Although I don’t agree with either its tone or its conclusion, I’m in broad agreement with Damon Linker’s analysis of the election outcome in The Week. Here’s its opening:
When every legally cast vote has been counted, Joe Biden will probably have prevailed in enough states to claim victory in the presidential race, perhaps even ending up with a few more Electoral Votes than Donald Trump managed to earn four years ago. That means Trump will probably be out, defeated in his bid for re-election.
But this is not a moment for Democrats to celebrate.
In the expectations game, the Democratic Party whiffed and whiffed badly. The Biden campaign and its allies managed to drive up turnout — but so did Trump. Republicans put up a hell of a fight, and not just, or even mainly, in the battle for the White House. Democrats have almost certainly failed to win a Senate majority, and so far they have lost some ground in the House as well (while still on track to maintain control of the lower chamber of Congress).
For the last thirty years progressive Democrats have had a recurring dream. Mr. Linker explains:
So much for the Democratic fantasy — the one that seemingly never dies — of unobstructed rule. Democrats didn’t just want to win and govern in the name of a deeply divided nation’s fractured sense of the common good. No, they wanted to lead a moral revolution, to transform the country — not only enacting a long list of new policies, but making a series of institutional changes that would entrench their power far into the future. Pack the Supreme Court. Add left-leaning states. Break up others to give the left huge margins in the Senate. Get rid of the Electoral College. Abolish the police. Rewrite the nation’s history, with white supremacy and racism placed “at the very center.” Ensure “equity” not just in opportunity but in outcomes. Hell, maybe they’d even establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to teach everyone who voted for or supported the 45th president just how evil they really are.
It has never come to pass and it will never come to pass. We are too large and diverse a country for 15% of the population to reign. Do the math. About 30% of Americans are Democrats about half of whom are progressives. If we are not to be like the ass frozen immobile between two piles of hay, politicians must forge coalitions and negotiate compromises including with people whom they detest. Here’s the part of his analysis I found most telling:
No wonder so many Republicans turned out to vote. Democrats proved to be the most effective GOTV operation for the GOP imaginable.
Yes, Trump and the Republican cheerleading section online and on cable news and talk radio harped on every extreme proposal. But this wasn’t just a function of the fallacy of composition, where one loony activist says something off the wall and the GOP amplifies it far beyond reason in order to tar the opposition unfairly. These were prominent Democrats — progressive politicians, activists, and scholars and prize-winning journalists at leading cultural institutions — talking this way. Joe Biden himself usually did the smart thing and tried to distance himself from the most radical proposals. But in the end it wasn’t enough to mollify fears of an ascendant left hell bent on entrenching itself in power and enacting institutional reforms that would enable it to lead a moral, political, and cultural revolution.
And therein lies a paradox that should be obvious but apparently isn’t: Democrats live in a country with a large, passionate opposition. Arrogant talk of demographic inevitabilities and transformative changes to lock Republicans out of power in the name of “democracy” has the effect of inspiring that opposition to unite against them, rendering political success less assured and more tenuous.
I also think that progressives are wildly over-estimating the appeal that their ideas have for blacks and Hispanics who tend to be social conservatives but that’s material for another post.
There will be no court packing. No added states. Nothing from the toxic progressive-fantasy wishlist will come anywhere close to passing. Instead, we will have grinding, obstructive gridlock. Some will demand that Biden push through progressive priorities by executive order. But every time he does — like every incident of urban rioting and looting, every effort to placate the left-wing “Squad” in the House, every micro-targeted identity-politics box-checking display of intersectional moral preening and finger-wagging — the country will move closer to witnessing a conservative backlash that results in Republicans taking control of the House and increasing their margin in the Senate in November 2022, rendering the Biden administration even more fully dead in the water.
I don’t think that tells the whole story. Based on the political advertising I saw on behalf of every Democratic House candidate, the strategy was clear: run on health care. That’s a fine strategy to appeal to people who get paid whether they come in to work or not but it leaves blacks and Hispanics with nothing. They have more interests and, indeed, more pressing interests than health care.
Sometimes I really think democrats are too full of themselves. They inevitably think they have the higher ground, sanctimoniously touting their moral superiority to others, that they are smarter than the average God-fearing working stiff, while openly projecting onto rivals the very flaws they seem to exemplify themselves, like “cheating,†racist epithets, fascism, intolerance etc.
For instance, in the 2018 midterms Mark Harris (R) was outed, and eventually ousted, for being associated with ballot harvesting tactics, enabling a temporary win in the NC 9th CD – a tactic considered illegal in NC. In that same year, CA ran with rampant ballot harvesting throughout the state flipping at least 6 conservative CD seats. Their rationale was it’s “legality,†made so by an outgoing Jerry Brown 2016 EO, in a democrat majority ruled state. Why, however, does such a blatant distortion of ballot collection protocols receive such a different appraisal, based only on a partisan-penned edict, splashing it with a “legal†label?
For the last 4 years DJT has been typecast as a “racist,†throughout a politically charged environment advocating for the denouncement of white privilege, black- encouraged segregation mantras, violence towards any diversity of thought. And yet, it’s being revealed, in post election stats, non-white minorities supported this president in numbers not seen since 1960. Could it be that a president’s actions speak louder than baseless partisan accusations.
In this current era of political upheavals, Antifa and BLM groups refer to themselves as anti-fascist, as they push down, knock out teeth, spit on, crudely address, and openly despise and antagonize those who disagree with their ideology/platform. In academic and professional circles the same intolerance is displayed by kicking students out of class, firing employees who dare belong to or speak approvingly of anything associated with R’s or, God forbid, Trump!
Now, after 4 years of Trump-stole-the-election cries, we are seeing a 2020 election riddled with inconsistencies, obstructing procedures followed to count legal votes, many battleground states exhibiting significantly more votes than there are registered voters, and there is nothing but crickets coming from our biased press and pundits.
In measuring the outcome by “expectations,” I can’t help but wonder about how many Republicans were braced for a complete shellacking, finding small comfort in the SCOTUS appointment and preparing for a period in the political wilderness. And in the leadup to the election I noticed a pretty strident tone from many online Democrats that anxiously awaited the punishment to be doled out for the outrage of Trump.
With record turnouts, we seem to have had little change. The polls appear to be off, but the map looks pretty familiar. The main change appears to be the reduced importance of the three big states: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. If Biden wins without any of these, it will be the first time ever. If he wins with just PA, it will be the first time since 1960. The Democrats are doing better in the Southwest and in the former Southern colonies.
If the Republicans retain the Senate, it will be the first time a newly elected Democratic President did not enjoy a Democratic Senate and House. That election stood out as a contest between the character (or lack thereof) btw/ Cleveland and Blaine. Blaine probably lost because the slur about the Democrats being the part of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion. If he hadn’t laid off social media for a few more days, he would have probably won New York and the Presidency.
And its my understanding that the House might have the thinnest majority since at least the New Deal. This will place challenges on the traditional absolute powers of the Speaker.
More generally, especially if the Republicans get a slight majority in the Senate, this might be the closest to a 50/50 government ever?
What else would a Democratic incumbent congressman run on besides health care?
Look at the list of achievements of the Democratic House this term
1. Partisan and failed impeachment
2. COVID relief bill in the spring — which was offset by the failure to find a compromise relief bill in the summer/fall.
3. Investigations of the President
That’s literally it.
One possible take is this is as anti-incumbent action the electorate could take against a divided government where both parties have some share of power.
Yep. That’s what I’ve been saying. 2020, Baby!
Not to mention the manifest lunacy of giving people stipends and then closing the stores. What else did they expect but to increase savings?
” Based on the political advertising I saw on behalf of every Democratic House candidate, the strategy was clear: run on health care.”
Agree, but according to the conservatives they were running on defund the police, GND, and Marxism. I said this was too close to call and I also thought it possible that Biden was elected and the Senate stayed Republican. I think our tribalism has things pretty well split and I think the summer riots, with very few people killed BTW unlike the riots in the 60s, balanced the poor performance with Covid so it became a turnout election. Always hard to call those.
Steve
I think Democrats still have a shot at the Senate.
The GA senate races will go to runoffs – and the Democrats would have 50/50 odds.
Democrats could enter Jan with the trifecta; Biden; a 50/50 Senate with Harris presiding; and < 10 seat majority in the House.
Imagine implementing the GND with that.
This was a very weird election.
Linker is overwrought, but I think he gets the gist basically right when it comes to the Democrats.
The GoP better not get too comfortable though. That the incumbent President lost while his party gained seats in the House does not reflect well on Trump. And his freakout today about counting ballots and “stolen election” aren’t exactly helping his brand.
Supposedly Trump is already thinking about running again in 2024. That should be fun and will make an interesting primary.
Well, I’ve turned the page unless clear proof of vote fraud can be brought forward.
A self described moderate President has been elected by a far left, green washed, America-trashing, witch hunting, completely transformative, self congratulatory cabal of Marxists.
Their power spreads from campus to newsrooms to megacap social media to top name entertainers speaking with the moral confidence of sages.
I want to know now most of all who Biden is.
If he’s as weak and malleable as he seems then we’re off again to hope and change legislation and McConnell will be the next target they will try to freeze and eliminate.
Proof of fraud will come from a consolidation of on-site witnesses in tabulation centers, whistleblowers in the USPS and elsewhere, videos taken of open malfeasance by vote tabulators, recounts, and the like. For me, an election fairly executed and won can be accepted. One that is sloppily run, has many opaque examples of possible fraud, unreasonable stops and starts to timely vote tabulation won’t be accepted.
I hate to break it to you but all elections are “sloppily run” and always have been. They’re run by people.
It’s really hard to accept the performance of the USPS.
I literally get half of my mail and 5 pieces every day of someone else’s from another zip code.
And, what are these stories about a sweep of sorting centers in PA turning up 130,000 mail in ballots? How sloppy can they be when they knew beforehand all eyes were on them? Is this carelessness or something else?
You absolutely need to avoid impropriety but also even the appearance of it.