What Happened?
It looks as if, once all the votes are counted, Biden-Harris will have beaten Trump-Pence by about 6 million votes and may break through to 80 million votes. They will have 306 Electoral College votes. It will be a stunning repudiation of Donald Trump. At the same time, Republicans will still hold onto many state legislatures and could be in a 50/50 tie or even a 52/48 majority in the US Senate. We had no blue tsunami; we had no red tide; we did have an overwhelming rejection of President Trump.
Biden won the cities and the suburbs. Trump won rural and small town America overwhelmingly. Interestingly, the regions of the country that did very well under Trump voted for Biden. The regions that did very poorly under Trump voted for Trump. The regions with sunrise economies voted for Biden; the regions with sunset economies voted for Trump. The counties with 30% of the nation’s GDP voted for Trump; the counties with 70% of the nation’s GDP voted for Biden. The less well educated voted for Trump; the better educated voted for Biden. The regions suffering most badly from the “deaths of despair” voted for Trump. Needless to say women voted for Biden, as did minorities. Biden won by reducing Trump’s 2016 electoral advantages among whites, seniors, working class voters, and Catholics.
Trump lost due to his personal qualities that many voters totally detested. It was a race between Trump and anti-Trump, and Trump lost.
This was an extremely high turnout election. In an article titled “Minding the Gap”, the Knight Foundation reminds us that close to 100 million Americans typically do not vote, and they are not aligned with either party although components lean in each direction. This year substantial numbers came off the sidelines and voted – “like their lives depended on it”. And on January 20, 2021, we will be rid of Donald Trump (but not Trumpism).
Independents broke heavily for Biden. Republicans stayed loyal to Trump. Mail-in ballots favored Biden; Election Day voters favored Trump. The margin of Biden’s victory was “everyone”. It was young and old; it was minorities and whites. It was religious voters (other than the white evangelicals), and it was secular voters.
Joe Biden has a mandate to do what is right for the nation after all the chaos, corruption and dishonesty of the last four years of Trump. Joe Biden has special gifts in empathy and understanding, listening and developing consensus, but he cannot do so alone and he will need to build agreements from the center out. Neither the Democrats not the Republicans have a broad mandate for their favored solutions — whether it’s Medicare for All or cutting income tax rates for the wealthy.
It is up to Biden to forge a bi-partisan consensus and move the nation forward after four wasted and destructive years and the abject failures to address the Covid pandemic under Donald Trump. It is clear to all that the nation is badly broken, and its systems are fractured, and they failed a stress test just as badly as the nation’s financial institutions failed the stress test of 2008-9. It is equally clear that we are a nation in vast disagreement about solutions to our problems. And equally frightening, we need to understand that even when we are in a agreement, “special interests” have been able to block the necessary progress (think surprise medical bills or overpriced pharmaceuticals). But we cannot in our despair give up the fight to move forward on quality education, affordable health care for all, a growing economy, a healthier environment and a slowing and reversal of climate change, racial justice, immigration reforms, and reducing income inequalities. Incremental victories are still victories, we just need to keep steadily building upon them. Most importantly we must rededicate ourselves to a renewal of our democratic ideals, beginning with enforcing the right to vote for every American citizen in every community.
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 11/16/20