Biden eyes 270, being briefed on Covid-19

Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey told CNN Thursday afternoon that he firmly believes there are enough uncounted votes in the Keystone State for Joe Biden to overtake President Donald Trump.

Casey predicted that Biden could overtake Trump by a 100,000 vote margin in Pennsylvania, but that it might “only reached when the vote is certified, which is down the road.”

“But for the short term, no question, I think, Joe Biden will win the state,” Casey, who has served in the US Senate since 2007, continued.

Casey added that he thinks Biden’s Pennsylvania win is “inevitable” because the remaining vote results that have yet to be tallied reside in and around cities and are mail-in votes.

“The reason for that is most of the vote out, as you know, is in Philadelphia, Delaware County,” he said. “Even in the counties that President Trump will win big, there’ll be scattering of Joe Biden votes because they’re mail-ins and they obviously tend to favor the Democrats.”

There are approximately 369,364 mail-in ballots left to be counted in the state as of 3:00 p.m. ET, according to the Pennsylvania’s secretary of state website. Philadelphia County estimates that they have 92,000 to 95,000 mail-in and absentee ballots left to count.

Trump is currently leading in Pennsylvania, but margins have narrowed as the commonwealth has tallied more voting results and more mail-in ballots have been counted. Trump cannot secure enough votes to win the presidency without winning Pennsylvania.

Casey said that Democrats have learned that they “have to try to get votes everywhere,” even in areas where Trump is popular.

“You gotta go everywhere. You have to have a message for every part of the state. And I think that lesson’s been learned,” he said. “But even when you do that, you have to accept the fact that sometimes the margins won’t change.”

Casey also called Trump “the most effective republican presidential candidate in Pennsylvania I’ve seen since Reagan” in rural parts of the commonwealth, asserting that future Republican presidential candidates will find his record tough to beat.

On an ongoing caucus call, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is giving a positive assessment of the outcome of Tuesday’s election, a Democratic source on the call tells CNN. This is despite House Democratic losses that likely mean she will hold a smaller majority in the new Congress.

“This was a big win,” she told House Democrats, referring to Joe Biden nearing a White House win, keeping the House majority and likely gaining at least a seat in the Senate.

Pelosi said that they “recognized from the start [2020] would be a steeper climb” to hold some of their seats because House Democrats did so well in deep red districts in 2018 when Trump wasn’t on the ballot.

Pelosi is also talking up the importance of the two possible Georgia Senate runoffs to take back the Senate majority.

Rep. Cheri Bustos, a who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, blamed bad polling for the outcome and for the bullish predictions headed into Election Day, according to two sources on the call.

“Voters looked more like 2016 than projected,” Bustos told Democrats, one of the sources said.

Pelosi, giving an upbeat assessment, tells Democrats that “we have created a mandate for Biden to lead our country in a unified way.”

The source said that Pelosi is using the word “mandate” repeatedly.

The call with her members comes amid Democratic hand-wringing about what went wrong Tuesday for their congressional candidates.

Joe Biden is in Wilmington, Delaware, receiving a Covid-19 briefing as he awaits election results.

“That is what Joe Biden has done today. He’s attending a meeting on Covid,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper said.

Biden is receiving this update a day after the US hit its highest number of new coronavirus infections in a single day with more than 100,000 cases reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

“We’re already on track, today, to have it be even worse,” Cooper added.

Cooper highlighted the stark contrast in how Biden is handling the pandemic compared to President Trump.

“What do you want to bet the President of the United States is certainly not being briefed on Covid today. It’s doubtful he’s being briefed on anything having to do with America’s business, national security,” Cooper said.

“To me it’s emblematic of the two approaches that Joe Biden who is not in office, is being briefed on Covid, as he has been all along, and taking it seriously enough that on such a difficult day in the pandemic, he’s taking time to be briefed on this,” Cooper said.