The president

he's basically planned to announce victory no matter what the numbers are.

Well, you know what?

If we beat him soundly, he won't be able to do it.

African American women in particular are the backbone of the Democratic Party and they've been saying for years that they want to see themselves represented in a major way in a principal way and that's what

they got in Senator Harris. But as one of Joe's favorite quotes reminds us,

faith sees best in the dark.

Hello and welcome to Trump cast. I'm Virginia Heffernan.

Joe Biden, the heartbroken man for our heartbroken time who's of course on the ballot today

is fond of quoting a Seamus Heaney poem.

What he quotes is actually a verse translation that Heaney did of Sophocles' poem, Philoctes.

He did this wonderful translation,

and of course, verse translations are incredibly difficult.

You have to take, in this case, ancient Greek Greek and not just get it accurately into modern English

You have to make it sing in modern English. You have to make it its own poem

One passage this is Biden's favorite, is an example of how Heaney brought to life the ancient dramas in modern, well let's call it Irish English.

Okay, I hope I can keep it together reading this and don't live to regret being so choked up today.

Here's Heaney. History says, don't hope on this side of the grave but then once in a lifetime the longed for

tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme. I find it moving that many who stutter like Biden often discover that in

committing poetry to memory they experience the fluency and eloquence that often

seems to elude them in ordinary speech. The mind is weird

that way and the eccentricity of minds and hearts has got to be present to us today

...