Breaking

(all times CET)

6:00am: I slept longer than I thought I would.  An early glance at my phone: Trump carried Florida and Ohio easily, and a scroll down the list of the battleground states reads Trump Trump Trump, some by sizeable margins.

6:30am: Robert Reich tweets to stay calm and “drink water.”

6:45am: Doing rough math on my phone calculator as CNN goes county-by-county through PA.  It looks to me like Biden can close the gap there.

7:00am: Trump misspells “polls” as “Poles” in a tweet.

7:15am: Rick Santorum is on CNN already talking about signatures on mail-in ballots in PA.  I think we can see where this is headed.

7:30am: The doorbell rings and it’s the pest control guy who comes to our building every few months to pour pesticide from an enormous jug down the kitchen drain.  L and I call him “Monsieur Cafard” (“Mister Cockroach”), which we find very funny for some reason.  He is polite and friendly, and before he leaves he tells me not to use the kitchen sink for the next 2 hours.

7:48am: Trump still up by 700K votes in PA, with 69% of the vote counted.

7:57am: So far this is all the horror of 2016 with all the slow-drip torture of 2000. 

8:14am: Trump’s lead in GA is down to around 100K votes as he steps to the podium in a room packed with people who are not wearing masks.  Standing before a phalanx of American flags, Trump riffs about all the states that he has won and the victory party he was planning, then pivots to the “sad group of people” who are evidently "stealing the election."  “This is a major fraud on our nation.  We want all voting to stop.  We will be going to the Supreme Court.”  Mike Pence concludes, kind of sheepishly, “We will make America great again again.”

8:39am: CNN reacts with predictable moral outrage at Trump’s statement.

9:00am: I get back in bed for a while.  My (German) wife asks me how it’s possible to declare a winner when the votes haven’t been counted.

9:30am: It’s okay to use the kitchen sink now.

10:30am: I have a Zoom call with our General Manager in Italy.  We talk about business and COVID19.  He doesn’t bring up the election, and I don’t either, and it's reassuring to know that there are people in the world with other things on their minds.

11:00am: Biden now leads Wisconsin by around 10,000 votes.

11:23am: My employer’s stock price is up 3.6%.

12:30pm: Online service for the Church of Scotland Geneva, for which I play Zoom technical director.  Today’s scripture lesson is from Matthew 18, the parable of the unmerciful servant.  The king forgives a big debt from one of his servants, who then turns around and roughs up a few of his fellow servants who owe him money.  The king catches wind of this and has the servant hauled off to prison to be tortured until he pays up.  The metaphor being that God is the king and we are the servant, and we should “pay forward” God’s mercy and forgiveness to others, even (especially) those who are indebted to us.  Or else.

1:36pm: Trump’s lead in Michigan has closed to fewer than 30,000 votes.  There remain around 200,000 uncounted votes in in Wayne County, where Biden currently leads by 36 points.

2:15pm: I do work Zooms as primary blue and red polygons flash on CNN on the other laptop. 

2:22pm: The gap is PA is down to ~600K votes, which might be a smaller than it was, but I’m having trouble keeping track at this point.  My employer’s stock price is up 4.6%

2:41pm: My home state of New Jersey has voted for legalizing recreational marijuana use.

3:12pm: Biden now leads in Michigan by ~8,000 votes.  Tweet of the day so far: “No matter what happens today, the United States of America is the country that made Donald Trump its President, and it always will be.” (@Vinncent)

3:44pm: I have a spring in my step as I go to my doctor to get the flu vaccine.

4:46pm: I put a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, in the hopes of opening it tonight around 11pm during my Zoom call with my college friends, thereby guaranteeing a Biden loss.

4:51pm: On CNN, PA is being characterized as being “very much in play.”  Trump’s lead in PA is now ~540K votes.  My employer’s stock price is up 6.27%.

5:16pm: Biden leads in Wisconsin by around 21,000 votes, and in Michigan by 32,000.

6:12pm: My employer’s stock finishes trading up 6.21% for the day.

6:37pm: The Election Commissioner for Wisconsin, a woman named Meagan who looks around 28, with straight blond shoulder-length hair and a northern midwestern twang, is on CNN explaining how they officially tally votes.  Election officials from several states have been doing this over the past hours, and I find it inspiring and comforting.  

8:00- 10:00pm: We spend a couple of hours sitting on the couch watching CNN on my laptop.  Watching American TV is a novel activity for me, and generally I think the cable news stations on both sides of the spectrum are toxic and harmful on many levels, but I can’t resist watching today.  After following John King for several hours, I’m pretty confident that I could operate the interface on the “Road to 270” screen.  CNN announces that Biden will speak “soon,” and I spend the next hour or so mentally drafting the speech I want him to give: celebrate the voting process, calmly call for remaining votes to be counted, project confidence in the outcome but do not claim victory.  At around 10, Biden walks onto a stage in Delaware and gives more or less that speech, and I am buoyed by the probably illusive feeling that civility may still be possible in my home country.

11:02pm: I Zoom with several of my friends from college who are in DC, Boston, California, NYC, Zurich, Tokyo.  I leave the champagne in the fridge and crack open a beer instead.