America dispatched Donald Trump from office but placed Joe Biden under the Republicans’ watchful eye. The US Senate does not appear to be changing hands and Nancy Pelosi’s House majority narrowed. The US simultaneously rejected Trump the man and calls from the Democrats’ left wing to defund the police. A cultural center of sorts prevailed.
Against this backdrop, Biden’s victory marks the end of a chapter, not a new beginning. But transitional figures can be essential; remember Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Ford.
The president-elect’s speech on Saturday night was presidential and soothing. Think of it as a momentary respite as tempests thrash the ship of state and Trump’s refusal to concede picks up pace. From the looks of things, Mitch McConnell is on board with him.
The former vice-president’s win was also record-setting. For the seventh time in eight presidential elections, the Democrats won the popular vote, a first for any US political party. Biden also scored the most votes ever received, and the largest share by a challenger to a sitting president since FDR beat Herbert Hoover in 1932.
The 2020 presidential election wasn’t a landslide but it wasn’t a squeaker either. By the numbers, Biden’s triumph was about energized Black voters in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit, younger Americans, and enough white voters walking away from the president. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could not have pulled it off. Biden’s mandate is personal.
Looking ahead, he stands to confront a GOP-led Senate and supreme court filled with three Trump-picked judges. If this reality emerges as the operative status quo, a Biden presidency may never come to fill a judicial vacancy.
Even as Biden flipped at least four states from red to blue, Trump surpassed his 2016 totals. In other words, his upset of Hillary Clinton was not an aberration. Trump’s performance bedevils liberals and pollsters alike.
Nationally, white suburban women again went Republican. The GOP held the line in down-ballot races. In hindsight, the Democrats’ gains in the 2018 midterms were stronger signals of the president’s own weaknesses than a wholesale rejection of the GOP. In fact, two years earlier, the Republicans actually tightened their grip on the Senate.
Trump also expanded his margins in Florida with a three-point win. Across the US, urban unrest helped him hold on to seniors despite his musings of cutting social security and Medicare. Crime also made a difference for Latinos.
Beyond that, identity politics’ allure appeared limited even as three-quarters of the country viewed racism as a serious problem. Affirmative action suffered defeat in California, Biden’s strongest state, and led to Trump performing slightly better among Asian Americans nationwide than in his initial run.
These hot-button issues will be with us for the near future. The trial of the University of North Carolina’s admissions policies just kicked off on Monday.
For the Democrats’ avowedly multicultural coalition, its broader underperformance has already led to internal feuding. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the leader of “the Squad”, is unrepentant and unbowed. Corbynism is a losing proposition. There is no reason to believe that it will fare better in the US than in the UK.
On the other side of Capitol Hill, McConnell emerged with close to an unalloyed triumph. So far, the Republicans lost only one Senate seat despite predictions to the contrary. Whether the balance of power shifts after Georgia’s run-off elections slated for early January remains to be seen.
For the moment, he stands to wield power without the headache of responsibility if Trump leaves the White House on schedule. With Biden in the Oval Office, McConnell need only answer only to his donors, wife and caucus – in that order.
But not yet. On Monday, he announced his support for the president’s challenge to the election’s results. When the chyron from Fox News reads “Not the end of the republic” as McConnell spoke on the Senate floor, you cannot help but wonder.
McConnell would also not say whether he had seen evidence of fraud that warranted overturning the election. Weimar was not that long ago and Gladiator remains the movie for our time.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
