MSNBC host Joy Reid said Wednesday that "there's a great amount of racism and anti-blackness" in the United States, as made evident by the close presidential race, which she called “disappointing.”"I think partly because we knew the red wave was a thing, the red mirage, I should say, we all knew it was coming," Reid told host Rachel Maddow. "In the moment, it’s aggravating. And I think partly, and I said this last night, I do think it’s because we’ve been reporting for five years, Rachel, about Russia … undermining our national security, the impeachment, the racism, the Nazis, all of it and then COVID laying on top of it, [it] felt like a repudiation was coming.”“I think even though we intellectually understand what America is at its base, right?" she said. "That there is a great amount of racism, anti-blackness, anti-wokeness, this idea that political correctness is some scheme to destroy white America, right?”She continued: "We know what this country is, but still part of you, I think part of your heart says, you know what, maybe the country’s going to pay off all of this pain, the children that were stolen with a repudiation. And as the night wore on and I realized and it sunk in, okay, that’s not happening, we are still who we thought, unfortunately.”“It’s disappointing. And I emerged from this disappointed,” she added.Reid's diagnosis of the election is contradicted by exit poll figures, which show that Trump garnered a larger share of the non-white vote than any Republican presidential candidate since 1960. Trump expanded his margins relative to 2016 with black males and females, latino males and females, and gay voters; the only demographic in which he lost voters was white males.Reid’s comments came late Wednesday after she had landed in hot water earlier in the day for calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, “Uncle Clarence,” repurposing the “Uncle Tom” slur in reference to the justice.With votes still being counted in Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, Democratic nominee Joe Biden leads Trump in electoral votes 264-214, needing only Nevada’s six electoral votes to capture the presidency.Democrats have been disappointed as Trump has put up a stronger-than-expected fight, compared to what polls had shown ahead of Election Day. FiveThirtyEight, a website run by polling analyst Nate Silver, had heavily favored Biden, giving Trump just a 1-in-10 chance of holding the presidency. The president would need a bigger-than-normal polling error in his favor to win, Silver explained ahead of Election Day, “but the real possibility that polls are underestimating Trump’s support is why he still has a path to win reelection."

WASHINGTON -- If President Donald Trump loses his bid for reelection, as looked increasingly likely Wednesday, it would be the first defeat of an incumbent president in 28 years. But one thing seemed certain: Win or lose, he will not go quietly away.Trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump spent the day trying to discredit the election based on invented fraud claims, hoping either to hang onto power or explain away a loss. He could find a narrow path to reelection among states still counting, but he has made clear that he would not shrink from the scene should he lose.Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York TimesAt the very least, he has 76 days left in office to use his power as he sees fit and to seek revenge on some of his perceived adversaries. Angry at a defeat, he may fire or sideline a variety of senior officials who failed to carry out his wishes as he saw it, including Christopher Wray, the FBI director, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious diseases specialist in the middle of a pandemic.And if he is forced to vacate the White House on Jan. 20, Trump is likely to prove more resilient than expected and almost surely will remain a powerful and disruptive force in American life. He received at least 68 million votes, or 5 million more votes than he did in 2016 and commanded about 48% of the popular vote, meaning he retained the support of nearly half of the public despite four years of scandal, setbacks, impeachment and the brutal coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 233,000 Americans.That gives him a power base to play a role that other defeated one-term presidents like Jimmy Carter and George Bush have not played. Trump has long toyed with starting his own television network to compete with Fox News, and in private lately he has broached the idea of running again in 2024, although he would be 78 by then. Even if his own days as a candidate are over, his 88-million-strong Twitter following gives him a bullhorn to be an influential voice on the right, potentially making him a kingmaker among rising Republicans."If anything is clear from the election results, it is that the president has a huge following, and he doesn't intend to exit the stage anytime soon," said former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of the few Republican officeholders to break with Trump over the past four years.That following may yet enable Trump to eke out a second term and four years to try to rebuild the economy and reshape the Republican Party in his image. But even from out of office, he could try to pressure Republican senators who preserved their majority to resist Biden at every turn, forcing them to choose between conciliation or crossing his political base.Until a new generation of Republicans steps forward, Trump could position himself as the de facto leader of the party, wielding an extraordinary database of information about his supporters that future candidates would love to rent or otherwise access. Allies imagined other Republicans making a pilgrimage to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, seeking his blessing."It isn't like his Twitter account or his ability to control a news cycle will stop," said Brad Parscale, the president's first campaign manager in this election cycle. "President Trump also has the largest amount of data ever collected by a politician. This will impact races and policies for years to come."Exit polls showed that regardless of prominent Republican defectors like Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and the Never Trumpers of the Lincoln Project, Trump enjoyed strong support within his own party, winning 93% of Republican voters. He also did somewhat better with Black voters (12%) and Hispanic voters (32%) than he did four years ago despite his often racist rhetoric. And after his high-energy blitz across battleground states, late-deciding voters broke his way.Some of Trump's arguments carried considerable weight with members of his party. Despite the coronavirus pandemic and the related economic toll, 41% of voters said they were doing better than when he took office, compared with only 20% who described themselves as worse off. Adopting his priorities, 35% of voters named the economy as the most important issue, twice as many who cited the pandemic. Fully 49% said the economy was good or excellent, and 48% approved of his government's handling of the virus."If he is defeated, the president will retain the undying loyalty of the party's voters and the new voters he brought into the party," said Sam Nunberg, who was a strategist on Trump's 2016 campaign. "President Trump will remain a hero within the Republican electorate. The winner of the 2024 Republican presidential primary will either be President Trump or the candidate who most closely resembles him."Not all Republicans share that view. While Trump will no doubt continue to speak out and assert himself on the public stage, they said the party would be happy to try to move beyond him if he loses and he would be remembered as an aberration."There will never be another Trump," said former Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida. "Copycats will fail. He will gradually fade, but the scars from this tumultuous period in American history will never disappear."Indeed, Trump failed to reproduce his fluky 2016 success when he secured an Electoral College victory even while losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. For all of the tools of incumbency, he failed to pick up a single state that he did not win last time, and as of Wednesday, he had lost two or three, with a couple of others still on the edge.Other presidents evicted after a single term or less -- like Gerald Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980 and Bush in 1992 -- tended to fade back into the political shadows. Ford briefly contemplated a comeback, Carter occasionally criticized his successors, and Bush campaigned for his sons, but none of them remained major political forces within their party for long. Politically, at least, each of them was seen to various degrees as a spent force.The last defeated president to try to play a power-broker role after leaving office was Herbert Hoover, who positioned himself to run again after his loss in 1932 to Franklin D. Roosevelt and became an outspoken leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. While he wielded significant influence for years, it did not regain him the nomination nor change the verdict of history.For Trump, who cares about "winning, winning, winning" more than almost anything, being known as a loser would be intolerable. On Election Day, during a visit to his campaign headquarters, he mused aloud about that. "Winning is easy," he told reporters and staff members. "Losing is never easy. Not for me it's not."To avoid such a fate, the president sought Wednesday to convince supporters that the election was being stolen simply because state and local authorities were counting legally cast ballots. The fact that it was not true evidently mattered little to him. He was setting up a narrative to justify legal challenges that even Republican lawyers called groundless and, should those fail, to set himself up as a martyr who was not repudiated by the voters but somehow robbed by unseen nefarious forces.Trump himself has a long history on the other end of fraud allegations. His sister asserted that he got someone else to take his college-entrance exam. The daughters of a Queens, New York, foot doctor claimed that their late father gave Trump a diagnosis of bone spurs to protect him from the draft for the Vietnam War as a favor to Fred Trump, his father. And his business dealings have often ensnared him in allegations and law suits.The younger Trump paid $25 million to students of his Trump University to settle fraud accusations. His charitable foundation was shut down after authorities found a "shocking pattern of illegality." He participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, according to a New York Times investigation. And Michael Cohen, his estranged lawyer and fixer, wrote in a recent book that he rigged two online polls on Trump's behalf.The president has survived all of that and a string of bankruptcies and other failures through a life of celebrity and populist appeals that gave him the aura of a winner that he nurtured. From his time in real estate and reality television, he has been part of the country's pop culture firmament for 30 years, a recurring figure in movies, television shows and his own books.He has been, for millions, a symbol of gold-gilded aspiration and wealth. He was the star of a popular television series for 14 seasons, one that introduced him to the country long before he ran for office. And once he did, his boisterous rallies bonded his supporters to him in a way that underscored how much of a cultural phenomenon he is.For months, as his chances of being reelected dwindled, Trump told advisers -- sometimes joking, sometimes not -- that should he lose he would promptly announce that he was running again in 2024. Two advisers said they anticipate he will make good on that declaration if his legal challenges fail and is defeated, a move that if nothing else would allow him to raise money to finance the rallies that sustain him.When he appeared likely to lose his original campaign in 2016, he and some of his family members talked about starting a media property, loosely conceived of as "Trump TV." Some of those discussions have continued into this year, according to people familiar with them."There's no question that he is one of the greatest polarizing political figures of modern history," said Tony Fabrizio, one of Trump's pollsters. "His supporters adore him, and his opponents revile him. There is no middle ground on Donald Trump."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Disappointed Democrats drove Wednesday toward extending their control of the House for two more years but with a potentially shrunken majority as they lost at least seven incumbents and failed to oust any Republican lawmakers in initial returns. After decades of trying, Republicans defeated 15-term Rep. Collin Peterson from a rural Minnesota district that backed President Donald Trump in 2016 by 31 percentage points, Trump's biggest margin in any Democratic-held district. Peterson, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, opposed Trump's impeachment and is one of the House's most conservative Democrats.

PRESIDENT

President Donald Trump has won the deeply red state of Alabama against Democrat Joe Biden and claimed nine electoral votes.

The GOP has easily won Alabama in every presidential election since 1976, when Jimmy Carter from neighboring Georgia was on the ballot.

While issues like impeachment and ...

All eyes are on the Senate this Election Day as Republicans look to maintain control of the legislative body where they currently hold a 53-seat majority.Shortly after polls closed on Tuesday, the Associated Press had called 12 Senate races: seven in favor of Democrats and five in favor of Republicans, including the reelection of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.). McConnell held off Democratic challenger Amy McGrath, a retired Marine combat pilot, to win a seventh term in the Senate.Republican Bill Hagerty has won an open seat in Tennessee, while Shelley Moore Capito becomes the first Republican in West Virginia to be reelected to the Senate in more than a century, according to the AP. Senators Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.) are projected to win as well.In the House, the AP has called 22 races in favor of Democrats and 22 in favor of Republicans.Twenty-three Republican-controlled seats and 12 Democrat-controlled seats are up for election: seven of the posts, all of which are currently Republican-held, have been rated a “toss-up” by the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan outlet dedicated to analyzing and predicting elections.The “toss-up” seats are those held by Senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue (Ga.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Susan Collins (Maine), and Steve Daines (Mont.). Elections featuring two Republican incumbents — Martha McSally (Ariz.) and Cory Gardner (Colo.) — are listed as leaning Democrat.Democrats would need a net gain of three seats to control the Senate in the event that Joe Biden wins, as the vice president can act as a tie-breaker on Senate votes. Should Trump and Vice President Mike Pence win, Democrats would need a net gain of four seats to wrest control from the current Republican majority. There are two independent senators who caucus with Democrats.McConnell warned recently that Democrats had a “50-50” chance of winning a majority in the Senate.“It’s a 50-50 proposition,” McConnell said. “We have a lot of exposure. This is a huge Republican class….There are dogfights all over the country.”In Georgia, both Senate seats are up for grabs and may be subject to a runoff race held on January 5 if a candidate cannot pass 50 percent of the vote by Election Day. If one or both Georgia seats go into a runoff, that could leave the fate of the Senate unknown for weeks after November 3.Graham is neck and neck with Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, a marked change from earlier this year when the South Carolina senator enjoyed a double-digit lead. The Democrat smashed Senate fundraising records by hauling in $57 million during the third quarter — twice as much as Graham has raised in the previous six quarters combined.Graham has breezed to victory by double-digit margins in each of his reelection races since he first won his seat in 2002. In 2016, President Trump won the state by more than 14 points. But Harrison has proven a formidable opponent to Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has been scorned by Democratic donors for leading the push to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court ahead of Election Day. If elected, Harrison would be the first Democratic senator to represent South Carolina in over two decades. The race between Tillis and Democratic opponent Cal Cunningham in North Carolina has also attracted a great deal of national attention. In early October it was revealed that Cunningham, who had run on a campaign of "truth" and "honor," had allegedly had an extramarital relationship. The U.S. Army Reserve is investigating Cunningham, who is a Reserve officer, over reports that he had an affair this year with Arlene Guzman Todd, whose husband has served in the Army.However, the affair allegations don't seem to have impacted Cunningham much: a Friday poll from Marist College found the Democrat up by 10 points, 53 percent to 43 percent. A New York Times poll showed him up by three points, 46 percent to 43 percent.In Iowa, Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield leads Ernst by three points, according to a recent Des Moines Register poll. While both Iowa senators are Republicans, Ernst’s seat was previously held by a Democrat, Tom Harkin, who held his seat for 30 years before his retirement in 2014. Ernst is a Trump ally in a state where support for the president has waned since 2016.In Maine, Collins is in danger of losing the seat she has held since 1997 to challenger Sara Gideon after mounting criticism for her decision to support the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and to vote to acquit President Trump in his Senate impeachment trial earlier this year. Gideon, who serves as state House speaker, leads in the polls. In Montana, Daines, the incumbent, will take on Steve Bullock, the outgoing governor of Montana. Similarly, in Colorado, Republican incumbent Gardner is up against the state's former governor, John Hickenlooper, who also made a bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. However, Michigan's Democrat-held seat may be in danger of flipping, as incumbent Senator Gary Peters holds a single-digit lead over Republican Army veteran John James. The incumbent's slight lead has largely remained within the margin of error in recent polls. RealClearPolitics rates the race a "toss-up."In the House, Democrats will look to maintain or grow their majority, which currently stands at 232 seats to Republicans’ 198. The Cook Political Report lists 25 House seat races as “toss-up,” 16 of which are Republican seats in danger of flipping.While six of those seats are open, the rest are currently held by Republicans: Representatives David Schweikert (Ariz.), Mike Garcia (Calif.), Rodney Davis (Ill.), Jim Hagedorn (Minn.), Ann Wagner (Mo.), Don Bacon (Neb.), Jeff Van Drew (N.J.), John Katko (N.Y.), Steve Chabot (Ohio), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Chip Roy (Texas).Assuming there are no vacancies and no members from a third party, Democrats or Republicans need a minimum of 218 seats to ensure control of the House of Representatives. As Democrats currently hold 232 seats, they would need a net loss no greater than 15 seats to remain in control. Republicans have 198 seats.

LIMA, Peru (AP) - For the second time in less than two months, opposition members in Peru's congress persuaded legislators to adopt a motion Monday that requires President Martin Vizcarra to face an impeachment vote.

The president survived a similar proceeding in September when his congressional opponents accused him of ...