With President Trump holding onto good leads in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio (with strong numbers in the rest of the Rust Belt), months of media reports about the death of the Trump presidency may have been greatly exaggerated. So much so that shortly before the 10 o’clock hour, CNN started hedging their bets by suggesting pundit predictions of a Democratic landslide were “always a pipe dream.”
“We're looking at the race having tightened up quite a bit from what some pundits were projecting. And right now, it really does look like President Trump has narrowed or even broken even in Florida and North Carolina and Georgia,” announced Jake Tapper after hearing updates from Wolf Blitzer and John King.
According to Tapper, “really it is all coming down to what we said months and months ago, the blue wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the states that Hillary Clinton thought she had in the bag that Donald Trump tore down. Joe Biden trying to build it back up.”
In the run-up to the election, CNN and the rest of the liberal media were fantasizing about Democratic nominee Joe Biden picking off multiple reliably red states, but now they were settling for flipping just Arizona. And to beyond that, they lamented how Biden was not expanding the map as much as they predicted (click “expand”):
DANA BASH: That’s right. And, you know, look, those states you just talked about, it is not over. We're still watching them. But it will whole M.O. of the Biden campaign from the beginning was to rebuild that blue wall, and there's also another state that's going to come in later, which is Arizona. And that is still one that the Biden campaign is really hoping to finally flip from red to blue.
ABBY PHILLIP: Yeah, and I think that we also are looking at a situation in which Biden is not maybe expanding the map as much as they might have hoped that they would. The states that they thought he had a good chance, maybe because of turnout, maybe because of demographics, are tight. Which is fine, but it's Election Day and you have to actually win the state in order for it to matter.
“Although the Biden people, we should say, have not conceded any Florida or Georgia or North Carolina, and they feel very good -- they still feel good about North Carolina, they still feel very positive about Arizona, and the blue wall,” Tapper noted as a way to calm liberal nerves.
He added: “But it's just not going to be as some Democrats were hoping for -- they thought it was going to be an early landslide, which was really always a pipe dream.”
As with MSNBC, the CNN crew also whined about how Republicans and the Trump campaign warned Cuban and Venezuelan communities in Southern Florida about a socialist-friendly Biden administration (click “expand”):
PHILLIP: But that being said, what is happening in Florida, I can tell you, Democrats are not happy about it. At the end of the day, the situation in Miami-Dade is something that in the autopsy of this election, they will be looking back at and trying to figure out what went wrong.
BASH: Definitely. And I'll tell you what they think went wrong. Is that the Trump attacks have worked.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
BASH: Calling the Democrats socialist worked with people in that area in particular and the segment of the population.
TAPPER: And a lot of disinformation campaigns going down there as well. That we have covered on this air.
A lot of states were still outstanding at the time of these conversations, but the point remained about how their messaging had shifted given the data.
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The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN’s Election Night in America
November 3, 2020
9:46:05 p.m. EasternJAKE TAPPER: We're looking at the race having tightened up quite a bit from what some pundits were projecting. And right now, it really does look like President Trump has narrowed or even broken even in Florida and North Carolina and Georgia.
So, really it is all coming down to what we said months and months ago, the blue wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the states that Hillary Clinton thought she had in the bag that Donald Trump tore down. Joe Biden trying to build it back up.
DANA BASH: That’s right. And, you know, look, those states you just talked about, it is not over. We're still watching them. But it will whole M.O. of the Biden campaign from the beginning was to rebuild that blue wall, and there's also another state that's going to come in later, which is Arizona. And that is still one that the Biden campaign is really hoping to finally flip from red to blue.
ABBY PHILLIP: Yeah, and I think that we also are looking at a situation in which Biden is not maybe expanding the map as much as they might have hoped that they would. The states that they thought he had a good chance, maybe because of turnout, maybe because of demographics, are tight. Which is fine, but it's Election Day and you have to actually win the state in order for it to matter.
So, you know, we don't know what's going to happen yet, but this is a map that, as you just said, is probably going to come down to what we always thought it would come down to, that blue wall up there that Biden really, really at this point, must hold on to.
TAPPER: Although the Biden people, we should say, have not conceded any Florida or Georgia or North Carolina, and they feel very good -- they still feel good about North Carolina, they still feel very positive about Arizona, and the blue wall.
But it's just not going to be as some Democrats were hoping for -- they thought it was going to be an early landslide, which was really always a pipe dream.
BASH: Yeah. I mean, there is no landslide we're looking at. No way, given the numbers that we've seen. Particularly when you start the night in Florida when it's at tight as Florida tends to be, and it's maybe even less so right now as they continue to count the votes.
What is interesting is Florida, one of the reasons the Biden campaign thinks they're doing not as well as they hoped is because they're underperforming with Latino voters.
TAPPER: Right.
BASH: They're hoping to change that dynamic in a big way when Arizona starts to count the votes. That they're hoping that is what helps to buoys them in Arizona.
TAPPER: And we talked about this earlier, the Latino voters in Florida, great deal of them are Cuban American and Venezuela American in Southern Florida, very different from the Mexican American, central American voters, Latino voters in Nevada and Arizona.
(…)
PHILLIP: But that being said, what is happening in Florida, I can tell you, Democrats are not happy about it. At the end of the day, the situation in Miami-Dade is something that in the autopsy of this election, they will be looking back at and trying to figure out what went wrong.
BASH: Definitely. And I'll tell you what they think went wrong. Is that the Trump attacks have worked.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
BASH: Calling the Democrats socialist worked with people in that area in particular and the segment of the population.
TAPPER: And a lot of disinformation campaigns going down there as well. That we have covered on this air.
(…)
