11.27 Judge Stephanos Bibas, writing on behalf of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling that the Trump campaign could not stop or try to reverse the certification of the voting results in Pennsylvania: “Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”
11.25 Cara announces she is enciente
11.25 Diego Maradona dies at 60.
11.24 Dow passes 30,000 for first time. Jim Cramer: “I think that what’s happening here is happy days are here again, somewhat justified because if we can get [COVID] under control, it is going to be like the end of Prohibition.”
11.24 Max Boot in the Washington Post: “The impetus for the GOP’s growing aversion to democracy is clear: It has lost the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections. That is a streak of futility unmatched in U.S. history. To maintain power — and avert the Venezuela-style apocalypse that many conservatives fear will result from Democratic dominance — the GOP must rely on institutions such as the electoral college and the Senate that give outsize weight to red states. That, in turn, has allowed Republicans to fill the federal courts with judges who will perpetuate their policy preferences for decades to come. The problem is being exacerbated by the tendency of the U.S. population to cluster in a handful of large states that are either already blue (California, New York) or moving that way (Georgia, North Carolina). “By 2040,” as my colleague Philip Bump noted, “the 15 most populous states will be home to 67 percent of the U.S. population and represented by 30 percent of the Senate.” . . . Even before Trump came along, Republicans had shown their willingness to use any means necessary to exercise power. Look at the bare-knuckle efforts in the 2000 election — from the “Brooks Brothers Riot” to a blatantly political Supreme Court decision — to stop the Florida recount and avert a possible Al Gore victory. Or look at the refusal by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to give a vote to President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in 2016 on the grounds that it was an election year, while rushing through the confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee just days before the 2020 election. Trump’s ascent turbocharged the Republican revolt against democracy. He employed a “declaration of emergency” to spend money on a border wall that Congress hadn’t funded. He used military aid in an attempt to buy Ukraine’s political help. He abused his position for personal financial gain. He politicized the Justice Department, the Homeland Security Department, the State Department, the intelligence community — even the National Weather Service. He demonized the press as the “enemy of the people,” accused his opponents of treason and sent security forces to attack peaceful protesters. He jettisoned any Republican commitment to principle and instead produced a party platform whose only tenet is fealty to the supreme leader and his nebulous agenda.Many Republicans seethed in private but supported these undemocratic acts in public. They became Trump’s willing collaborators. Now we see where that has led.”
11.24 David Dinkins dies at 93.
11.21 Skeletal remains of what are believed to have been a rich man and his male slave attempting to escape death from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago were discovered in Pompeii. Officials said the men apparently escaped the initial fall of ash from Mount Vesuvius then succumbed to a powerful volcanic blast that took place the next morning. The remains of the two victims, lying next to each other on their backs, were found in a layer of gray ash at least 2 meters deep, they said. Archaeologists poured liquid chalk into the cavities, or void, left by the decaying bodies in the ash, giving the shape and position of the victims in the throes of death.
11.19 Biden: “[Trump] is one of the most irresponsible presidents in American history… I’m confident he knows he hasn’t won, and is not going to win, and we’re going to be sworn in on Jan. 20.”
11.19 A copy of Detective Comics #27, the very first appearance of Batman, has sold at auction for $1.5 million, becoming the most expensive comic book starring The Dark Knight ever sold.
11.19 At a press conference in which he continued to baselessly impute election fraud, Rudy Giuliani melted down.
11.18 Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic: “Understanding the pandemic this week requires grasping two thoughts at once. First, the United States has never been closer to defeating the pandemic. Second, some of the country’s most agonizing days still lie ahead.”
11.17 Steven Teles in the Times: “Unlike the more homogeneous Republicans, the Democrats have no choice but to be a confederation of subcultures. We need to develop internal norms of pluralism and coexistence appropriate to a loose band of affiliated politicians and groups, rather than those of a party that is the arm of a cohesive social movement.”
11.17 Robin Givhan in The Washington Post: “Trump doesn’t even look like he’s having a particularly good time golfing. He simply appears to be avoiding the dreadfulness of his responsibilities. Such is his privilege.”
11.17 Michael Gerson in The Washington Post: “Trump is not only refusing to provide leadership during a rapidly mounting health crisis; he is also sabotaging the ability of the incoming Biden administration to cooperate with leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. By disrupting the presidential transition during an unfolding covid-19 disaster, Trump is engaging in American history’s most deadly sulk.”
11.16 Michelle Goldberg in the Times: “Moderates need radicals to expand their scope for action. Radicals need moderates to wield power in a giant heterogenous country with sclerotic institutions and deep wells of reaction. Neither camp could have defeated Donald Trump on its own. It’s frustrating now, as it was heartbreaking in 2004, that revanchist Republicans retain such a hold on America. But that’s all the more reason for Democrats to stop their counterproductive sniping and work together to beat them.”
11.16 Jodi Diering, an ER nurse in South Dakota, says via Tweet that her Covid-19 patients often “don’t want to believe that Covid is real. . . Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be… Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred. . . The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is going to ruin the USA.. . .They do all this, she said, “while gasping for breath” on oxygen. “They tell you there must be another reason they are sick,” she wrote. “They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have COVID, because it’s not real. Yes. This really happens. . . I can’t stop thinking about it. These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated.”
11.15 Obama on 60 Minutes: “I don’t hold the tech companies entirely responsible … because this predates social media. It was already there. But social media has turbocharged it. I know most of these folks. I’ve talked to them about it. The degree to which these companies are insisting that they are more like a phone company than they are like The Atlantic, I do not think is tenable. They are making editorial choices, whether they’ve buried them in algorithms or not. The First Amendment doesn’t require private companies to provide a platform for any view that is out there.”
11.13 Paul Hornung dies at 85.
11.13 Rep. Elissa Slotkin: “We sometimes make people feel like they aren’t conscientious enough. They aren’t thoughtful enough. They aren’t ‘woke’ enough. They aren’t smart enough or educated enough to just understand what’s good for them. … It’s talking down to people. It’s alienating them.”
11.13 The Miami Marlins named Kim Ng general manager. She is the first woman to hold the title.
11.13 In London, a new statue honoring Mary Wollstonecraft is met with “dismay and bafflement.” Washington Post: British journalist Caitlin Moran posted a witty twitter crusade against the sculpture, asking why a great female writer must be depicted as “hot and naked.” Pointing out the double-standard, she tweeted, “I just KNOW, the streets will soon be full of statues depicting John Locke‘s shiny testicles, Nelson Mandela‘s proud penis, and Descartes’ adorable arse.” But feminist scholars in the U.S. were more circumspect. Elaine Showalter tells me, “My first reaction was horror at what seemed like a degrading representation of Mary Wollstonecraft. But looking more carefully one can see that the newspaper photographs distort the dimensions and the meaning of the actual statue. The nude female figure is tiny and emerges from a large tumultuous swirl of forces. It’s not Wollstonecraft, but the birth of feminism, the rights of woman freeing herself from the weight of history and custom.” Charlotte Gordon, the author of Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley, tells me, “In some ways this controversy is a true reflection of the legacy of Wollstonecraft, who challenged the sexual mores of her time, and was hated and loved for it ever since. I applaud the efforts of the group to get this statue built and am happy that people are discussing Wollstonecraft’s legacy with passion. Better this than a yawn.”
11.11 Axios: Geography, rather than race or age, paints the clearest picture of President Trump‘s defeat — and illustrates the demographic trends that could hurt Republicans in future elections. Suburbs — which are growing, are racially and ethnically diverse, and are becoming new immigrant hubs — have shifted toward Democrats. Every sizable Pennsylvania county surrounding Philadelphia had a bigger Democratic margin than in 2016. That leftward shift repeated itself in areas around Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Dallas, Austin and Charlotte. Blue areas got even bluer, while rural areas dug in for Trump. n Georgia, Biden’s margin over Trump in populous Cobb and Gwinnett counties was 12 points higher than Clinton’s in 2016. The white working class vote in the Midwest didn’t deliver victory for Biden, even though that was one of his key selling points in the Democratic primary. Latino support for Trump grew in several key regions — not just in Miami. The results highlight the complexity and diversity of the Latino vote in the U.S. While Democrats’ focus on Latino communities in Arizona might have helped Biden flip the state, they seemingly lost ground in Florida and Texas. Hispanic erosion was catastrophic for Democrats in many places,” Dave Wasserman of The Cook Political Report told Axios. Three heavily Latino counties in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, while still supporting Biden, all swung by 19+ points toward Trump compared to 2016.
11.10 Frank Figliuzzi on MSNBC: “We’re coming very close to having what the bureau calls a barricaded subject. The barricaded subject is in the White House.”
11.9 When an interviewer from GQ asked “People have been wondering in interviews when you’re going to die for the last 50 years. How satisfying is it to still be here?”, Keith Richards replied, “Every day is a pleasure. I mean, I don’t wish to defy anybody’s predictions and I’m really not interested in them. But I’ll croak when I croak and everybody will know.”
11.9 Dwayne Johnson: “My vote represented my little girls. It also represented humanity, decency [and] principles and values [wife Lauren Hashian] and I instill in our little daughters. And finally, my vote represented the importance of just being a decent human being. And to me, being a decent human being matters. This win feels so good, but now the real work begins,” he continued. “Because we have an entire country divided. I’m not turning my back on you just because we have a difference of opinion. I’m not made that way. I’m still right here and when the sun comes up, we all get up with it — go to work, feed our families and pay our bills.”
11.9 The Irish Times
11.9 The Washington Post: When news broke Saturday that Donald Trump’s reign was ending, the president was on a golf course that he owns in Virginia, playing his last round as a non-loser. In Washington, about 125 of his worshipful supporters gathered on the stoop of the Supreme Court to “stop the steal,” then circumnavigated the U.S. Capitol seven times, because that’s how the Israelites conquered Jericho, according to the Book of Joshua. And Rudy Giuliani made a defiant stand on the gravelly backside of Four Seasons Total Landscaping in an industrial stretch of Northeast Philadelphia, near a crematorium and an adult-video store called Fantasy Island, along State Road, which leads — as being associated with Trump sometimes does — to a prison.
11.7 Alex Trebek dies at 80
11.7 On his podcast, Steve Bannon calls for the beheading of Anthony Fauci.
11.7 Pennsylvania goes for Biden, giving his more than 270 electoral votes, and the presidency. Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to be elected to constitutional executive office.
11.6 A head writer on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Rebecca Drysdale, has departed the show: “I am making the decision for myself to never work on, write, or be involved with, another Trump sketch ever again. . . . I can’t decide the outcome of this election, but I can make the choice for myself, to vote him out of my creative life.”
11.6 Amber Phillips in The Washington Post: “Democrats must be asking themselves, if the election was this close despite polls showing Americans’ disapproval of Trump, what happened?
11.6 Trump via Twitter: “I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST. The OBSERVERS were not allowed, in any way, shape, or form, to do their job and therefore, votes accepted during this period must be determined to be ILLEGAL VOTES. U.S. Supreme Court should decide!”
11.5 Anderson Cooper on CNN: “We have never seen, really, other than- well, I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this from a president of the United States. It’s sad and it’s truly pathetic. And of course, it’s dangerous and of course, it will go to the courts but if you’ll notice, the president did not have any evidence presented at all. Nothing. No real actual evidence of any kind of fraud. That is the president of the United States. That is the most powerful person in the world and we see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun, realizing his time is over, but he just hasn’t accepted it and he wants to take everybody down with him, including this country.”
11.5 Trump: “This is a case where they’re trying to steal an election, They’re trying to rig an election, and we can’t let that happen.”
11.4 Dov Seidman, author: “Whatever the final vote, it is already clear that the number of Americans saying, ‘Enough is enough’ was not enough. There was no blue political wave. But, more importantly, there was no moral wave. There was no widespread rejection of the kind of leadership that divides us, especially in a pandemic.’’
11.3 Presidential election day ends without the winner being identified
11.1 From Moscow: A Russian oligarch, nicknamed The Sausage King, has been murdered with a crossbow in an outdoor sauna