Everyone knew Georgia would eventually be called for Joe Biden, and now it has been on an “apparent” basis. (A manual hand recount is currently underway.) And Donald Trump has won North Carolina. These calls follow last night’s declaration that Biden has won Arizona. And so Biden has ended up with the same electoral count — 306 — that Trump accumulated in 2016 in his victory over Hillary Clinton.

TYT’s John Iadarola: “I think the Republican mind is flexible in that it is empty. And thus, like a garden hose…when a garden hose is empty it can be bent for whatever you need it to do.”

James Carville: “Pennsylvania’s gonna be fine. I’m not at all worried about Pennsylvania. Arizona is done. Nevada’s done. I’m keepin’ my eye on Georgia right now. At the end of the day this is not gonna be a particularly close election. Biden will win the popular vote by more than Obama did in 2012. He will probably…not certainly but probably end up with 307 [electoral] votes. I know it’s been nerve-wracking for a lot of people, but it’s not that close.”

Trump: Help me, Jesus…help me vanquish my enemies and lend a hand. I mean, I won and they’re trying to steal it.
Jesus: You sure?
Trump: I won it all. Georgia, Florida, North Carolina…look at the map. A wonderful, glorious thing.
Jesus: But Georgia’s still in play, no? The Atlanta vote is being counted as we speak.
Trump: But they’re trying to steal Pennsylvania, and it’s mine. I won it and they’re crooked thieves.
Jesus: Is Philly counted? Not until Friday or Saturday, I’ve heard.
Trump: The Democrats are evil. They’re manufacturing fake votes and throwing my ballots out.
Jesus: What’s my name?
Trump: Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus: Do you really expect me to step in and just…what, change your life with a wave of my hand?
Trump: It would be a good thing. The right thing.
Jesus: I don’t fix elections. I’m here to help you spiritually.
Trump: Can you get the Southern District of New York prosecutors off my back?
Jesus: I don’t do that either.
Trump: But I need your help. Or…you know, your guidance. I need to serve for another four years. I’m trying to fulfill God’s plan, as you know.
Jesus: You think?
Trump: The Evangelicals love me. They want me to strike down Roe vs. Wade. It’s my destiny.

I realize that Joe Biden‘s odds of winning appear to be reasonably good at this point. 264 electoral votes thus far, and he’ll be at 270 when he wins Nevada. But nothing substantial will be accomplished under a Biden administration with the Senate remaining in Republican hands.

I just can’t wrap my head around the loathsome Susan Collins and Lindsay Graham winning in their respective states (Maine, South Carolina).

So Biden has won Wisconsin and will almost certainly take Michigan and Nevada — 32 electoral votes. Still in doubt are Pennsyltucky (20) and Georgia (16) The idea is that the still-uncounted Atlanta vote eventually might tip Georgia in Biden’s favor, and that the same might eventually happen with the metropolitan Philadelphia vote in Pennsylvania.

Biden can afford to lose Pennsylvania if he wins Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. He’s currently ahead in all three states.

He could also prevail by winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But Pennsylvania is looking dicey. (To me anyway.) If Biden loses Pennsylvania and either Michigan or Wisconsin, he can still win if (a) the Atlanta vote him a Georgia win and (b) holds on to the Arizona plurality. Right?

“The Remaining Vote in Pennsylvania Appears To Be Overwhelmingly For Biden,” posted three hours ago (6:30 am Pacific) by N.Y. Times Nate Cohen:

“Joe Biden has won absentee ballots counted in Pennsylvania by an overwhelming margin so far, according to data from the Secretary of State early Wednesday. If he carried the remaining absentee ballots by a similar margin, he would win the state.

“President Trump leads by nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania as of 5 a.m. on Wednesday, and Mr. Biden’s chances depend on whether he can win a large percentage of the more than 1.4 million absentee ballots that remain to be counted.

“So far, Mr. Biden has won absentee voters in Pennsylvania, 78 percent to 21 percent, according to the Secretary of State’s office. The results comport with the findings of pre-election surveys and an analysis of absentee ballot requests, which all indicated that Mr. Biden held an overwhelming lead among absentee voters.

“If Mr. Biden won the more than 1.4 million absentee votes by such a large margin, he would net around 800,000 votes — enough to overcome his deficit statewide.”

10:55 pm [posted by a smart guy named Mike Vatis]: “Just a reminder for people losing their minds right now.  Biden was not really expected to win, and does not need to win, Texas, Florida, Georgia or North Carolina.  A landslide win by Biden that included some of those states would have been wonderful, a clear renunciation of Trumpism.  But the greater likelihood has always been that the race would come down to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — again.  

“Plus we’ve known for a long time now that the early vote counts (i.e., the ones you’re seeing now) in Michigan and Pennsylvania would comprise election-day votes, which would favor Trump, as many Democrats voted by mail or voted early, and those votes are tallied later.  And we’ve also known that, because of the way different votes are counted in these key states, Trump’s strategy has been to (a) declare victory tonight or tomorrow morning based on the early vote counts, and (b) use the courts (and public disturbances) to stop the counting of any mail-in votes after tonight.  

“DON’T PLAY INTO HIS STRATEGY BY WETTING YOUR PANTS, PEOPLE!  

“All the votes must be counted, period.  We won’t know the results for several days.  That has always been the likely scenario, and that is what everyone should have been preparing for.  Don’t let dashed hopes of a resounding early victory for Biden now drive you into Trump’s trap of believing that Trump somehow won.  

“Also: Biden has an alternative path — if he does not win Pennsyltucky, but takes Wisco and Michigan, he can still get to 270 if he takes Arizona and the single electoral vote accorded to the Omaha congressional district.  That alternative path is still very much alive, too.  So there may still be some very good news tonight out of Arizona and Omaha.  And there may be some very good news out of Wisconsin early tomorrow morning (once Milwaukee county votes are tallied).  But Michigan and, especially, Pennsylvania, will take more time.  So be patient, and don’t do Trump’s work for him.”

10:45 pm: A recent 538 poll (posted on 11.2) had Demicratic challenger Sarah Gideon leading Republican incumbent Susan Collins in the Maine Senatorial race. The latest AP tally of today’s Maine vote has Gideon well behind Collins. In short, the 538 poll bore very little relation to what was in the minds of Maine voters.

9:55 pm: Anyone who claims he/she knew that the Biden vs. Trump vote would come down to a cliffhanger is lying. Two or three (including Joe Biden) predicted it would be closer than expected, but almost everyone believed that a decisive Biden victory was in the cards. Some were predicting a possible landslide.

What’s unfolding may well turn into a variation of Bush vs. Gore. Who knows? But what a mess, what a shocker. And there’s definitely something wrong with the polling industry. It’s infuriating that they got it so wrong.

Hey. So how’s everyone doing? pic.twitter.com/8I0XwuqM7F

— Marc Bernardin (@marcbernardin) November 4, 2020

:

9:10 pm: James Carville to MSNBC viewers — “Come down off the ledge, put away the razor blades and the Ambien….hang in there, we’re gonna be fine. The [final] count is gonna be good for Biden. I don’t mind putting the champagne on ice. I’ve waited four years for this…I don’t mind waiting another four days.”

As of right now (9:20 pm) Biden has 213 electoral votes vs. 136 for Trump. It’s all going to come down to the final tallies in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona — a good portion of the remaining votes being mail-ins.

7:50 pm: The tight numbers are horrifying. I’m going through an out-of-body experience. I feel like my brain is melting. I’m blaming the pandemic for his horrible evening, because we’re mainly talking about “live” voting and that means mostly Republican votes since righties don’t get Covid.

So yes, mail-in ballots could save Biden-Harris, but their stunning under-performance is mainly due to purported associations between Biden-Harris and hardcore p.c. lefty messaging….wokesters, cancel culture, looters, p.c. fanatics, Critical Race Theory, p.c. hatred of cisgender white guys, “Defund The Police” instead of “Re–Think The Police“, Robin DiAngelo‘s “White Fragility”, the Portland and Seattle marauders, the BLM ers and the Rosanna Arquette metaphor.

Yes, I know — there’s no rational reason to believe there’s strong linkage between the agendas of Joe Biden and odious wokesters, but how else to explain what’s happening?

You can’t tell me anyone gives a damn about Hunter Biden‘s laptop. Are older white cisgender male voters (including Cuban-Americans) afraid of Kamala Harris being President, considering Biden’s advanced age? I believe it has to be the wokester factor. Two years ago an Atlantic article reported that a vast majority of Americans hate cancel culture. Tonight they registered their displeasure, or so I strongly suspect.

Yes, Virginia…the woke left may (I say “may”) have pulled off the seemingly impossible — i.e., getting a compulsively lying, incompetent, sociopathic brute re-elected President of the United States. Maybe. Rank evil may actually triumph again. Trump supporters are voting for a form of social suicide and climate destruction They actually voted to support recklessness, incompetency and stinking-to-high-heaven corruption.

If I was a pollster I would be thinking about ways to obscure or camoflauge my appearance…fake noses, fake beards, fat suits, Woody Allen-styled fishing hats. Mobs with clubs and ax handles will be out looking for them on Wednesday morning, and I wouldn’t altogether blame them.

All along the argument against Trump has been irrefutable, but somehow the radical left has managed to weaken or dilute the argument for Biden, which is ridiculous given that he’s never been and never will be in any kind of wokester pocket. He’s a sensible, practical old-school center-lefty.

I can’t believe this is happening. I’m almost having trouble breathing. This could still come down to mail-in ballots…right? Plus all the predictions about Democrats ending up flipping the Senate in their favor…even that isn’t happening. Lindsay Graham and Susan Collins have been re-elected! Good effing God!

6:55 pm: I don’t like all these close races. Same day voting is favoring Trumo; mail-ins will mostly help Biden. There are nonetheless millions of voters out there who are flat-out loose-screw nihilists…they want to give an incompetent, lying criminal another four years, if only to spite the wokesters.

North Carolina numbers are driving me crazy. Trump has taken the lead in Ohio. Once the Pennsylvania mail-in ballots are counted (probably by Friday), it’ll be okay. I’m nonetheless nervous, anxious, biting my nails. And I’m feeling really angry at the pollsters. I want to literally punch them out.

Friendo: “The polls are off like they were in 2016. There should be a total overhaul of the polling formula. I hope to God this doesn’t extend for weeks and weeks. There’d better not be recounts.” Journo pally: “I’m feeling some 2016 deja vu.”

5:25 pm: A mere Biden victory will not be emotionally satisfying. I want Biden to beat Trump badly, or at least fairly badly. Right now…who knows? And what’s with those Trump-supporting Latino males?

5 pm: Red and blue states are voting accordingly. Biden has 85 electoral votes vs. Trump’s 55. Many millions want the beast to stay in the White House, and many other millions not only disagree but are slapping their foreheads in disbelief.

4:30 pm: This is like Oscar night only much, much better, so I guess I’ll start timestamping with running commentary starting around…uh, now. Biden has taken Virginia and Vermont, and will probably win North Carolina. Oh, and Trump has won Kentucky, West Virginia, South Carolina and…uhm, Indiana. In the cards. Florida will probably go for Trump. (Panhandle rubes + an apparently sizable percentage of Miami-Dade Latino males.) And also Georgia, it seems.

Trump: “Losing is never easy” pic.twitter.com/KzLJCwDvzS

— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) November 3, 2020

Friendo: How are you feeling about tomorrow?
HE: The Biden victory starts tomorrow night, concludes Thursday or Friday. Anyone who thinks that Tuesday’s returns will be an either-or, could-go-either-way, “who knows?” thing is living in a nether realm.
Friendo: It’ll come down to four states: Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
HE: Not North Carolina? Not Arizona?
Friendo: I think Trump has NC and maybe AZ, but this is based purely on advanced voting. My prediction is Trump has a slight lead over Biden before we find out the results of WI, PA, MI and MB and MN. This is going to the courts, bruh.
HE: A slight electoral lead over Biden until those four states come in?
Friendo: Three of those four states have installed rules to continue counting ballots until Friday
HE: Right.
Friendo: It’ll be too tight to declare a winner tomorrow, in my opinion. Trump won three of those four states in 2016 so Biden needs to flip them but he is leading in polling in each.
HE: A cliffhanger situation until Thursday or Friday? Naaahh. Tuesday tallies won’t be conclusive, but they’ll be pretty encouraging. If, God forbid, it somehow goes the wrong way regardless, everyone will be blaming wokesters and cancel culture.

Everyone who attended Kendall Jenner‘s birthday party last Saturday night (Halloween) had to first be insta-tested and given a clean bill of health before going upstairs. It isn’t cool to throw a big party these days, of course, but if you’re gonna say “fuck it, I don’t care, life is short, let’s do it anyway”, Kendall chose the right methodology.

The party happened at Harriet’s Rooftop atop WeHo’s 1 Hotel.

Roughly 100 coolios attended, including Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Jaden Smith, Hailey Baldwin, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West, Scott Disick, Kylie Jenner, Travis Scott, Paris Hilton, Justine Skye, Quavo, Winnie Harlow, Swaeetie and Doja Cat. I trust they had a good time and that the testing was efficient and everyone’s fine, etc . We’re all entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that includes the above. No one’s better than anyone else.

But I have a question. Imagine for the sake of imagining that Kendall’s guests were on a Los Angeles-to-Seoul flight aboard a privately-charted jumbo jet, and an hour or two past Hawaii the jet was shot down by terrorists and sank into the Pacific. Apart from the loss of life suffered by the crew, how exactly would the world be a lesser place as a result of this tragedy?

Imagine that a gathering of old-time Hollywood hotshots were all on a Pan American Clipper flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu in early 1939…Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Joel McCrea, Olivia De Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Don Ameche, Jean Arthur, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Victor Fleming, Alfred Hitchcock, Viven Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard, Ann Sheridan, Ray Milland, Rosalind Russell. And an hour or two west of Los Angeles the plane was shot down by Axis agents and sank into the Pacific. Would the world have been a lesser place?

Alan Ball‘s “somewhat autobiographically inspired Uncle Frank (Amazon, 11.26) hits a…successful balance between ensemble seriocomedy, Big Issues and a somewhat pressure-cooked plot. Set in the early ’70s, it casts the reliably deft Paul Bettany as a gay man forced to confront the Southern family to whom he’s stayed closeted. Even at its most manipulative, Uncle Frank remains polished and engaging. A big plus is Paul Bettany, who makes the title character’s residual Southern courtliness, acquired urbanity and painful psychological scars keenly felt.” — from Dennis Harvey’s 1.25.20 Variety review.

One look at Bettany tells you his character probably isn’t straight — the slender frame, the moustache, the extra-precise cut of his sports jacket, the way he holds his cigarette and touches his sternum during solemn discussions. His extended South Carolina-residing family senses something different about him, but they don’t spot the specifics. Or would rather not.

The weather in New York City was cold on Wednesday, 2.23.66. But that probably didn’t dissuade several hundred hearty souls from catching a film that evening. There was no pandemic (you could go anywhere, do anything!) and roughly 30 choices give or take, in large part because films hung around for months in second-run houses. No cable or streaming, of course, but theatres everywhere, including the Garrick at 152 Bleecker.

Rubber Soul was only a couple of months old. Bob Dylan‘s most recent album was Highway 61 Revisited (and Blonde on Blonde, which wouldn’t pop until 6.20.66, was still being recorded). Aftermath, the next big Rolling Stones album, was also being worked on and wouldn’t surface until 4.15.66. Only elite musicians and college students were dropping acid at the time; middle-class kids wouldn’t take the plunge until the summer of ’67 and beyond. Anti-Vietnam War currents bad begun but hadn’t manifested in waves. But things were happening; you could feel it.

Roman Polanski‘s Repulsion opened on 2.23; ditto Jack Smight‘s Harper with Paul Newman and Arthur Hiller‘s Promise Her Anything with Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron. Arthur Penn‘s The Chase had opened five days earlier (2.18) and was still heavily hyped. Daniel Mann‘s atrocious Our Man Flint had opened a month earlier. David Lean‘s Dr. Zhivago (12.22.65) was playing at Leows’ Capitol; Martin Ritt‘s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (12.16.65), an anti-James Bond spy film and deeply admired for that, was playing in neighborhood houses. Robert Mulligan‘s Inside Daisy Clover had opened at the Radio City Music Hall on the same day, and was hanging on two months hence. George Axelrod‘s Lord Love A Duck (which I’ll never, ever see) had opened on 2.21. (9)

Carol Reed‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy, which had opened in October ’65, was selling reserved seats at Leows’ State. Robert Wise‘s The Sound of Music was still at the Rivoli after nine months. Even the stodgy and elephantine My Fair Lady, which had premiered on 10.21.64, was still playing twice a day at the Criterion. (3)

Jason Robards in A Thousand Clowns, which had opened on 12.13.65, was playing here and there. Two Sidney Lumet films released the previous year, The Pawnbroker and The Hill, were still viewable. King and Country, a 1964 Joseph Losey film, was also playing, Ditto The Servant, a Losey film that had opened in England in November ’63. Ted Kotcheff‘s Life At The Top, a sequel to Room at the Top and which had opened in mid December ’65, was kicking around. John Schlesinger‘s Darling had opened stateside in August ’65, but was still playing. (7)

Also on Manhattan screens: The Ipcress File, The Shop on Main Street, Laurence Olivier‘s Othello, Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Tony Richardson‘s The Loved One, Impossible on Saturday, The Flight of the Phoenix, The Battle of the Bulge, Juliet of the Spirits, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Made in Paris, Bambole. (12).

…and I saw a huge rogue wave breaking toward my ship, I would turn the ship away (“full steam ahead, left hard rudder!”) so that the crest of the wave would smash into the stern. Yes, the ship would be momentarily engulfed and might even be submerged for a few seconds but would then pop through like a cork and be pushed along by the sheer force of energy. It would then basically surf atop the whitewater like a boogie board. That way Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Ernest Borgnine, Carol Lynley and Red Buttons might live to see another day. The one thing you never want to let happen is to allow the tidal wave to hit you from the side — that invites capsizing.

The legend is that right after yelling “cut!”, director Irwin Allen would always ask “is everyone okay?”

Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes‘ All In: The Fight for Democracy, a 102-minute Amazon Prime doc about voter suppression and how it affected the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp, will debut on 9.18.20.

16 days earlier the Garbus-Cortes doc will have a special world premiere screening at the West Wind Solano Twin Drive-In (1611 Solano Way) in Concord. The event is co-sponsored by Mill Valley Film Festival honcho Mark Fishkin and Telluride Film Festival exec director Julie Huntsinger.

Team Hollywood Elsewhere would be delighted to attend but we’ll be in Arizona…sorry.

In November 2018 Democratic gubernatorial Stacey Abrams lost to Republican gubernatorial candidate (and ardent Trump supporter) Brian Kemp, by a margin of roughly 54,000 votes — 1,978,408 for Kemp vs. 1,923,685 for Abrams. It is widely agreed that Kemp, Georgia’s Secretary of State since 2010, had basically cheated his way to victory by way of voter suppression.

On a single day in late July 2017 Kemp had removed 560,000 Georgians from the voter rolls — voters who’d been flagged because they’d skipped one too many elections. Abrams would later call the purge the “use-it-or-lose-it scheme.”

On 8.11.18, the New York Times posted an article by Carol Anderson titled “Brian Kemp, Enemy of Democracy“, which explored Kemp’s unscrupulous voter suppression efforts. “Hackable polling machines, voter roll purges, refusing to register voters until after an election, the use of investigations to intimidate groups registering minorities to vote — Mr. Kemp knows it all,” Anderson wrote.