Looking at CNN's election map for the House of Representatives, it looks to me as though the Democrats are going to *just barely* squeak by with control of the House. Here is the current state of "decided" elections:

Link (although the numbers will update and change)

Slight detour ... to listen to one of my favorite voices.

Beau of the Fifth Column

In 2000, Katherine Harris the Florida Secretary of State, who was actually the co-chair of George Bush's campaign, stopped the counting of ballots before it was even finished. There was never a "recount" in Florida because there was never a fully completed first count. Absentee ballots weren't even counted until months later, under an audit by a consortium of news outlets. The final tally showed that Al Gore had the most votes in Florida and should have been the 43rd President.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcZ4gN2TDsY]

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden appears to be inching toward victory as counting continues in several key states that could put him over 270 electoral votes, the threshold needed to win the Electoral College and take the White House. President Trump and his supporters, meanwhile, have attacked the process and falsely claimed Democrats are stealing the election, and the Trump campaign has launched a barrage of legal challenges in swing states related to ballot counting.

With the results closer than many pollsters had predicted, Democracy Now! co-host Juan González says “a false narrative” is taking root that Latinx voters were primarily to blame for the weak Democratic result. “The main story is that people of color, especially Latinos, flocked to the polls in numbers that far exceeded what the experts had expected, while the total number of votes cast by white Americans barely increased from the last presidential election,” says González. “How come none of the experts are asking why white voters underperformed the Democratic Party?”

There is only one choice in this election. The consolidation of oligarchic power under Donald Trump or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden. The oligarchs, with Trump or Biden, will win again. We will lose. The oligarchs made it abundantly clear, should Bernie Sanders miraculously become the Democratic Party nominee, they would join forces with the Republicans to crush him. Trump would, if Sanders was the nominee, instantly be shorn by the Democratic Party elites of his demons and his propensity for tyranny. Sanders would be red-baited — as he was viciously Friday in The New York Times’ “As Bernie Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity” — and turned into a figure of derision and ridicule. The oligarchs preach the sermon of the least-worst to us when they attempt to ram a Hillary Clinton or a Biden down our throats but ignore it for themselves. They prefer Biden over Trump, but they can live with either.

Well, one good thing out of this set of elections is that medical and recreational drugs did very, very well.

Cannabis

Four additional states legalized recreational cannabis yesterday, bringing the total number of states to 15, plus Washington DC and a number of island territories. The four new states are:

South Dakota
Montana
New Jersey
Arizona

It saddens me to announce the news of ek hornbeck's passing. I received an email today from his good friend and colleague, TMC aka TheMomCat. Here are her words:

It is with the deepest sorrow to tell you that ek hornbeck passed from this world at 6:05 AM ET. He was not just a fellow blogger but a kind and close friend. He comforted those in pain and inflicted pain on the comfortable. I cannot tell you how much he will be missed by his family, friends and, especially, by me.

Blessed Be, TMC

I've known ek as a blogger since 2009 when I joined Docudharma, back in the days when buhdydharma was still blogging. After buhdy went "off to the mountain", ek and TMC took the reigns and have continued Docudharma to this day. Around the same time ek started his own blog, The Stars Hollow Gazette. ek was a prolific writer to the end.

The blogosphere wont be the same without ek hornbeck.

RIP, ek.