WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Friday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- You had a dream, that there is now a president-elect and that all the uncertainty and anxiety of a long week started to fade away like long-ago birth pangs. In your dream President Trump summoned reporters and entered the White House press briefing room once again to … .
- The sound of Rep. Jim Jordan’s loud voice awakened you, as he’s saying something about one hundred thousand mail in ballots. And there’s Rep. Matt Gaetz, also on Fox News, saying Trump “is fighting for the rest of us.” He’s saying some wimpy Republicans are ready to throw in the towel. Author David Bossie says there were ballots where there were no GOP observers. “We are fighting for this president every minute. This corruption must end.” Jay Sekulow, on the president’s legal team, tells one of his clients, Fox’s Sean Hannity, that hopefully the entire Supreme Court will rule in favor the GOP complaint about late votes in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile Friday night Justice Samuel Alito ordered those late votes to be segregated. Did you miss Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel saying the lawsuits are concentrating on Pennsylvania and Michigan. How heartening to see the gang’s all here, in the Fox clubhouse, keeping the president’s hopes alive that his foe Joe Biden can be beaten back.
- Over on CNN, Gloria Borger is saying “It’s interesting how Republicans can walk this line,” choosing to either follow up on the president’s claims of Democratic machinations or back away. And there’s Wolf Blitzer saying the world awaits Joe Biden to speak as he is “closer and closer to becoming president of the United States.” The forces of good and evil arrayed against each other? Or is it evil and good. Anyway, the election that wouldn’t die is safely lodged on our screens, distracting us from the marauding virus that is dramatically worsening, reaching another 120,000 to 140,000 a day, killing a thousand or more victims. every 24 hours. You’ll find the latest White House case below.
- Let’s turn to the magic board and watch Pennsylvania pop up, and then shrink away to be replaced by Nevada, and Georgia. This or that combination or just Pennsylvania alone could put Biden “over the top.” Yet not yet with 99.5% certainty and so the networks and news services can’t call any of the last five states. The future of the country hangs suspended in mid air and maybe won’t descend to the hard earth, collapsing from the universe of possibilities to the single reality, for now or maybe not tomorrow or Sunday or .. for days of court rulings, recounts and new accusations and on and on until when? December 14? That’s when the states have to certify the results and not until then. The fight could boil on day after day. Best to slip away to dreamland again. Save your strength,
- For Biden, the choice of what tone to strike in a Friday night appearance before the cameras was a delicate one. Patience and confidence of winning? Showing how busy he is planning the hoped-for transition? It’s not the time, probably, to talk about the president watching the TV screens, on the phone goading his followers to fight harder, brooding about his enemies, thinking about who to fire.
- Finally, the lights go on and the man whose hopes came alive at 8:49a ET Friday morning when he took the lead in Pennsylvania can speak to the nation. Sure, it’s not prime time any more. It’s more than 14 hours later then that moment and there’s been no really substantial change since then. The totals have fluctuated yet overall remain on a gradual trajectory toward victory. Can’t be presumptuous. It can’t be a victory address.
- But first, let’s go to our reporter in Wilmington for the umpteenth time this week. What? She has nothing to say? She’s talked out? That’s not how to play this game. Talk, and keep talking until your tongue bleeds.
- “We don’t have a final declaration of victory yet,” Biden said as he finally got to read the Teleprompter. Yet, “It’s clear, we’re going to win this race.” He said he is on track for 300 electoral votes. So far, he said, he’s gotten more than 74 million votes and is beating Trump by more than 4 million. The vote counting “can be numbing.” But the votes represent voters. A record number of them “chose change” delivering a mandate on Covid, climate.
- Biden said he and Kamaal Harris are “not waiting to get to work.” They had a briefing on the worsening virus. Grieving families, he said, “are not alone.”
- The purpose of politics is not unending warfare. It’s to “give everybody a fair shot,” he said. We may be opponents “but we’re not enemies.” Biden finished by saying he hoped to talk again on Saturday.
- Shortly after Biden left the stage, CNN reported White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is the latest top White House official to test positive for the coronavirus. Never a big fan of masks, Meadows now will have to drop out of what’s become an Oval Office war- room operation.
- Next week’s economic data includes the two big monthly inflation reports, the Consumer Price Index and the business inflation index, the PPI. Kevin Kastner goes through the oncoming data points in his preview elsewhere on this macenews.com site. The morning’s monthly jobs report was better than expected though unemployment remains very high, as also detailed elsewhere on the site.
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