I need to begin this with a notification. I am not even going to attempt a regular Friday Talking Points column today. We're so far from normal that it just wouldn't work -- that's what I decided when sitting down to write, at any rate.

Where we stand as a nation right now is that Joe Biden is almost certainly going to become the next president of the United States. Donald Trump is almost certainly not going to have a second term in office. We're only "almost" certain because the vote count in several states is so close that they haven't officially been called for one candidate or the other yet.

But the writing is on the wall, at this point. As I write, Biden is ahead in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Trump is ahead in North Carolina and Alaska. But Trump needed pretty much all of these states to win. Biden only needs Pennsylvania, or a combination of any two of the others. And he's currently ahead in four of them.

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As we all sit around refreshing our browsers to see if there are any further ballot count updates in Pennsylvania and Georgia today, I thought it was worth taking a longer view of that map we've all been staring at. I wrote about this a month ago, but I have some further thoughts I'd like to share about the long-term trends in states moving along the red/purple/blue spectrum.

What really spurred me to write about it again so soon was the dawning realization that even though it now seems that Joe Biden has rebuilt the vaunted "big blue wall," I think it would be far too optimistic to think that this is any sort of lasting trend which will put the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania firmly back in the Democrats' column for a long time to come. But more on that in a moment.

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Here we go again. It's like we all woke up today in the year 2000. Lawsuits are being filed, votes are still being counted, and several key states have not been called yet. There is no winner, although as of this writing it certainly seems like Biden's got a clear edge. But, just like in 2000, that can always change.

The good news (such as it is) is that so far Team Trump hasn't come up with any single example of even suspicious behavior, much less outright wrongdoing. If they had, you can bet that we'd all have heard about it by now. Instead, they are left filing lawsuits that the Pennsylvania attorney general characterized as "more of a partisan document than a legal one." Believing you won and tweeting about it is one thing, but proving you won in court is a lot harder to do, in other words.

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I'm not even going to try to write an article today, because nobody would likely even read it. We're all just waiting for the results to start appearing anyway, so I thought I'd file this as a placeholder column so we can all start fresh down in the comments section tonight.

I got the following list of poll closure times from the Washington Post, which has a much more detailed list, but I just wanted to post the main information as a summary. Caveats: Other sources I checked differed on whether a few states would report some results an hour earlier (such as Oregon), and already there are a handful of counties here and there which have been granted extended polling hours. But other than that, this list should do. And, just to show everyone how much more pleasant it is to watch the results out here, all times are given in Pacific Standard Time (which is when I'll be seeing them).

Without further ado, here is the basic list of the schedule of state poll closing times. "Partial Results" means there are some counties which close early, and some which close late. Most often (but not in all cases), this is due to a time zone line splitting the state. "Completed Results" is the follow-up to Partial Results. And "Full Results" means that polls across the entire state close at the same time.

3:00 P.S.T.

Partial Results

Indiana
Kentucky

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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.

One general comment before we begin. This year has seen a "get out the vote" effort that absolutely dwarfs anything seen previously. Americans have been reminded not just to vote but to have a plan for voting for months now, and from some very unusual sources. A few days ago, I actually saw a public service "Go vote!" television ad featuring Cheech and Chong. Younger readers may not comprehend just how mindbendingly weird this is. A more up-to-date reference (although still somewhat dated, these days) would be how jarring it would be to see a "Go vote!" P.S.A. from Beavis and Butthead. Cheech and Chong -- while both blatantly smoking joints -- do a short little pro-vote comedy routine using their signature stoner humor. I never thought I would see such a thing in a million years, and yet this year it's barely even noticed. That's how strange this election has been.

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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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In 1973, baseball legend Yogi Berra uttered the immortal line: "It ain't over 'til it's over." He was speaking about the playoffs, but it's really a universal statement that has particular relevance right now. Because tens of millions of Americans just want the election to be over. Many have wanted this for months. And we've still got five more days to go.

We've all been through the wringer this year. We've been squashed flat by the twin rollers of the worst pandemic in 100 years and the worst economic hit since the Great Depression. We've been wrung out and hung out to dry. It's why everyone has been so exhausted all year long.

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President Donald Trump has gotten away with all kinds of things while in office, blowing apart many traditions, conventions, and presidential precedents. He has gotten away with it, for the most part, because very little of it is actually written into law. They're all just a sort of an unwritten code of conduct that previous presidents have all (mostly) followed. But if Democrats do win the "trifecta" next Tuesday and wind up in control of both houses of Congress and the White House, they will be in a position to do something about this sorry state of affairs, in order to prevent any future presidents from getting away with such egregious behavior.

It may be one of those rare times in American history when an incoming president will willingly sign laws that restrict his own power, because the need for such laws is now so obvious and it fits in so well with Joe Biden's desire for us all to return to some sort of normalcy. So allowing Congress to legally define what these norms are shouldn't be too big a problem for Biden.

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So it has come down to this. Do you want to live in a fantasy world for the next four years, or would you prefer reality? President Donald Trump's White House science office put out a press release today that should really go down in history right next to George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner. It lists Trump's accomplishments while in office, and prominently features the statement that Trump is responsible for "ending the COVID-19 pandemic."

Got that? It's over. A thing of the past. Nothing to worry about. The pandemic is finally behind us. We can all relax once again and throw away our masks forever, because our Dear Leader has conquered the virus once and for all. Rejoice!

Meanwhile, out in the real world, 70,000 to 80,000 Americans are getting sick each and every day. Around 1,000 deaths are also happening every day. Due to the coronavirus that has "ended." This is the actual reality, not Trumpian fantasy. And yet the president wants us all to deny it, to the greater glory of him.

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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.

The biggest campaign news of the past week was the second and final presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden. As a measure of how Trump has normalized political chaos, the big takeaway from the debate was that Trump behaved normally. Which was, of course, shocking (for him).

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