I just spent a few hours watching the Electoral College vote. Now, admittedly I am a pretty wonky political guy, but I have never before paid even the slightest attention to the formality of each state's electors meeting to cast their official ballots to elect the next president. It was always an afterthought, a mere formality. Something you'd hear about maybe a day or so after it happened, because it was of no real consequence. Even in the midst of the 2000 Bush v. Gore fight, nobody really paid much attention to the Electoral College, because it simply wasn't all that relevant to the legal fight.

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President Donald Trump, as we all know full well by now, has truly become the thing he hates the most: a total loser.

He's lost the 2020 election so many times, it's hard to keep track of them all. First, he lost when all the votes were counted. Then he lost after he demanded they recount the votes. Then he lost when all the states certified their results. Then he lost when all the states named their electors to the Electoral College. Monday, he's going to lose the biggest one yet, as the Electoral College votes 306-232 for Joe Biden.

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President-Elect Joe Biden has been making lots of news with his slow rollout of nominees for various cabinet choices, top advisors, czars, and agency heads. So far, Team Biden has taken a very systematic approach, choosing one or two main areas each week (such as pandemic response or the economy), and then rolling out entire teams of top advisors all at once. This helps the media and the public keep their focus on individual areas of responsibility, and as a result it gives all the Biden picks lots of good press (for being so gradual and comprehensible).

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President Donald Trump is the lamest of lame ducks right now. He is so lost in his fantasy that he somehow didn't lose the election to Joe Biden that he has almost completely stopped even any pretense of doing his job. He rouses himself out of his funk to occasionally fire someone who has annoyed him in some way, but that's about it, really. Otherwise his time is consumed by all the sour grapes served up at his giant pity party.

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Bad puns aside, though, the dereliction of duty shown by President Donald Trump this week should stun us all. It doesn't, of course, because: he's been derelict on so many duties over the past four years already; he's been especially out to lunch on the coronavirus pandemic; and most people are paying more attention to his extended tantrum about losing the election to Joe Biden. But we should be paying a lot closer attention to what Trump is failing to do right now -- and our guess is that we will, very soon now.

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While Democrats are rightly excoriating President Donald Trump for his extended hissy fit over the election results (who's hiding in his basement now, Mister President?), they should also be in the process of dialing down expectations for what Joe Biden will be able to accomplish as president. Because in all likelihood, Democrats are not going to win both Senate seats in the Georgia runoff elections. It could happen, but even if it does it will still mean lowered expectations for what comes next.

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Here we are, the end of a very long and exhausting road. Election Day is tomorrow. But 100 million Americans may have already voted before Tuesday even dawns. Voting in the time of COVID-19 has been just as different as everything else we've been living through.

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We'll get to explaining that title further (as if it really needs it), down in the talking points section of our program. And happy Hallowe'en-eve to everyone ("Hallowe'en'en," maybe?).

The homestretch of the 2020 election has been rather bizarre to watch, since President Donald Trump has made his closing argument: "Pandemic? What pandemic? I don't see any pandemic anywhere!"

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Welcome to our penultimate Electoral Math column. Next Monday, I will post my own final picks for the 2020 presidential election, for better or for worse. And I promise, in the final column, there will be no tossup states at all -- I'll make a prediction even for those I've got to flip a coin to decide.

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We are now only one Scaramucci away from Election Day. For those unfamiliar with the reference, a "Scaramucci" is a unit of time measurement equal to the time Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci spent as President Donald Trump's press secretary -- 11 days. And we're now only one Scaramucci away from the election.

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