NBC calls Democrat Conor Lamb the victor in Pennsylvania special election.

We have the Washington numbers and NBC is calling Conor Lamb the apparent winner in PA-18

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) March 14, 2018

I tried to stay up and watch this whole thing, but then the wine kicked in and I was done.

Kornacki did a great job though, so I thought I would use his tweet in my post about this amazing race.

Five Thirty Eight also backs NBC's announcement that Lamb is the winner here:

As of 8 a.m. Wednesday, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, Lamb leads by 641 votes, or 0.28 percentage points. And he and Democrats have claimed victory. 

The exact margin will likely change,1 but it’s going to be very difficult for Saccone to make up that deficit. The only votes left to be counted are around 200 absentee ballots in Greene County (expected to be announced on Wednesday) as well as a handful of provisional and overseas ballots, which may take days to finalize. There may not even be 641 ballots left to count. 

Nor is a recount likely to change the final result. Although it would be pretty easy for Republicans to request a recount should they want one, recounts typically don’t shift election margins by that much. That’s especially true in Pennsylvania, where most voting is done on electronic touchscreens; a recount would only reveal errors in the small population of paper ballots.

Of course Saccone is not conceding as of yet, and with it this incredibly close I don't really blame him.

However this whole thing is simply amazing, no Democrat should have even had a chance in this race, and the fact that Lamb won (?) should terrify the Republican party moving forward into 2018.

And this might give them a couple of nightmares as well.

Our election night poll in PA-18 found that health care was a defining issue in the race. 52% said it was either the most important issue or very important in their vote, and Conor Lamb won those voters 62-38: https://t.co/1D00GVRY5k

— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) March 14, 2018

Do you feel that blue wave a coming?

Because I certainly do. 

So does the Constitution have a provision to deal with a fraudulent presidential election? The short answer is "no."

Courtesy of FiveThirtyEight:  

For all the headlines about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, no hard evidence has come to light, at least publicly, showing that President Trump or his team were involved. But suppose that such evidence did come to light — what would happen if it became clear that Trump or his advisers colluded with the Russians?1 This isn’t the only type of wrongdoing the investigations could uncover, but it’s among the most serious because it would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2016 result. So, is there a process for dealing with a finding that in essence invalidates an election? 

When it comes to presidential elections, the answer is: not really. The laws and processes around national elections have grown up in a piecemeal fashion over time, with state and local laws governing the administration of presidential elections. And the Constitution itself focuses more on ensuring stability than on administering elections. As a result, there aren’t clear procedures for how to handle questions of legitimacy after the fact — especially when those questions involve the presidency.

FiveThirtyEight dives deep into the whys and why nots, that the framers of the Constitution took into consideration when creating the document that is at the heart of our democracy.

However for the purposes of this post I will skip all of that detail and just get to the rather disappointing punchline:

In most of the historical cases, the main question was how the Electoral College votes would be allocated in each state. Once those have been cast, the case for questioning a presidential election or gauging which side really won becomes a lot more difficult. Of course, the Constitution does have one mechanism for undoing the results of an election: impeachment. That process, however, is focused on individual wrongdoing (or, through a separate process, inability), not electoral irregularities. In that sense, even if collusion revelations did lead to Trump’s impeachment and removal from office, the process wouldn’t really address the question of whether his election had been legitimate in the first place. 

The lack of an established process for reviewing elections points to a larger issue: The structures established by the Constitution assumed a world in which the presidency and the Electoral College were not fully absorbed into a contentious national party system. That vision has long since been replaced by one in which presidential elections are national contests over policy agendas and ideas. The text of our Constitution has never been changed to reflect this reality. Instead, the Electoral College remains the final word on who gets to be president. When it comes to the possibility that the winning side colluded with a foreign power to influence the election outcome, the Constitution doesn’t offer much in the way of a plan.

This is probably something that Vladimir Putin understood better than your average voter.

There are no do overs in presidential politics.

Once into the Oval Office a bad president can be like an intestinal parasite latching on firmly, too far out of reach for easy removal.

Perhaps we can impeach Donald Trump, that does not mean that we can replace him with anyone better, or that we can stop the destructive policy decisions that he and the Republicans are putting in place as we  speak.

We often hear that elections have consequences, and perhaps that has never been more true than the election of 2016.

The numbers fluctuate back and forth to some degree but this is essentially where things have stood ever since the last debate.

 Take solace in the numbers, but then go out in vote.

Unless you already have of course, in which case just prepare for the Trump supporter freakout that is sure to come on November 9th.

Polls show a close race in Alaska? In Alaska? Oh....My...God!

Polls show a close race in Alaska (!), putting the Clinton-wins-every-state-that-touches-an-ocean map into play. https://t.co/mRHuPB7DiA pic.twitter.com/a26dFEIZvO

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 17, 2016

Okay first off as all of you know this has been a fantasy of mine since......let's go with forever.

Internally Alaska is not as blood red as our presidential voting shows us to be, we elect plenty of Democrats in local elections, and yet every year since 1964 we always vote GOP.

But this year, but this year, but this year....I cannot even bring myself to say it.

However I do want to say that if you are one of the many, many Bernie Sanders supporters here in Alaska that came out to caucus in the primaries, and you want to show your strength to the political power structures here in the state, in order to take a more active role in choosing which direction we take next, coming out in numbers large enough to make the state go blue this election cycle would give you the kind credibility as a group that would be impossible to ignore.

I'm just saying.

By the way it is still really not that close up here, as of right now according to Five Thirty Eight, the projection suggests a 66.6% chance for Trump and only 33.2% chance for Hillary.

However at least one recent poll shows them in virtual tie.

Is anybody else's heart beating super fast right now? Or is that just me?

Even Fox News polls show that Hillary Clinton destroyed Donald Trump in the debate. And her poll numbers have gone up as a result.

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

A Fox News poll released Friday confirmed what other scientific surveys have found in the aftermath of the first presidential debate: Hillary Clinton prevailed over Donald Trump in the affair, and she has seen a slight overall national bump because of it. 

The poll, which was conducted entirely after the debate, found that 61% of voters who watched the debate viewed Clinton as the winner. Just 21% thought Trump came out on top.

Okay just take a moment to look at these numbers.

This is not just eking out a victory, or even beating somebody handily. 61 to 21 is stomping him into a mud hole and taking a week's worth of lunch money.

Of course there is one person who completely disagrees with these polling results. 

I won the debate if you decide without watching the totally one-sided "spin" that followed. This despite the really bad microphone.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2016

And since the debate we have watched Trump making things infinitely worse by having a Twitter meltdown over Miss Venezuela.

That is like beating a man in a boxing ring and then having him fall down the stairs while exiting the building, and then being hit by oncoming traffic as he crosses the street to his car.

And the effect of this?

Courtesy of Fox News:

A new Fox News poll shows Hillary Clinton has a slight lead over Donald Trump after the first presidential debate. 

On "Special Report" tonight, Bret Baier revealed that in a four-way presidential race, Clinton got 43 percent, compared to 41 percent earlier this month.

Remember folks this is a Fox News poll.

There are also a number of state polls showing Hillary making significant gains as well.  Including in some swing states.

And it has been enough for the folks over at FiveThirtyEight to make this observation: 

National polls conducted since Monday’s presidential debate have shown Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by an average of about 4 percentage points — a meaningful improvement from her position before the debate, when she led by just 1 or 2 points. Now, it’s becoming clearer that battleground state polls are moving toward Clinton as well.

There was an attempt by the Right Wing, including some talking heads on Fox News, to use those unreliable online polls to create the narrative that Trump had done much better than expected, but now that the more trustworthy polls, including one Fox News itself,  are showing just the opposite it is going to be much harder for them to continue lying to themselves.

Not impossible mind you, but much harder.

So what does this all mean?

Well essentially as long as Hillary Clinton is not filmed stomping on kittens she should have this thing in the bag.

And hopefully Trump will follow through with his threat to use Bill's past infidelities to attack Hillary in the next debate, because that can do NOTHING but help Democrats in the long run.

Good news for Donald Trump, the media says poll numbers are up and the campaign is making a comeback. Bad news, it's the Russian media.

Courtesy of Sputnik News:

Donald Trump appears to have made a political comeback for the ages, but the media has gone silent about a major new poll that shows the Republican has catapulted back into the lead instead showing their viewers polls from three weeks ago. 

Following a major shake-up in his campaign’s leadership with the hiring of seasoned political operative Kellyanne Conway to manage the effort and controversial Brietbart CEO Steve Bannon to consult on messaging, Donald Trump has seen a meteoric rise in daily tracking polls jumping eight points to somersault past Hillary Clinton calling the corporate media’s coronation of the former Secretary of State into question. 

The poll, released by USC/LA Times asks a portion of 3,000 US citizens randomly across all households and demographic groups who they prefer for president. The poll is conducted each day to measure any volatile shifts in the candidates’ performance and to gauge the momentum of the race. 

The poll finds that Trump now holds a two point lead over Clinton, nationally. The poll found Donald Trump seven points ahead of Hillary Clinton at the start of the Democratic National Convention marred by WikiLeaks revelations of a coordinated effort by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, and the mainstream media to undermine the electoral chances of opponent Bernie Sanders. The press were actually told to report spoon fed lines from political operatives “without attribution” in order to create a false narrative. Esteemed journalists such as dean of the Nevada political press corps and MSNBC correspondent Jon Ralston happily did as they were told.

Wow! That sounded like it could have come directly from Breitbart News instead of a Russian new outlet.

As you might imagine that USC/LA Times poll is an outlier and a quick check over at Real Clear Politics shows that most of the polling has Hillary up significantly over Trump in every other poll.

Of course to get the straight poop the best source is Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight: 

Hillary Clinton moved into a clear polling lead over Donald Trump just after the Democratic convention, which ended on July 28. Pretty much ever since, the reporters and poll watchers that I follow have seemed eager to tell the next twist in the story. Would Trump’s numbers get even worse, possibly leading to the first double-digit victory for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964? Or would Trump mount a comeback? As of last Tuesday, there wasn’t much evidence of an overall shift in the race. Trump was gaining ground in some polls but losing ground in a roughly equal number of them. 

Since then, Trump has gotten some slightly better results, with national polls suggesting a race more in line with a 5- or 6-percentage-point lead for Clinton instead of the 7- or 8-point lead she had earlier in August. But state polls haven’t really followed suit and continue to show Clinton with some of her largest leads of the campaign. Trump received some decent numbers in Iowa and Nevada, but his polls in other swing states have been bad. 

Overall, Trump has gained slightly in our forecasts: He’s up to a 15 percent chance of winning the Electoral College in our polls-only model, up from a low of 11 percent a week ago. 

In other words Trump is still getting slaughtered, but the slaughter is only slightly less bloody.

However for the Russian news agency that signifies a "comeback."

Is this the moment in time that we can stop arguing that Russia is NOT trying to get Donald Trump elected? 

I have been saying for awhile now that Hillary Clinton needs to win this election by a landslide. Here is what that might look like.

Courtesy of FiveThirtyEight:

In a normal presidential election, both candidates raise essentially unlimited money and staff their campaigns with hundreds of experienced professionals. In a normal presidential election, both candidates are good representatives of their party’s traditional values and therefore unite almost all their party’s voters behind them. In a normal presidential election, both candidates have years of experience running for office and deftly pivot away from controversies to exploit their opponents’ weaknesses. In a normal presidential election, both candidates target a broad enough range of demographic groups to have a viable chance of reaching 51 percent of the vote. This may not be a normal presidential election because while most of those things are true for Clinton, it’s not clear that any of them apply to Trump.

Now Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight by no means suggests that Hillary WILL beat Donald Trump for certain, much less in a landslide victory.

But considering the circumstances  of this election that possibility does exist.

Here are a couple of examples of what we might see in November if indeed that is the case.

I like it. That's a good solid win.

However don't forget that Trump is going to cry foul and claim the election was stolen, so a much bigger margin would be preferable.

Oh yeah, that's much better.

Bill Clinton won Missouri twice and South Carolina seems to up for grabs this time as well. So this could be a very likely scenario.

But you know what? I would like to see an even bigger margin if possible.

Wow, Texas going blue, and Alaska!

Damn wouldn't that be something?

Let me just say how over the moon I would be if my state finally voted for Democratic nominee in a presidential election for the first time since 1964.

It's unlikely though right?

But if we turn out in significant numbers we might come close to seeing something like this come to fruition. Never hurts to try, right?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have managed to convince at least five young people so far to register this year for the first time, and I can guarantee that none of them are going to vote for Trump.

If we all try to do that, well then just maybe dreams CAN come true.

This is what it would look like if every woman in the country would refuse to vote for Donald Trump.

Courtesy of Daily Kos:

From Nate Silver: Exclusive @FiveThirtyEight projection on what the Electoral College would look like if women refuse to vote Trump.

Boy do I suddenly feel completely unnecessary. 

I swear that if the women actually did this, and even turned Alaska blue, that I would be their slave forever. 

Not that I haven't always been but still.

Okay kids it's another primary day. But then right now isn't every day a primary day? Update!

MICHIGAN, MISSISSIPPI, HAWAII, IDAHO, GO VOTE! I don't care how you vote, just DO IT! #primaryday pic.twitter.com/g9sQYHtCTm

— Elise Griswold (@GrizzyGalore) March 8, 2016

So what's on the menu for today?

Let's see on the Democrat side we have Michigan with 130 delegates and Mississippi with 36.

According to Fivethirtyeight Hillary has a 99% chance of wining Michigan and since Mississippi has a large African American community she will undoubtedly win there as well.

As for Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican clown car, they have Michigan (59 delegates) which 538 predicts will go for Trump, Mississippi (40 delegates) where Trump also leads, Hawaii (19 delegates) where I have no idea which way the balmy wind is blowing, and Idaho (32 delegates) where Trump is currently in the lead.

So essentially is appears that there will be no surprises tonight.

But then again that's what everybody says until they get surprised.

Update: MSNBC is calling Mississippi for Hillary, and categorizing it as a HUGE win.

Update 2: Trump is now the projected winner in Mississippi. No surprises so far.

Update 3: Trump projected to win Michigan on the Republican side, and it is still too close to call for the Democrats.

Update 4: Okay so finally they called Michigan for Sanders, but only by the slimmest of margins. It looks like all of the pollsters were wrong about this one.

Update 5: Cruz wins Idaho. 

After the Super Tuesday results the road to victory for Bernie Sanders seems more filled with obstacles than ever before.

My daughter and I sat here in my office last night and watched the returns.

To say that the debate became passionate would be an understatement.

One of the main points of contention was the question of Bernie's path moving forward.

My personal take was that it was now virtually non-existent.

And it seems I am not alone in that perception.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Bernie Sanders has vowed to fight for the presidential nomination until the Democratic convention, but the results this evening suggest that he is not anywhere close to being on track to amass a majority of pledged delegates. 

Hillary Clinton’s landslide margins in the South and her competitiveness elsewhere translate to an overall lead of around 15 to 20 percentage points nationwide. Her support is anchored by a huge advantage among black voters, who represent nearly a quarter of Democratic voters and have offered her more than 80 percent of their votes — a tally rivaling or even exceeding the share won by Barack Obama in 2008. 

Mr. Sanders, despite pockets of strength, has not fared well enough to overcome such a huge deficit among black voters. 

Not even a few feel-good wins in states like Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma will change that. Mr. Sanders would have needed big wins in these states — by much more than 20 percentage points — to entertain the possibility of overcoming his enormous deficit in the South, where the majority of Democrats are African-American.

Here's more courtesy of The Guardian:  

It’s time for some cold hard truths in this presidential election. 

Here’s an ice cold one: winning a landslide victory in the mighty state of Vermont is not a foundation for success. Especially if Vermont has been your home since the Jurassic age of politics. 

Here’s another: if you hold a victory rally before most of the states have been called, you’re not fooling anyone. When your victorious supporters have emptied the hall before the TV pundits have barely warmed up, you’re actually throwing a consolation party.

And a little more from Fivethirtyeight: 

To borrow a phrase from Dan Rather, Hillary Clinton swept through the South like a big wheel through a Delta cotton field on Super Tuesday. She won seven states total, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia in the South. She also won Massachusetts and American Samoa. Bernie Sanders emerged victorious in four states (Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Vermont), but his victories tended to come by smaller margins and in smaller states. The end result is that Clinton has a clear path to winning the nomination, and Sanders’s only hope to derail her is for something very unusual to happen.

There are of course a few articles claiming that Sanders is still in the game, but only a handful. 

My daughter was adamant last night that Bernie supporters would never show up to the polls for Hillary, but I was just as adamant that she did not need them, and if they were GOOD Democrats they would vote for the candidate representing the party.

Like I said, it got passionate.

So what do all of you think?

Is this race coming to an end soon, or does Bernie have what it takes to disappoint Hillary for the second time in eight years?