Remain Patient, Keep Calm
After two nights and nearly three days into the election, we still don’t have a president-elect but are cautiously optimistic about Joe Biden’s possible paths to 270 electoral votes. While we do our collective best to remain calm and patient with vote counting in several critical battleground states, I wanted to share my favorite lighthearted moments of “election week” so far:
- A moment of on-air indulgence
Two of the biggest surprises (and victories!) on election night were the flips of Michigan and Wisconsin back to the Democratic candidate for president. During his neverending canvassing of the “magic wall” on CNN, the normally stoic host John King could not hold back from delivering the quip of the week as he explained for the umpteenth time how votes were coming in for both candidates: Joe Biden has rebuilt the blue wall and — forgive me — Trump is going to pay for it.
2. Social media companies fight to halt misinformation
It surprised no one that Donald Trump falsely claimed victory on election night, that had been expected for weeks. But as has occurred with increasing frequency in recent years, the oft-maligned social media giants Twitter and Facebook have acted quickly to flag the president’s lies about the 2020 election results and state-by-state voting processes. Since Tuesday, nine of Trump’s tweets about the election have been hidden beneath labels marking them as disputed or misleading, while several posts from members of his campaign and family have also been marked as misleading or pulled from Facebook. These may seem like small acts to protect truth in the age of subjective reality, but for millions of people who rely on social media platforms to ingest news and inform their own perspectives, they represent a rebuke of falsehood and lifelines to reliable sources of information.
3. The last laugh of an American patriot
As of Thursday morning, Joe Biden leads the vote count in Arizona. While Biden’s lead in the state may not hold when all votes are counted, the fact that he leads in a Republican stronghold that has not gone for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign in 1996 is remarkable. There are a number of possible reasons for Biden’s lead, with shifting demographics and growing suburbs in the state as the most likely. But another crucial reason, noted by most news organizations as they report the vote tally, has been president Trump’s public disdain for John McCain. While Trump’s attitude toward American servicemembers should be well known by now, his unpatriotic declaration that McCain was “not a war hero” for having been captured and held as a POW in Vietnam was a shock to the public in 2016. The late naval pilot and longtime Senator was subject to many other insults from Trump during a two-year war of words, even as many members of the Republican party encouraged the president to make amends with McCain due to his popularity among conservatives. One of Trump’s most shameful insults now glistens with irony as John McCain — still beloved by Arizonians — may very well deliver a Biden victory from beyond the grave: “I don’t like losers.”
