John carlin
11/04/2020 17:41
Clarín.com
World
Updated 11/04/2020 5:41 PM
After traveling for a week by car with my old friend Lenny through deep America, we return to his house in Boston and prepare to spend the election night in front of the television, like the rest of his compatriots.
Lenny is one of the lucky ones.
It is the American dream made flesh.
The son of an Irish-born taxi driver, he got his start in journalism at
Time
magazine
, got to know the world, chose to earn money, and got a job writing speeches and books for wealthy but illiterate bankers.
He also wrote speeches for President Bill Clinton.
It is the archetype of the Democratic voter
, or archetype plus.
Tremendously cultured (he knows more about my three countries -Spain, United Kingdom and Argentina- than I do), funny, witty, good people, Lenny has always been a great patriot, a proud American.
“My family crossed the Atlantic and we did well.
But luckily I have an Irish passport and if Trump wins it will be time to return.
The United States will cease to be my country.
I will be ashamed
.
No. More: I'll feel nauseous ”.
Like Lenny, tens of millions.
Like Lenny, the whole country in a nervous breakdown.
I read in a New York magazine that for most the suspense tonight will be like "waiting for the results of a biopsy."
20.00:
The Economist
magazine
calculated the average of the thousands of polls that have been done and says that Joseph Biden will sweep:
that he will win 350 of the votes of the electoral colleges
when he only needs 270 to be president.
The first numbers for Ohio and Florida, with almost half of the votes counted, indicate they got it right.
If Biden wins them, Trump falls.
9pm: Ohio and Florida choose Trump.
Votes from rural areas have been decisive.
Another hope, Texas - another possibility of Joe Biden stealing Republican territory from the orange monster - is fading as well.
There will be no win.
(Polls: never again, thank you.) In a moment of utter abnormality, orthodoxy prevails.
Democrats will conquer California and the entire West Coast, New York, and the Northeast;
the Republicans, the South and the Middle.
"The truth is that my vote and
that of almost everyone is useless,"
says Lenny, lamenting the original idea of "the founding fathers" to ignore the concept of an absolute majority to elect the president.
Lenore Kurek, a follower of President Donald Trump, in Michigan.
AP Photo
22.00: Everything will depend on four relatively low-population states, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The latter was where Lenny and I were last week.
We witnessed a Trump election rally in the rural town of Lancaster.
There were 15,000 people, almost all with bare faces and euphoric eyes.
"From afar, I hate them
," Lenny told me.
“Up close, they make me sad.
They are my people, the working class.
My father would have cried ”.
Better news: Arizona, start painting well for Uncle Joe.
The 'cowboys' come to the rescue.
23.00: The states already resolved appear on the TV screen.
New York, New Jersey, Vermont: Biden.
Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama: Trump.
To yawn.
"The racist South with Trump,"
Lenny says bitterly.
“We should have let them go in the 19th century.
We would have avoided civil war and all this shit now. "
12.00 pm: Arizona leans toward Biden;
Trump ahead in the other three states.
But the margin of victory will be very tight.
Trump will send armies of lawyers to question the outcome if he loses.
"There will be gigantic demonstrations
,
"
says Lenny, "if Trump gets his way and gets the idea that he won by judicial coup."
01.00: James Carville, Bill Clinton's election guru, says: “My message to the Democrats is don't go to the razor yet, don't cut your wrists.
I think we can win Georgia. "
The midnight surprise is that Biden could, perhaps, wrest this southern state from Trump.
Not all votes have been counted in Atlanta, where there is a black majority.
Trump, scared, drops his first tweet of the night.
"They are going to STEAL our elections."
We started.
The maniac instigating his faithful to violence
.
Lenny the patriot goes to sleep, muttering, "I want secession."
02.00: I'm alone at the front.
Trump appears.
Ask people to "stop voting."
("They've already voted, you idiot!" I yell at the TV).
What he means is that they stop "counting."
Sure, because he still has an advantage in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
As illegal, and childish, as wanting to stop a football game at minute 75 because your team is winning
.
And then he says, "This is a fraud on the American public."
How??
This was said in the Soviet Union;
This is said by the Cuban Communist Party today.
And now the president of the United States joins, delegitimizing the democratic system that brought him to the White House.
Insane is not the word.
The next.
03.00: Everything is still in the balance and I go to bed.
A friend from London calls me, a former British ambassador.
If Trump wins, he tells me, the United States will be a pariah state.
07.00: Nothing new, although Biden is making a comeback in Georgia and the other three crucial states.
I discuss with Lenny the outrage that Trump said.
"The worst thing," he says, "is that his people believe it."
If all.
Word of Trump, word of God.
Deep, deeply idiotic America
: let's not complicate it any further.
1:00 pm: Biden, 223 polling station votes, Trump, 213. Biden with very slight advantages, but few votes left to count and a feeling now that he will win.
It is an anecdote but it will win the national vote for sure, by more than two million.
We may not know the final result until tomorrow, or the day after.
Then the mess will come.
I'm getting ready to fly back home to Barcelona.
I tell Lenny that I feel bad leaving him in the trenches.
He smiles and imitating a German accent, he lets me know a classic from World War II movies, when they capture an Allied soldier.
"For you, Englishman," he says, "ze war is over."
For you, English, the war is over ”.
Good night, Private Lenny, and good luck.
Look also
Elections in the United States: Groundhog Day, in a small town in Pennsylvania
Elections in the United States: the fears of the day after