(Editor’s note: There’s a lot of crystal ball-gazing and apocalyptic fears about the election outcome. I’ve been covering and intensely following presidential elections for more than half a century; here is my scenario as to what things may look like the day after.)
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WASHINGTON – (Nov. 4) –There was, in fact, a moment of triumph for Donald Trump on Election Night, and it came early: A few minutes before 7 p.m. in the East, the networks projected him to win both Kentucky and Indiana by solid margins.
Any Trump supporters who saw that may have been elated – unless they noticed that his winning margins — 57 percent in Kentucky and barely 54 percent in Vice-President Mike Pence’s Indiana were down sharply from four years ago; he was getting about six percent less in each state.
After that, the electoral roof began to fall in. Slowly, at first; for the first time since 1980, South Carolina was too close to call when its polls closed at 7 pm. Trump would win it in the end, but only after it no longer mattered. What did matter came before the polls closed in the East an hour later. Florida tabulates its absentee ballots quickly, and Democratic nominee Joe Biden soon had a 300,000 vote lead.
“We can’t call this race before polls close in the panhandle,” CNN’s John King said, gesturing at his famous ‘magic wall,’ “but it becomes increasingly hard to see how President Trump finds the votes to make up the difference. Florida was shoved from center stage at 8 p.m. when most Eastern states closed their polls.
Michigan was called for Joe Biden before 8:30. Pennsylvania, which had more difficulty with the count, was said to be leaning to the former vice-president. Trump then began first calling FOX News and then issued a statement denouncing “obvious, massive fraud.”
The networks all called Florida for Biden at 8:49. By that time, the Democratic candidate had taken the lead in the national popular vote, something Hillary Clinton hadn’t done till after she conceded defeat in the wee hours, four years before.
Pennsylvania was declared for Biden before 10 p.m. By then, the math was clear. Joe Biden had 256 certain electoral votes as the polls closed at 11 p.m. in California, Washington and Oregon. One minute later, he was President-elect with 329.
Later, he added Hawaii, and the individual electoral votes in Nebraska and Maine, to reach 334. He addressed his supporters shortly before midnight, saying he was hoping to hear from President Trump, but that “I promise you that Vice-President Harris and I are going to build this nation back better starting Jan. 20.”
President Trump made no further statement, but was reported to be frantically telephoning congressional leaders; it is known that he tried, but failed, to reach Chief Justice John Roberts.
In many states, the overwhelming turnout and huge numbers of mail and absentee ballots did slow the count. Still, the shift in power was clear well before dawn. The 78 electoral votes of Texas, Ohio, Georgia and Iowa still remained undecided by morning, with Biden holding narrow leads in Ohio and Georgia and Trump ahead slightly in the other two. But even if all went for Trump, it would be meaningless in terms of the outcome. The electoral vote in the rest of the country stood at Biden 334; Trump, 126.
The nationwide popular vote at 8 a.m. stood at Biden, 57,771,324; Trump, 45,320,972, with many of the uncounted votes in the Democratic strongholds of California and New York. The Libertarian and Green Party candidates, who together polled nearly six million votes last time, had less than a million. Democrats also had at least 51 seats in the U.S. Senate and at least 249 in the House.
In any other election; that would be that — but this was the first presidential contest in U.S. history in which the incumbent had hinted he might not leave if he lost the election.
However, the drama both heightened and seemed closer to a solution when the 87-year-old President Pro Tem of the Senate. Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, called an unexpected news conference.
The nation had been expecting to hear from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had won reelection by an unexpectedly narrow margin. But Grassley said McConnell had asked him to announce that McConnell would step down from his leadership role in January, when he would have become minority leader.
Grassley, who said he was not a candidate for the post (“Are you nuts? We need someone young in there!”) had something else to say too. “I voted for President Trump. But he lost. In America, when you lose, you accept the result and move on. It’s time to move on.”
Three hours later, as an estimated 245 million Americans watched their screens, President Trump appeared. “Joe Biden won this election. He shouldn’t have. There was fraud, many people told me they saw illegal ballots. People were also misled by the fake news, scared by lies about the pandemic and voted for Biden.”
“They’ll want me back. You can trust me on this. Sleepy Joe won’t be in charge. I may come back in four years to fix the mess, you never know. Meanwhile, good luck to him and to this country, because you will need it.” He left without taking questions.
Despite predictions of violence, there were only a few brief incidents, all of which were swiftly ended by law enforcement authorities; in the worst of these, one alleged member of the Proud Boys was killed and two others wounded in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
U.S. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who reportedly wrote in his wife Ann’s name for President, said in brief remarks to a reporter that “we brought this on ourselves.” Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee, called on GOP national chair Ronna McDaniel to convene a conference on the future of the Republican Party.
However, other Republicans were calling on her to step down, and some said that Romney, the only GOP senator to vote to convict President Trump on impeachment charges, should replace her.
European stock markets jumped 20 percent on news that Trump had apparently lost. U.S. stock futures took a deep dive before the markets opened, but began to stabilize. By early afternoon, once it became clear that Trump apparently intended to leave, voluntarily if not gracefully, stocks had recovered and were showing modest gains.
