‘Stop Listening!’ MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Calls BS On Trump ‘Landslide’ That Could End Up A 1% Victory
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell called BS on the idea that President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in a “landslide” — and said you should “stop listening” to anyone who says he did.
Going into Election Day, the expectation was that it would be a close presidential race that could take days or longer to reach a clear decision. But once polls began to close and the results poured in, it was only a matter of hours before outlets called the race for Trump.
On Monday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word, O’Donnell explained just how narrow the final result could be once all the votes are counted, and canceled anyone who would call it a “landslide”:
Ballots received in the mail tomorrow will be counted in California. So there are literally millions of ballots yet to be counted in this country, including in the state of Pennsylvania, where thousands of votes remain to be counted to determine the balance of the United States Senate.
Republicans will probably have 52 senators next year or 53 if Republicans win the Pennsylvania Senate election. The Democrats will probably have 47 members of the Senate or 48 if Democrat Bob Casey wins the Pennsylvania Senate race.
We still don’t know which party will control the House of Representatives, but we do know that it will be very close. As of tonight, Republicans have 214 seats in the House and Democrats have 205 seats in the House, according to NBC News, with 16 remaining to be decided.
In the presidential vote. Donald Trump currently has 50.2% of the vote to Kamala Harris, 48.1% of the vote. But that margin will probably narrow after all the California votes are finally counted, and it is possible that Kamala Harris will end up with only one– 1% of the vote less than Donald Trump, a 1% gap. Right now, she’s at 2% less than Donald Trump.
If you hear anyone calling this election a landslide, please stop listening to that person! About elections, at least.
We have seen landslides in this country and they don’t look like this election. Bill Clinton’s reelection was never in doubt. In 1996, he won with 49.2% of the vote against Bob Dole’s 40.1% of the vote and Ross Perot’s 8.4% of the vote.
Bill Clinton won by nine points and no one called that a landslide because it wasn’t.
The last landslide we had was Ronald Reagan’s reelection in 1984, where he won 49 states in the Electoral College, with only the state of Minnesota voting for Walter Mondale, who was from Minnesota. Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale by 18 points. That’s what a landslide looks like.
Watch above via MSNBC’s The Last Word.
