While nothing is final just yet, three things are increasingly clear: Joe Biden is the President-elect, Mitch McConnell remains Senate Majority Leader with a tiny majority, and Speaker Pelosi lost some Democratic seats in the House. In no particular order, some analytic points about the whole enchilada:
Joe Biden received over seventy-four million votes, the largest number of votes in the history of the United States. This is most amazing, especially considering that in two previous Presidential runs, he never got past “*%” (that is, negligible) support. His support was strongest among non-white voters (especially black women), young and/or first-time voters, the irreligious and voters not employed full time. According to the New York Times exit polls, two-thirds of those voting for Mr. Biden said they were voting primarily “against the other candidate.”
President Trump received over seventy million votes, or the second-highest number in the history of the United States, eclipsing even winning candidate Obama in 2008. Trump won both white men and white women voters (while losing some ground) but registered gains with blacks, Latinos, and LGBT voters (% increase over 2016). Whether you loved or hated him, it’s fair to say he had the worst four years of media coverage in modern American presidential history (deserved or not), and somehow gained over seven million votes!
Mr. Biden has called repeatedly for reconciliation and stated bluntly he will work as hard for those who voted against him as for those who voted for him. These are exactly the right words for our times. The country is deeply divided, and until we stop referring to one another as enemies, Nazis, morons, etc. we cannot move forward. With President Trump out of the White House, the “but Trump” excuse for rudeness or vulgarity has expired. President Biden will have his hands full restoring dignified disagreement.
The exasperated foreign coverage of the election was amusing. Yes, there are many more efficient ways (to have a Presidential decision) than holding fifty state elections. But these are, and will remain, the UNITED STATES of America. The Soviets held very fast, very efficient elections: it was not an improvement. Those Americans calling for a more centralized, national vote have either (1) never worked in Washington, or (2) forgotten their civics lessons. The system is working well, thank you very much, and we’ll keep it. President Trump’s claims notwithstanding, we only started “calling” elections on election night in the 1960’s with the advent of television and polling. There is no reason to consider systemic change because it takes a few days to finish vote counting, or to conduct a recount.
One bright spot was the dog that didn’t bark. Thus far, there has been no government commentary about possible foreign activities to affect the actual voting. If that holds true, it would appear that the United States Cyber Command, Department of Homeland Security, and the Intelligence Community accomplished the mission.
For the second time in as many Presidential elections, pollsters made fools of themselves. Chagrined after their 2016 fiasco, which fostered some of the initial paranoia about President Trump–since after all, he couldn’t have won the election fairly based on what the polls predicted–the pollsters believed the 2018 mid-term results proved they had adjusted and were once again accurate. What they forgot was President Trump was only figuratively on that ballot, and the massive 2020 blue wave the pollsters imagined only demonstrated they were once again looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Citizens of all stripes should remember that polling is roughly akin to fortune telling: you see mostly what you want to see, and that’s not necessarily what will be.
On the other hand, massive kudos to the prognosticators who looked at the demography and changing State voting rules and identified where the “red mirage/blue shift” would happen. In case you missed it, this was the concept that President Trump would hold an advantage in some states at the end of election day, but as the counting went on, that edge would narrow and disappear. To those claiming the constant erosion of support for President Trump in the final state election tallies is evidence of fraud: sorry, that’s not the case. States who counted absentee ballots late demonstrated the effect of greater Democratic Party representation in those votes, that is all.
Whither Progressivism? I still have friends who say this election was only close because the Democrats ran a moderate, and the result would have been a blue wave with candidates Sanders or Warren. The notion of either of them capturing Pennsylvania or Arizona, let alone Georgia? I’ll leave the last word to Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), a moderate Democrat and former colleague of mine who oh-so-narrowly won re-election. Leaks from the House Democratic conference call on Thursday had her screaming at Speaker Pelosi and others, “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. . . . We lost good members because of that. If we are classifying Tuesday as a success . . . we will get f—ing torn apart in 2022.” The House Democratic majority may be in the single digits when all the races are decided. And Progressives should avoid looking at State results, where the GOP gained control of several states just prior to redistricting.
This year, as in several past elections, pundits claimed that the Republican Party was doomed because demography is destiny. That is, younger voters skew liberal and Democratic, so they will stay that way in perpetuity. Or minority voters do, and the Unites States will shortly be a non-white majority electorate. So Democrats win. ((Brief aside: population estimates for China all the way through the 1970’s showed accelerating growth. Demographers joked that the modal person on the planet was an eighteen year-old Chinese female, and nothing reproduces itself like an eighteen year-old Chinese female. Demography is destiny. Except the Chinese Communist Party had other ideas, and the will to enforce a draconian one-child policy. They were so successful they halted Chinese population growth, because political demography is not destiny, it’s a variable. People change.)) Young people want free stuff and fewer restrictions. They grow up and get jobs and hate the high taxes. They buy a house and resent the loud music from the bonger next door. Minority groups refuse to act like monoliths, because they are comprised of real people, not stereotypes: for example, Latinos overwhelmingly do not identify as “people of color.” While it is undeniably true the Democrats capture the most minority votes, the GOP has gained an increasing share of the black and Hispanic vote in the last several Presidential elections. Both parties will continue to evolve and compete for all voters. . . for that is what they do.
The Media? Where to start? Major media organizations decided that President Trump was a unique threat to the American experiment and therefor adopted the stance of active resistance to his administration. Will they reclaim any semblance of nonpartisan coverage, let alone objectivity? Unlikely. President Trump was a major boon for the bottom line of these media, and that is at an end with the end of his Presidency. Where do they go for eyeballs, now? Can they possibly resist covering former President Trump?
What about President Trump? While it is possible he’ll just walk away from politics, it is very unlikely. Late in the election cycle, former President Obama broke with tradition and campaigned heavily against President Trump; former President Trump won’t even consider staying above the fray. Trump will resume his role as Tweeter-in-Chief, grabbing headlines with outrageous comments and over-sized rallies. Needless to say, any sputtering of the economy or increase in coronavirus cases will yield a Trumpian tweet-storm of ridicule. Nothing would more salve his ego then attempting to oust President Biden, so he’ll remain in the mix.
Trumpism as a movement? It’s future depends on what you think it is. If you view Trumpism as a collection of racist, misogynist, ignorant and hateful ideas, then Trumpism will recede back onto the fringes of the American polity. But Trump’s view of China as a problem, not a partner? Already mainstream in foreign and economic policy circles in DC. President Biden will have nothing good to say about President Putin, but he’ll be hard-pressed to develop a more oppositional Russia policy. The Wall is over, but support for immigration is flagging, and both parties admit immigration reform is essential, or another wave of child refugees is likely. Protecting the working class from the ravages of globalization is now a rare area of bipartisan agreement. Oftentimes, Trump’s extreme words belied mainstream thoughts. If he were at all introspective, he might realize how easily he could have won re-election with a little moderation.
So we’re headed for a period of Divided Government, which has gotten a bad reputation of late. The “Not My President//the other side is Evil” stuff really got started after Bush v. Gore in 2000 and became steadily worse. By the end of the Obama presidency it deteriorated into the Merrick Garland Supreme Court debacle, a preview of most of the Trump presidency as nothing useful could pass both Houses of Congress and be signed by the President. Let me counter all that by stating that divided government is something America traditionally has a genius for, and we should welcome the chance to re-awaken the spirit. Our worst policies happen when one party controls both the executive and legislative branches, as they inevitably overreach. A willingness to compromise among the three branches has previously and can again result in laws and policies that are supported by the vast majority of Americans. Not accepted under force of law, not resented but accommodated, but supported as the best for all.
Finally, the closeness of the election should put to bed some of the more extreme and unwise ideas: dumping the electoral college, conjuring up new states, creating a national election, packing the Supreme Court. The system worked, people: leave it alone. In the end, the Electoral College will reflect the popular vote, and will exaggerate (a positive thing) the size of Mr Biden’s victory. Adding states fixes nothing, nor does adding legislators! Could you imagine the chaos if we were amidst a national recount right now? And the Supreme Court has nine legitimate justices, quite capable of doing the job assigned by the Constitution. There is no constitutional provision they have to be liberal, they just have to be confirmed.* The urge to change the system every time one is unhappy with a candidate, a party, or a policy is immature. As The Beatles put it, “You say you’d change the constitution, welll-llll, you know, we all want to change your head.”
We’re not out of the woods yet. President Trump could still be truculent in the months left in his administration, and his supporters could begin a “lost cause” mythology. Supporters of President Biden must resist the overwhelming urge to use the power of government to persecute former officials of the Trump administration: that is the stuff of banana republics, not our United States. All told, I’m optimistic the country can regain some normalcy and make divided government work again.
* To those who continue to claim the denial of Merrick Garland somehow invalidates the nomination of Justices Gorsuch or Barrett or both, let me put this argument to bed. Yes, it was completely hypocritical of Majority Leader McConnell to claim he was upholding some standard in denying Mr. Garland a vote. But, there would have been no difference in the Supreme Court. McConnell should have simply held the hearing, held the vote, and failed to confirm Mr. Gorsuch. There was ample historical precedent for this, including most recently Mr. Bork's nomination. If he had chosen this path, we would have ended up with the same court as today, but without this silly argument about non-existent precedent.