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Predicting exactly how Election Day will play out can be a dangerous game, as many people learned Tuesday, but Bernie Sanders got very close.
An old clip of the Vermont senator and former Democratic presidential candidate in The show tonight in October is circulating as we await the results of the US elections, despite Donald Trump’s false and baseless claims of an early victory.
In the Oct. 23 interview, Sanders explained to host Jimmy Fallon why he endorsed Biden for president after competing against him for the nomination and discussed Texas’ role in the future of progressive politics. But more importantly, it laid out why this year’s election results would take longer than usual and what Trump’s reaction would likely be on election night.
“Although the election is on November 3 and it has been said that we will not know the results until days later, when do you think we will know the results?” Fallon asked at the time.
“Jimmy, you make an important point, and I hope the American people understand that, because this is something that worries me,” Sanders began.
“My opinion is that all votes should be counted. For reasons that I don’t have time to address tonight, I suspect that they are going to have a situation in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, other states, where they are going to receive huge amounts of mail ballots. And unlike states like Florida or Vermont, they can’t, for bad reasons, start processing those ballots until, I don’t know, Election Day or maybe when the polls close. That means there will be states dealing with maybe millions of mail-in ballots. “
Sanders is right: A record 64 million ballots were mailed before Election Day, which is complicating vote counting this year. Key battlefield states Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia received significant numbers of ballots by mail, and in Pennsylvania, for example, the Trump campaign and Republicans blocked vote processing before Election Day. This has caused a delay in the counting of votes that could extend during the week.
“Here’s my concern,” Sanders said. “What the polls show, and what the studies have shown, is that, for whatever reason, Democrats are more likely to use mail-in ballots than Republicans are more likely to get to the polls on Election Day. Elections It is likely that the first votes to be counted will be those people who arrived on Election Day, who will be Republican.
“And here’s the fear, and I hope everyone hears it,” Sanders continued. “It could very well be that at 10 o’clock on election night, Trump is winning in Michigan, he’s winning in Pennsylvania, he’s winning in Wisconsin, and he’s on television and he’s saying, ‘Thank you Americans for coming back electing me. It’s over. Have a nice day. But then the next day, and the next day, all those mail-in ballots start counting, and it turns out that Biden won those states, at which point Trump says, ‘See, fraudulent. I told him those mail-in ballots were crooked. And we are not leaving office. That is a concern that I and many people have … people should be aware of that possibility. “
It was in the early hours of Wednesday, not at 10 p.m. on election night. But despite the incomplete results, citing (among others) Midwestern states where he was leading the way in still incomplete counts, Trump falsely claimed victory over Biden, both in a televised address to supporters at the White House and in Twitter and Facebook, in a clear declaration of intent to manipulate the electoral process.
“Frankly, we won this election,” Trump said, although millions of votes, including key results from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia, have not been fully counted and no major news outlet has declared a winner. “We will go to the Supreme Court of the United States,” he added. “We want all voting to stop.” It wasn’t a total surprise that Trump declared this victory false and premature, but Sanders even hit the states right.
It’s undeniable: Bernie called him.
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