A number of key states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, continue to count ballots days after the polls closed and against the backdrop of threatened legal action from the Trump campaign. GBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu spoke with WBZ Political Analyst Jon Keller about the election and what this moment means for us in the near future. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: As we walk into another day of uncertainty here, Jon, are they going to call this race today?
Jon Keller: It looks like we're getting close — noon our time. I guess Nevada has another big load of votes that they're going to release. I mean, Joe, the fact that President Trump is on the edge of losing this race just strikes me as grotesque, historic political malpractice.
Mathieu: Well, I'll tell you what, we don't have that many one-term presidents in history. Where are you going with that?
Keller: Well, let's briefly review the past four years. I apologize in advance to people who don't want to relive it. But consider, first of all, [Trump's] failure to lift his approval rating in four years of inhabiting the world's most powerful bully pulpit. That's really astonishing. A president's approval ratings go up and down, but his never moved off its wretched initial level. Think of the never ending stream of completely unforced errors. One jumps to mind as we watch him teetering on the verge of losing Arizona — some news organizations have already called it for Joe Biden — fueled to some extent by the needless jihad against John McCain, both in life and in death. That apparently is a contributing factor out there. [It] not only may cost him Arizona, but cost him the repeal of Obamacare, famously. His idiotic elevation of Joe Biden and branding of Biden as the guy who I most fear through this endless pursuit of this Ukraine nonsense, which never stuck with anyone beyond his core base and which you may recall got him impeached. And then climaxing it all is the mind-boggling bungling of his response to COVID-19. No one blamed him for the virus getting in here. All he had to say was, "it's here. We've got to rally together. I'm going to do everything in my power to help you American people. Now, here's doctors Fauci and Birx." Step back, and you're golden. You're on a glide path to reelection, economic crash notwithstanding. But no, he has been just a spectacular committer of political malpractice at every step of the way.
Mathieu: You just said a lot. Can we then extrapolate, maybe go to the very end of your theory there, and suggest that if Donald Trump is not re-elected, it's because of the coronavirus.
Keller: Well, I want to preface this by saying exit polls really need to be looked at with skepticism this time around, given the difficulty of conducting exit polls. But some of the early exit polling I'm seeing suggests that he really made some eyebrow-raising gains. One of them had him with 20 percent of Black male votes. That's better than most Republican nominees do and perhaps speaks to how good the economy was going before COVID hit. We're well aware, and it's undisputed, that he made gains among Latino voters, again, speaking to the economic growth that occurred and his aggressive prosecution of the ideas of socialism and also of socialist regimes in Latin America. So yeah, there was definitely potential for re-election. It wasn't going to be easy; nothing is in a 50/50 country. But I don't think there's any doubt that if he loses, history will record that he blew it.
Mathieu: So backing up a little bit to where we are now, we still don't know, Jon. Let's say this race is called today, tomorrow, next week [or] whenever it happens. Elections officials say, "look, we did this right. We certified the votes. Here's what we have." About half the country, no matter which way this goes, Jon, is going to believe it [and] is going to trust the outcome. That's a crisis.
Keller: Yeah, but it's the kind of crisis we've been living with for many years.
Mathieu: How do you get out of that crisis, though? What's the job for whomever wins the White House to try to get us beyond this moment?
Keller: Boy...
Mathieu: By the way, you may not think it's possible.
Keller: I love to be able to give you snappy answers, but that's a tough one. Joe Biden is experienced in the art of backroom schmoozing in Washington. You'll remember as vice president to Barack Obama, he was the guy that Obama would send over to Capitol Hill because they clearly didn't want to deal with Obama. And he got a fair amount done that way. There will be an immediate opportunity for some semblance of bipartisanship in dealing with the economic crash and the need for a stimulus. Even Mitch McConnell is saying that's job one when they come back next week. Biden won't be in office yet if he, in fact, is the president elect, but there will be opportunities dealing with that. It's not going to be easy. We're still suffering from the poison of the 2000 contested election. And that was a situation where Al Gore was very gracious and put the interests of the country ahead of his own anger and feeling of having been robbed. That's not going to happen this time. If you're sitting around waiting for Donald Trump to put anyone's interests ahead of his own, you're going to be waiting a long time.
