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**NOVEMBER 5, 2020**

Meyerson on TAP

About My Predictions ...

A number of you likely read my Tuesday On TAP, in which I predicted a
sweeping Biden victory. I'm confident I got the "victory" part right,
but not, unfortunately, the "sweeping."

Mea culpa. Boy, was I culpa. I was going on the basis of the polls I
judged to be the best, a judgment informed (or misinformed) by people
I'd trusted on such matters. There were a couple of flashing
lights-like The Des Moines Register's poll-that should have slowed
me down, but didn't.

The misinformation probably came down to the question of who was judged
to be a "likely voter." In hindsight, a sizable number of unlikelies
turned out to be likely after all. The Trumpies did a very good job of
mobilizing Red America, as the Bidens did the Blue. Clearly, there was a
collective underestimation of the Trumpies' achievement, and I was
part of that collective.

We also don't know yet the consequences of the fact that the Trump
people actually walked their precincts for months, while the Biden side
relied on phone and digital contacts, though they did begin walking in
the final weeks. All praise to UNITE HERE, the union of (largely
unemployed) hotel workers, who spent months walking in Nevada, Arizona,
and Philadelphia and thereby made a huge contribution to Biden's
impending victory.

My Tuesday mistake reminds me of a story about FDR. As his 1936
re-election campaign loomed, he held a Cabinet meeting to discuss the
coming campaign and brought up the inconvenient fact that when he'd
run in 1932, he'd delivered a big speech in Pittsburgh in which he'd
pledged he'd absolutely balance the budget. Happily, necessarily, he
hadn't done that once elected. Indeed, he'd allocated billions to
put millions of unemployed Americans on the federal payroll building
schools, roads, bridges, airports, dams, aircraft carriers, the works.
The budget was thus way out of balance, and it was a blessing that it
was. Still, there was the matter of that Pittsburgh speech. What, he
asked his Cabinet, should he do about it?

The room fell silent. Then, Commerce Secretary Dan Roper suggested a
response: "Deny you were ever in Pittsburgh."

My Tuesday On TAP? What Tuesday On TAP?

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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2020's Biggest Losers: Probably Trump, Definitely Schumer

As Democrats fail to take the Senate, their leader's performance
merits some scrutiny. BY HAROLD MEYERSON

Policy Matters

Divorced from candidates and to a degree from partisanship, policies
that make a tangible difference in people's lives once again performed
well at the ballot. BY DAVID DAYEN

It's Time for an Overhaul of House Democratic Leadership

The performance, strategy, and results were all wrong. BY ALEXANDER
SAMMON

Unsanitized: What Does the Election Mean for Stimulus?

It means a smaller set of relief, unfortunately, though that's better
than gridlock. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for November 5, 2020.
BY DAVID DAYEN

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