Keep Counting

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Wednesday, November 04, 2020

 

We are entering a dangerous and treacherous moment as a nation right now.

 

I happen to think that the announcements from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that they were not going to get anything like current results out live overnight is a mistake. Pennsylvania’s vow to only finish counting votes several days from now is basically an invitation to daydream, and replay the calls and non-calls of Election Night until suggestible minds turn to goo.

 

It seems likely to me that Fox News tried very hard tonight to put people to bed with a Biden lead. It’s not at all clear to me why Virginia and Arizona were called so easily for Biden, when Georgia and North Carolina could not be for Donald Trump. In the coming 24 hours or so the full popular vote of California will be thrown on top of Biden’s total, and Democrats will begin to lean into their anti-“minoritarian rule” pose. This will be before we get a picture of whether Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have finished counting.

 

Republicans need to be screaming at the top of their lungs right now: Keep counting. For their own sakes and the sake of the country, they can’t let a vacuum open up between now and the results in Pennsylvania. Something really ugly can fill in very quickly.