MrWonderful

He has Type 2 diabetes, and he's 81, yes. Anything more concrete about how his overall health is?

Yeah, prostate cancer, if caught early, takes forever to kill you. He's not in any danger from that. Doesn't mean he couldn't drop dead -- he's 90 -- but he isn't worth a pick just yet.

Yeah, there is no case. This is all a money grab, simple as that. The Trump sheeple have kicked in well over $200MM to his coffers since the election. That's all this is. Have to keep the con going. What I especially love are the 106 House Republicans who are backing the Texas challenge in the Supreme Court, even though those same 106 idiots got elected on the very same ballots that they now want thrown out, apparently. Their hypocrisy is breathtaking.

That, and, as I said, until I see a picture of him not looking like the last one I saw, I'll continue to think he's a decent pick for next year. Carl Reiner was very active on Twitter (if it was him) right up until his death, so that doesn't necessarily mean much. I still think Ryan O'Neal is a better pick than Caan is, though.

This is true. Has anyone seen a picture of James Caan since the one where he looked so gaunt in the wheelchair? I may have him on my list for next year if no further information comes out.

Damn, I guess former LA Kings hockey announcer Bob Miller better watch the fuck out! He was forced to retire a few years ago due to heart issues and turned 82 in October.

Ali officially had it for 32 years, though he likely had it for about 36 years, since he pretty clearly was showing symptoms for about 4 years before his diagnosis. In any case, it does appear that many patients can expect to live almost as long as non-afflicted people, so you could very well be right.

Might even be sooner than that. He's lived for a really long time with this disease. I know that he got it at a very young age, but still, he might be a good pick as soon as next year in formats that reward you for younger picks.

The Alaska Senate race was finally called for Sullivan (the GOP incumbent), and with Cunningham conceding to Tillis in North Carolina, it's down to the 2 Georgia runoffs in January to determine control of the Senate. The Democrats need to win them both to get to 50/50, with Harris as the tiebreaking vote.

Agreed. He will be on my top 50 list until...he no longer is!

A must-add to the list imo.

I agree with you that if it does split, Warnock would be a little more likely than Ossoff to be the Democrat that wins, as the Reverend might get just a little more support among black voters than Ossoff does, and Loeffler may not get white male support by quite as much as Perdue does. Also, both Republicans, Perdue and Loeffler, are unabashed pro-Trump supporters. There's no ambiguity there.

I always answer Woodward!

Politico believes the favorite for State to be Susan Rice, and I agree with that assessment, unless Mitch McConnell is hellbent on not confirming her, which I guess is possible. It's also possible that the Democrats still get to the Senate majority (or 50/50, which is the same thing). Coons is on the Foreign Relations Committee though, and obviously Biden is very familiar with him, though he's even more familiar with Rice, having worked with her closely during the Obama Administration. As far as Cheney is concerned, I'm sure it's not like he's going to have a super-active role in whatever advice he gives to Biden, if that report is true.

The Senate is not necessarily lost for Democrats. Both Georgia Senate races are going to a special runoff election on January 5, as Georgia has a law that if no candidate reaches 50% of the vote, it goes to a runoff. We knew that this would be the case in the race involving Republican incumbent Senator Kelly Loeffler, since there were a few contenders on that ballot; that one will be Loeffler vs. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat, who is a Reverend. In the other race, Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue has to go to a runoff because he only got about 49.7% of the vote against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, who was about 2 points behind. As Republicans had a good night in the Senate overall, with unexpectedly easy wins for Susan Collins and Joni Ernst, and since it looks like Thom Tillis will keep his seat, I view this development in Georgia as a break for Democrats. In normal times, I'd say each Democrat in Georgia would be a slight underdog. However, with both races now on the same ballot, it gives the Democrats something of an all-or-nothing opportunity to win both seats. The Democratic Party can turn the January 5 election into a national referendum of sorts. Will Republicans in Georgia be especially motivated to turn out the vote again, just 2 months later, without Trump on the ticket? Perhaps they will, but I think it's a question worth asking. It is fair to point out that Perdue slightly overperformed Trump in the state, a possible good thing for Republicans. Still, If I'm the Dems, I'd rather have an all-or-nothing opportunity (it's going to be 2-0 one way or the other, almost certainly), instead of having 2 races in 2 separate states where you'd be slight underdogs in both. One final point on this: the Alaska Senate race has not been called yet. The Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan, has a big lead with the votes that have been counted so far, but only about half of the votes are in, and the remaining vote is supposed to be the mail-in vote, which will skew Democratic. The "Democrat" (who is actually an Independent), Dr. Al Gross, claims that he expects that his campaign will win once all of the votes are counted up. Perhaps that's just bluster, but it's worth noting that Sullivan was involved in some sort of scandal involving an oil pipeline deal, and that this seat was formerly held by a Democrat until Sullivan won it in 2014. Democrats would have to win 2 of the these 3 seats to get to 50/50 in the Senate, which would mean that they would have control by virtue of VP Kamala Harris being able to break ties with her vote.

What a shame. Of course it can't be a total shock given his dire disease, and it must have deteriorated very quickly for him. Seems like he was a good man, and he lived the last 12-18 months with a grace, dignity, and, yes, wit that is to be admired. May he rest in peace.

I guess it's semantics. Is there a batch within a county that could come in of something like 100 votes where Trump got, say, 55 of them? Sure. But I'm just speaking in general terms, large batches of this vote are going to skew heavily Democratic, even in Republican counties. Republicans in PA and in most places simply did not vote by mail with any kind of regularity. A notable exception to this was in Arizona, where in Maricopa County (Phoenix area) it is not uncommon to see Republicans voting by mail with 1 or 2 days left before Election Day, which is why you've seen the lead in AZ dwindle a bit for the last couple of days.

Well, to be fair, no major news organization (in the U.S., anyway) has called PA yet. But it's been blatantly obvious since the early AM hours of Wednesday where it was headed in PA. The outstanding vote was/is practically all the early mail-in vote, which everyone knew would skew heavily Democratic. And as the results kept coming in, there was and has been demonstrated data that shows Biden getting about 80-85% in the Democratic stronghold counties like Philadelphia, and he's even getting a sizable majority in the rural Republican counties because, well, the vast majority of Republican voters voted on Election Day. The votes still left to be counted are going to skew heavily Democratic, and that's just a fact. It looks like Biden will end up winning the state by about 80-100K, well outside the margin where a recount could happen.

Biden just took the lead in PA.

Biden has closed to within about 22K in PA. Just a matter of time. As soon as he takes the lead there, I'd imagine the race gets called.

I am not ruling out PA, actually, for Biden, and GA is very much in play for Biden. In fact, I think he wins the Peach State.

Biden has, indeed, increased his lead in Wisconsin, as some Kenosha ballots have come in. He's now up by over 20K votes in Wisconsin, by .6% in the state overall. In Michigan, meanwhile, Biden has cut the lead to about 27K votes. Biden now -300.

Biden just went back up by about 11K votes in Wisconsin, as Green Bay's absentee vote came in. 95% reporting. Kenosha's absentee count still needs to come in, and that is also expected to net the Democrats some more votes.

Biden has just moved to -200 in betting markets. What a roller-coaster that was last night, with Biden going up -250 initially as the early returns looked good in Florida before we saw the Miami-Dade count. Trump got up by as much as -500 last night, and then stabilized to around -300 for much of the night. When Arizona was called by Fox News for Biden, it became more like -200. And now it's flipped back to Biden. As I was saying, I think the math looks favorable for Biden in both Michigan and Georgia. And if he holds that scant lead in Wisconsin, it really looks good for Biden. Not assuming anything right now, though. This is far from over.

Apparently there are about 410K votes to be counted in Georgia, almost all from Atlanta and the suburbs and mail-in votes. Trump is up by about 102K. That would mean that Biden would need to get just under 63% of the remaining vote to win, and that seems do-able. It's going to be super-close either way.