The Press Box - Election Night Reaction Pod

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker cover 2020's election night. They address votes in swing states, the needle, and media coverage, and then make predictions while results come in and a winner has yet to be announced. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis, a David Shoemaker of the Ringer here with your election night, instant reaction shrug emoji podcast. Because David, it's almost midnight on the East Coast. We don't know who the next president of the United States is going to be yet. And it doesn't sound like we're going to know until morning. Morning. That's being generous.

The last notes that I. that I copy and paste it into my working Google Doc over here is that Wisconsin just is multiple question marks. Michigan says they'll need until Friday for a final count and Pennsylvania still is not counted like over a million votes. So yeah, maybe morning, maybe morning. Yeah, they may have to cancel Wheel of Fortune to do election returns over the next couple of days. I want to do two things tonight. One, walk through the events of the evening so far. But first, before we get to that, just talk about the fact that we don't have a result yet. This David was not a Biden landslide that a lot of Democrats had hope for.

There are 200,000 plus people dead in the United States due to the coronavirus. Yeah. Donald Trump has mismanaged this virus and then some. Kids in cages. We could let you make the rest of the list. and yet it's coming down to a handful of states in the Midwest, Arizona, and maybe a stray electoral vote in Nebraska or Maine. What do you make of that? Well, I mean, I kind of struggled before we recorded with exactly how to say this and

what point of the show to say it, but you teed it up. I mean, there's hundreds of thousands of people dead from coronavirus in the United States. If we're going to agree that that's a salient political issue, then one has to kind of conclude that Joe Biden didn't make that stick on President Trump. Didn't make that I mean, didn't

well, I don't know if I want to say weaponized, but he didn't kind of make that a real negative to the point that it affected a whole lot of votes, it seems like. And it seems sort of stunning, but maybe that's as much of a partisan issue, or maybe that signal some sort of, I mean, the sort of divide that we all, you know, gleefully point out after the fact that we've turned a blind eye to, um, I mean, honestly, it's, I mean, if you think about it abstractly, I guess it's not hard to, it's not hard to conceptualize someone who sees this as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, is a, a, is a, a, that, that, that, that, that, that part of it is, is, is, is pretty.

amazing. Between active God and failure of the president, I ask, why choose? Why can't it be both? No, to your point, I saw this tweet from Vincent Cunningham at the New Yorker earlier. He said, of course you can believe it's this close, right? In this age of political polarization, of course it really wasn't going to be a blowout where Joe Biden won Florida, you know, flipped Georgia, right made inroads into texas again some of those states have not been called yet but it looks like bad news for biden in all those places of course it was going to be a grinded out election that came down to a handful of states but it's still pretty amazing because you say salient political issue if a virus raging out of control in the united states is not a salient political issue what is

what could possibly be well i guess i guess the argument would be that if you don't blame for it then you sort of give Trump a pass on all the other usual metrics because of it right it's like a complete flip like you can't you don't get you don't you don't knock Trump for the economy if you don't blame him for COVID right so I mean those things are I think it's not just a blind eye situation I think it's a total fun house mirror thing but you're right I mean it was it's been a it's not really a roller coaster ride of a night it's been um you know for a night that's ending with great possibility. It does feel like it's sort of been the roller coasters,

been going downhill the whole night, or at least, or more, maybe it's more like the roller coaster got stuck halfway through the loop and you're just, you're just waiting for someone to come take you out of the car. Yeah, that little thing they press down on your legs and the roller coaster won't come up. Remember when you get on the ride? There'd be like that three seconds where it wouldn't go up.

You'd have that little moment of panic. That's kind of what we feel like at this point. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's, listen, it's the whole night. I mean, we'll go through it step by step. But, you know, as soon as Florida was sort of, I mean, just right out of the gate, you know, went in the Trump column. I think that's when we should have known, one, regardless of whether or not everything we knew was wrong, we knew that it was going to be a long night or it's going to be a long week. Without Florida, there's no landslide. And without a landslide, there's no decision tonight.

Yeah. And I just want to make sure we're characterizing this correctly here as we creep past midnight. It's not that Trump's going to win and Biden's going to lose. Biden could still sweep the Midwest and have that little extra padding in Arizona. And in two days, we could be wondering whether Elizabeth Warren is going to be secretary of the treasury. Oh, yeah. It's just that it wasn't going to be that easy. And that fact is worth reflecting on. for a second. It is. Again, given the state of the country, it really wasn't going to be a blowout. It wasn't going to be a landslide. It was still going to be relatively, and again, we got a lot of, we got a lot of data to still come in, but it was going to be a relatively tight election.

Shall we march through some of the events of the evening? Yeah. So first of all, remember when we were trying to counsel press box listeners about how to watch the election? I just forgot about all that immediately. I was I was watching TV during the Kentucky hour, which is like four o'clock out here in California. You know, I was like, oh, what's, what's Steve Kornacki saying about those suburban counties in Kentucky, knowing that that's not going to make any difference to anything. So that was a complete waste of time. Then within an hour, Florida started to come in. And I think the first anvil that dropped on every Democrat's head tonight, David, was the results from Miami-Dade County. Sure. And Biden doing not only badly there, but really badly versus what Hillary

did there in 2016. What did you make of that? Well, I mean, listen, from a layman's point of view, and I proudly call myself a layman, the Miami-Dade discussion every four years is a little bit crazy because we're talking about failures in a district that Democrats always win, right? It's just a matter of the margin. Yep. And really, you know, all Biden had to do, I mean, Biden's numbers all over the rest of the state. I think he hit everything. I mean, they hit everything the campaign was shooting for.

But they're looking at like a 10 point deficit, Miami-Dade compared to what Hillary did. Again, he's getting over 50. He's going to end up with 55 percent or something like that. But, yeah, I mean, it's sort of stunning. They didn't do a lot of direct campaigning there with Harris or Biden. And I don't know if they thought it would be automatic. I don't know if they thought that they were doing enough in the rest of the state. Clearly, well, I mean, and also it must be said that all the polling out of there was just completely incorrect.

So I don't know if the internal polls and everything were just as incorrect. But, you know, everybody's pointing at the Cuban community there. Who knows? I mean, like, it'll probably take a long time for this post-mortem to really tell us what was going on. But, I mean, listen, there's not going to be a lot of times

where one of these major swing states can be where you can pinpoint the whiff. You know, you can pinpoint where the just categorical error was. And it really seems like this is a, like a single sub-community in one, in one county could have made all the difference for this campaign. Well, that was a big question. Wasn't it because as soon as it became clear that the polls were off in Florida,

then every Democrat you know on Twitter goes, uh-oh, uh-oh, wasn't this the point in the night in 2016 where we watched Hillary lose Florida? And then everything turned bad. And, you know, Nate Silver sort of had to rush to Twitter. go, no, no, no, no, no. This, the polls could be wrong in Florida and they could be right everywhere else. You're saying that he said that tonight. Yeah. Yeah. And I saw, I mean, or not as off as much everywhere else. Anchors on every channel, I think we're making the same argument. MSNBC was probably the most earnest, the most prepared to make that that case of the

bunch, which, you know, shows their determination at least. But that, but yeah, I mean, Florida, I mean, it seems to be correct. I mean, if, if the Florida man, Twitter, accounts have taught us nothing. There is no state like Florida. There is, and certainly, um, the disparity or the, you know, the differences between the blue and red districts in the state or, or, you know, dissimilar to some extent than every other state. And certainly Miami-Dade is its own little creature and the, you know, the Cuban community within that, uh, is unlike the, you know, it's, it's, it's clear tonight if it wasn't clear before. The Latino voting community is not a monolith and and and certainly not when you when you single out

a group is well i mean if you even want to if it's a group within itself the cuban community in miami does not necessarily correlate to anything else in the country at all so it's i mean which is fair enough but did you see the results in south texas yeah it may be that joe biden just did not do well with latinos across the country right now we're still waiting on arizona to kind of know more about Arizona. Still waiting to know more about other states, right? In southwest, California, places like that. But this may have been a multi-prong problem for him, turning out votes.

I think that is evident. And I think, but I do think, Arizona is, I mean, Arizona will be an interesting one. But I think that regardless, I mean, the Latino community, if we're going to keep using this sort of blanket term for them, I guess we, you know, we'll use a lot of blanket terms over the night. is so big that it can't possibly be a monolith. And I know that, you know, we've joked about that, that terminology before. I mean, and even if it, even if it weren't that big, it makes complete sense.

And if you're, if you're, I would, I would, I would hesitate to, to make any sort of broad proclamations about it because that's clearly what kind of got us into this mess. So, I mean, we'll see. Let's advance a little bit in the evening to about eight o'clock Eastern time. a bunch of states came in, some obvious ones, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, Oklahoma, Washington, D.C. We continued to look at Florida and some of those early states. And I sent you a text because it was really funny how the night was just laid out dramatically that the states Biden absolutely needed to win were going to be counted last. And all the kind of bonus states for

Biden were going to be counted first. So for Democrats, it was almost set up. as like, you know, you had this like, you know, sort of fire. He was actually just kind of going through the firewall. Florida doesn't look like it's going to work. And George is kind of trending the wrong direction. North Carolina, he's not totally dead, but it's, it's looking like it's going to be tight at best. Texas is eh.

And you're just kind of getting in and in and in. And obviously that is not something that was designed that way, but that was really, really funny, I guess, if that's the word to watch. Well, I mean, and listen, no matter what happens in IP, there's going to be a lot of a lot of, you know, trash talked about the polling again. This is what we do, you know, I mean, Nate Silver and Nate Con and all these guys are the Joe Bucks of the presidential election cycle. What?

Let me just everybody. They're the people that we love to hate and point and blame for everything is the, you know, if our team loses. Oh, there you go. So, no, you did. You took it right to the right place. Now I totally understand. Yeah.

Go for it. It is, I mean, this year of all years. I mean, it's not, you know, it doesn't take any math degree to say. It's just impossible for people to predict. I mean, so much harder than other years. And watching it live as a viewer, you realize this, right? Because, like, you see these numbers, you see the, you see all the votes coming in, but you don't know what votes and you're looking at.

And for the most part, the people on TV, the people online, they don't know what votes they are either. I mean, when we're talking about right-end ballots versus, you know, ballots that were cast, vote you know people that voted today and um which is to say the dramatic tension of the night was also totally skewed by the fact that we saw north carolina and ohio and just just jump out into the joe biden column uh georgia not far behind right and and but we didn't know you know with 50 percent reporting Biden was way out in front in ohio he goes up by a few points in north carolina but we don't know what votes we're looking at we don't even we can't even say oh but they haven't counted these Republican districts yet.

You can say it to some extent, but we don't know how that, how mailins factor in. I mean, the whole thing was geared up just to toy with our emotions. It's almost like we learned our lesson four years ago. So they had like a reality show. They had to introduce a new level of intrigue. They had to add new rules so that we would, because our anxiety might not have gotten high enough. And so we have to add in this total question mark about, what point we're counting mail-in ballots.

By the way, in some states like Pennsylvania, we're just not going to worry about that for a minute. We'll count those when we're when we get around to it. 2.2 million that we're going to count at some point. I love when the tweet went around that somebody was reporting that, I guess it was in Philadelphia. They had 300 and something mail-in ballots. They counted about 75,000.

They were like, we're just calling it a night. Like, there's no overtime in this office, so we'll see Y'LMR. Like, what is going on? What is it going? You know the thing that happens right before every election on Twitter where everyone turns into Halloween costume, Steve Kornacki? And they're just talking so confidently about precincts and counties and all this stuff. Tonight, no one was even pretending because it was so incredibly confusing because every state was counting same day, mail in, and everything else at totally different times. So no one even pretended they knew what was going on.

Yeah. And instead, they just got mad at the New York Times needle, which was also, so I wrote this down as a feature of the six o'clock hour here in the Pacific, 9 o'clock Easter. That's when there was just this massive Democratic freak out. It began in earnest because, again, it wasn't clear and it's not clear that Joe Biden's going to lose the election. He could win it quite comfortably. But all the plan Bs and plan Cs started melting. away. So then, as you say, when your team loses, or at least doesn't win all the state elections, what do you do? You turn on someone named Nate. And then, more amazingly, David, Nate Silver

turned on Nate Cone. He started criticizing the needle and then Nate Cone had to come back and defend the methodology of the needle. It always comes down to the methodology of the needle. It's a story of our lives, isn't it? It really is. I mean, listen, I was, I spent a good portion of the night struggling to reconcile, like what I was seeing, you know, with my lying eyes on TV and where I was, and where the needle was landing right in front of me in these various, you know, swing states. The needle is, especially on a night like tonight, an election like this, is geared solely to,

engender outrage. I mean, it is like anything, any conspiracy theory you want to make up about the needle, it just felt totally true tonight. And listen,

if that were the case, they got their money's worth. Everybody was getting refreshed on this page, I mean, five trillion times a minute, just to see, just to see,

and seriously, just see if they could wrap their head around how the margin of error in their North Carolina reporting could possibly lead to a Biden victory. It's a,

it's, well, I mean, I guess it's worth stating that North Carolina is one of the few states that that has not been called as we're recording this. One of the few states that look like, you know, that we were expecting to be called, that hasn't been called yet. We got, by the way, back-to-back calls. Biden wins Hawaii, Trump wins Ohio. So that's about, I think that just captures the mood.

Oh, yeah, we won Hawaii. You might have won Ohio, but we got Hawaii in the bag. Yeah, yeah. high fives in Biden headquarters. By the way, did you see a friend of the ringer Brian Copleman going after the needle? Oh, yeah. And you know what? Well, go ahead and read what he said.

Read what he said. I believe what Nate Cone does on election night is borderline immoral. The needle best guess graphic, which shifts over the night, is carnival-style bullshit. The whole thing is, and his endeavor is, I believe, bankrupt sorcery masquerading as science. First of all, hard agree. Second of all, I believe that everything the needle says is true. But I do also agree that it is Carnie sorcery in its own way. It is the modern carnies.

It is the modern side show that is just like, step right in, my friend, step right into the tent and see who's going to win the presidential election. The guy that guessed your weight was actually probably the most talented man at guessing weights around, right? I mean, he knew weight guessing better than anyone else. But the big lie was not that. The big lie was that it didn't matter if he guessed your weight or not. It was actually better for them if he was wrong. Yeah, there's certainly a carny aspect to it.

And by the way, if we're going to go on on one, Nate, let's go on the other Nate. Nate Silver is, I actually got more from his pre-election last round of interviews that he did than just about anything else. In my election time research, he's brilliant at doing this and has been for a long time. But all night tonight, he was on 538, like on their live blog,

dropping notes about their scenario generator, which is the most maddening thing that they could have, I mean, talk about a carny thing just to engender rage, right? There was, at one point he said, if Trump wins Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, he's about a 50% shot to win the electoral college. But if Biden then wins Ohio, Trump's chances plummet to 1%,

which is like, well, wait, but he's still won the, the other three, right? So, like, none of this is good lining up. Like, I know that it makes sense to him. It doesn't make sense to me. And then by the, by the, like, the last note that I got from, that I, that I, that I, that I grabbed from him was if Trump wins Florida, by the way, again, he just said it

was 50%. If Trump wins Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, which is where we appear to be, but Biden wins Arizona. Biden is at an 85% favorite in our scenario generator. There's a 6% chance of elect. Toral Godge tie, though. But I don't know. None of this makes sense to me.

And even if it did, I'm not sure that it fucking matters what the, what the, what the, with the scenario generator has to say about how this election is going to go. I guess I would rather Nate be spending his time explaining the things that are actually happening to me. I have been trying to wrap my arms around that because I do not want to sound like the Joe Morgan of media podcasts. here. We're like, oh, those guys don't know what they're talking about. Those numbers. It's about grit. Yeah, it's about, yeah, it's about grit. It's about want to. The campaign that wants to is going to win this election. I don't want us to be those guys. That seems like a like a bad side of history to be on. But there is something wild where in another one of those blog posts you talk about, Nate said, oh, so Biden came in right with a 90% chance

to win the election. And I think I like you and I were going around going, hey, Biden has a 90% chance to win. That doesn't mean he's going to win, but nine out of ten times he's going to win. Well, when Trump won Florida or appeared that he was on route to winning Florida, Nate said, okay, if Trump wins Florida, he now has a 33% chance to win the election. We went, wait, what? And I like this tweet from Zanep to Fecki. I hope I'm pronouncing name correctly.

This is how fragile those forecasts were. One state has a polling error, and the forecast now says Trump, has a one and three chance of winning. If errors are broadly correlated, not just Miami Cubans, the odds go up more. Big numbers don't imply certainty. And I think you can have those two opinions at the same time. One is that what Nate and those guys are doing, both Nate's,

is incredible. And it's really fascinating. You know, and it's not BS. I would never say it's BS. But at the other time, those percentages are not something that you can write and ink and say, well, here it is. The number says this, right? This stuff is really complicated.

And it's not, it's, it's almost like we either know too much or not enough about the stuff. I can't tell what it is. And so you just feel like you get yanked all over the place on election night. And again, for you and I, I'm guessing it's, we probably don't know enough. Well, yeah. But that was quite a ride. It is.

It is. I mean, listen, you sent me a tweet from Dave Weigel as we were watching this. And I love Dave Weigel. But he said, getting to 2018 vibes tonight. By the way, we should talk about that. What year does this remind us of element of the whole thing? But he said, getting 2018 vibes tonight, starting with Florida breaking to the GOP, continuing with D's gaining in Midwest Burbs, even if Trump wins Ohio, Biden's already ahead of Clinton's raw vote in places like Delco, the Columbus Burbs,

and Medina outskirts of Cleveland. This is what I want. And Dave Weigel is, I don't know, Dave, but he is, I think by any definition, a like an old school journalist. Fashioned himself as an old school journalist certainly understands the numbers more than most old school journalists probably would. He's sort of got like the manner

of an old school journalist, but he understands all the new school stuff. Yeah, but I want, but this is what I want, right? I want someone who, I mean, it seems like, as dense as that tweet was, it does seem like he's speaking to me, right? It seems like he's taking the sort of the numbers,

that he's data informed, but it feels like old fashioned, gut speculation. He's talking, he's not saying he's not using the terms grit or want to here, but he's, but he's, it does feel a little bit more old school. And there's, there's a part of that that's really

alluring and, and to me watching this on a night, I mean, watching all this nonsense on a night like tonight. You know, sometimes you just need someone to, you need an old journalist or an old coach and we can talk about Tommy Tuberville if you want, but to break through all of the, all of the chatter,

sort of. I mean, at least, at least We want people that understand it, but also understand who the people that are trying to absorb it. I got two needle updates for you. One is that due to some reporting errors with the North Carolina vote, Nate Cohen, Nick Cohen, excuse me, had to go through through and recalibrate the North Carolina needle, which became slightly less dire for Biden. Number two, the Georgia needle, David, with 80% reporting in Georgia, now favors Biden all of a sudden. Whoa. Whoa. That was a big jump.

Didn't the needle cast a day? Now, am I not understanding the needle now? Now I really feel like Joe Morgan. I am off. I got to tell you, as of like an hour before we started recording, maybe more than that,

I am off the needle. And I'm fully up, but I'm not off the upshot. I'm fully on to the, I'm fully on to the outlet tracker. Have you, are you familiar with this? Where they have all of the different outlets

who are calling the race and just like which ones have called it? So now you can look on, you can see like, okay, I don't know what Decision Desk HQ is, but it made the outlet track. Oh, that's good. They're the most loosey-goosey of the bunch, apparently. They're calling a lot of these first Fox is close behind. And look, Fox was kind of quick to call in years past, too.

Not usually, I don't think they've been wrong. So, you know, I'm excited to see what Fox and Decision Desk HQ are doing and to see how long it takes everyone else to follow along. It's notable, though, that they were calling Florida. way early, right? And now Fox is the only person, the only outlet that's called Arizona, I believe. They're the only two that have called Florida.

They're the only two that have called Texas, in both cases, both for Trump. They've called nothing for Georgia, nothing for North Carolina, which especially in the case of North Carolina seems pretty notable right now. I guess there's still a lot of uncertainty there. Getting another update here on the television.

Soon, Joe Biden expected to speak. So we may get the classic early in the night they're still counting the votes, folks. They're still counting the votes. Just be patient. We're going to settle in for a long night, which is a sign that both campaigns do not expect to have a winner tonight. Can I ask just a real, real just base question?

Please. What do you think the mechanism is for Donald Trump to not be tweeting throughout this entire night? Has he not been? No. He said, we look really good like six hours ago or something like that. But that's it. Yeah. I just don't.

I mean, there have been moments before in the past where there people have joked about people taking away his iPhone or whatever. But like either maybe this is the time. Maybe it's election just like four years ago. Maybe maybe this is the time when he's, when actual human emotions sort of take over and he's just like, just leaving me alone. But it does seem, it seems totally out of character. I'm looking at the pin tweet on his account, which is just him dancing doing this weird dance that he did in the closing weeks of the election.

So now I'm picturing him like his phone is is somewhere not plugged in and he's just dancing like this in front of the television. I have no idea. Him not tweeting through the night is actually one of the craziest upsets of 2020. I do want to say about the dancing since you brought it up that I realized at some point tonight that I was, you know, in my little liberal ivory tower or whatever. Like I don't, I don't actually, I'm not paying attention to what the rest of the country sees because I thought Trump danced once.

I thought that there was one dancing. moment that sort of got gleefully meaned by his supporters, but apparently he's been dancing at every single rally. And I should have known this from that, by the way, we also should have known that Trump is going to make inroads into the Latino community with that incredible commercial that was circulating last week that we decided to not talk about in the last episode of the show. But there's a lot that I guess it could be learned from Trump's dance moves that I was, I was very skeptical of, but he's outfoxed me once again. We underestimated Trump one more time.

us this is going to be necessarily a little bit of a time capsule podcast but let's set everybody up to where we are right now as you say joe biden has by one account one arizona if nothing else he is looking very very good in arizona which gives him a remaining plan b even if he doesn't wind up winning georgia north carolina of those states right plan a would be to win michigan win Wisconsin and win Pennsylvania. Plan B would be to win Michigan, win Wisconsin, and then win Arizona and find one of those free-hanging electoral votes

in Nebraska or Maine. That's plan B. So Joe Biden is pretty well set up there as we record this. But as you say, that has not stopped Democrats from absolutely freaking out of the course of the evening. Right.

And I, by the way, I don't blame anybody who does. Well, no. This was, I was more, I was much more nervous tonight watching these results than I thought I would be. I think that the mechanisms of viewership and I, and I, whatever, I don't remember what I said about how I'd be watching. I certainly did not, I was not expected for the way I'd be watching tonight, which was, you know, every, I might have been able to predict it if I'd, you know, been floating above me at other moments like this. but every, every, you know, 20 minutes or so, I would just click through all of the channels. I guess, you know, all the cable channels,

a couple of, you know, the network stuff a little bit. But, you know, God love Chuck Todd. I can't believe they're like making him compete with his cohort Steve Kornacki on, you know, ownership of the digital state tracker. But I would like flip through like once every 20 minutes, or half hour and just try to get a feel for everything. And I'd land on one and then go back to my laptop

where I'd completely forget about what was on TV. My 12-year-old came in and he was, he started choosing what channel we were watching based on just his opinion of the people talking. Not completely apolitically settled on MSNBC. He just liked their vibe the best. Interesting. It was funny.

He had no tolerance for CNN, even though the personality interplan and CNN seemed to be what was capturing the zeitgeist for at least some portion of the night. But yeah, I mean, I was so, you know, I would look down on my laptop and really even just flipping between Twitter 538 and the upshot, I was, had,

every second of my life was filled and my anxiety meter was off the judge. If there was a New York Times neat needle that was tracking my anxiety, I think we would have called that at about 915. Yeah, I mean, it was, was it it it was everything is a very long way of saying everything uh about our engagement about our viewership about ever about the way that we're following the elections is just geared towards

engendering the maximum amount of anxiety absolutely and there's nothing we can do about that absolutely and and you know i think ms and bc leicesterver and the democratic side of the ledger is kind of meant to be soothing in most you know they're they don't put people on there to make you mad so much but CNN, whichever side you're on, is just designed to make you mad about every 30 minutes, to put somebody on there. You mean, that's when they're like, oh, we're going to bring like Cory Lewandowski on just so you'll be like, what in the living hell is he doing on my television? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. I will save most of the media notes for tomorrow, David, but just in terms of Twitter, were you as amazed as I was about the phenomenon of people rooting for states? like you would get on there and see all your liberal friends going, come on Texas. Yeah. Come on, Texas.

You got to do this, Texas. I've never seen so many Americans rooting for Texas in my life. And I say this as a proud Texan. I'm just so funny, the idea that everybody's just cheering them on. Come on, Texas. You can do it. Come on, Georgia. You got this.

Come on, Ohio. Oh, come on, Ohio. Other than, like, college football, I have never seen states that you don't live in embraced in that particular way. Yeah, well, I mean, everything is just sort of nationalized now, right?

I mean, it's also why we, I mean, listen, we've been trained to take Florida and Ohio really personally, Pennsylvania too. But in a year where everything, it seems possible. And frankly, very little turned out

to be possible. It does seem like we all have stakes in every year. single in every in every state and every state and and and and i mean listen i think there was certainly an allure with with texas with ohio which seemed off the board to me two weeks ago uh you know i mean some of these i mean now in georgia north carolina um the allure of the listen the landslide was out the window like i said as soon as florida was lost but the allure of

sort of like stick it to you win in one of these states, I think was really real. People had really set their hearts on it. And then like I said, when the early numbers started coming in and you saw that Biden actually was up for a minute in Texas, I mean, listen, whatever happens in Texas, it was an incredible night for Democrats in that state. I think you and I can both agree on that. Having spent a lot of time there, you having spent most of your entire life there. and I agree. Everybody's personal investment in all these states is pretty surprising. That said, I just want to say formally, come on Georgia.

All right, let's cut it off there. We're back tomorrow, David, hopefully with a winner, hopefully with Jamel Hill to get her thoughts about all of this evening's events and all the events of the last four years. And we will try to put a bow on this. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida.

Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Back tomorrow, friends, to see who the next president of the United States is going to be, we think. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.