned out to vote in record numbers. The rate at which they did so was set to surpass all presidential elections since 1908.After all the fears of armed intimidation at the polls, of militia groups descending on polling stations to wreak havoc, election day was overwhelmingly orderly and calm. Sporadic local squabbles over voting machine breakdowns and scurrilous spam calls were recorded, as they regularly are in US presidential races.State after state broke voting records. Texas, which last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1976, received more early votes than the entirety of the poll in 2016. Florida recorded 9m early votes, some 63% of the total – another jaw-dropping showing. More