Not too close to call: this was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats
It was the night when America’s better angels refused to come out to play.
If Trump’s victory in 2016 has too often been characterised as a failure of the other side, the election of 2020 demands that we recognise the deep appeal of this president to almost half of Americans who appear to prefer a leader who projects strength rather than compassion, anger rather than common civility.
Whichever way this election now goes and however Democrats spin it, this has been the bleakest of nights for the Dems, pollsters, and anybody who believed that America would prove to be exhausted by four years of Donald Trump. Whilst it’s true that Joe Biden has already improved on Hillary Clinton’s numbers – adding two million votes to her total thus far – the problem for Democrats is that Trump has now added three million to his 2016 total. A refutation of Donald Trump it most certainly is not; the result, a situation that nobody wanted, least of all voters hoping for a government that wouldn’t spend the next two or more years in deadlock.
Trump has already declared victory (prematurely, of course) and the numbers are now close enough to allow him to chase this result through the courts. Legal and constitutional experts are expressing outrage at the language coming from the President, but this result is already a victory for people who don’t listen to constitutional scholars and care not a jot about their outrage.
Trump could yet win without the courts and America revert to the place it’s been for the past four years, with implications impossible to anticipate, not least in terms of Trump’s retribution against those that have stood in his way. The hostility between the two sides in the culture war has been deep but somewhat moderated on the liberal side by their faith that Trump was set for one term. Is America ready for another four years in which the minority decide the affairs of the majority?
Once all the counting and shouting (and litigating) is done in the coming days, the 2020 election might yet result in the ordination of Joe Biden in January but it would not mean the exorcism of Trumpism that many had hoped and even more – many Republicans included – had expected. Nor would it be a chance for America’s deeply polarised government to push on with purpose. Trump has survived four years with the Congress divided. He can survive another four. As this election proves, his schtick had never been about governance as much as gestural politics. For Biden, however, he would enter the White House already hobbling like the lame-duck he’d be sure to become. He prides himself on being able to work across the aisle, but he has never boasted of being able to work miracles.
So, what happened?
Well, the Electoral College happened (again) and it still favours Republicans in tight races. Smaller states are over-represented and larger states over-represented, with a study last year finding that a Republican winning 49% of the vote would win the Electoral College 27% of the time, compared to a Democrat who would win it only 11% of the time. Going into the evening, Republicans knew the polls suggested that they had a very narrow path to victory. Trump appeared on Fox News earlier in the day sounding worn down by the campaign. He was surely beaten. Except he wasn’t or, certainly, not as much as some of Biden’s double-digit poll leads had suggested.
People will either understate or overstate the significance of Florida given it’s a peculiar race decided by the unique demographics. It would have been a bonus for Biden – the most painless way to bring this race to an early end – so his not winning there was hardly a surprise. The manner of his defeat, however, was shameful because it revealed that Democrat naivety that’s too often their undoing. Although he gained support in many red counties, flipping a few in the process, it was in the Democrat stronghold of Miami-Dade where he failed spectacularly. Trump’s campaign had been targeting Latino voters, mainly Cuban, who had responded to his attack ads that portrayed Biden as though he was an exponent of South American style socialism.
Crude and effective, it is precisely the kind of politics that Republicans do so well. What is unforgivable is that mutterings of the soft Latino vote had been around for weeks. Democrats had done too little to address it, despite Bloomberg money and a visit from Obama. It might not be meaningful but, in terms of the cold pragmatics of winning power, it begins to look habitual.
After Florida, the night proceeded along familiar lines. Democrats won Democrat states, Republicans won Republican. Texas was close enough to think it’s now purple but not so purple as to help Biden. The key takeaway was that America had not shifted that much since 2016. Arizona appears like it might flip which would give Biden slight relief but not much. Former astronaut Mark Kelly was an inspired choice and picked up the Senate seat in an otherwise terrible night for Democrats hoping to take control of both houses of Congress. Georgia remains too close to call and the Upper Midwest states are going to take a time to count. These are the places where it was assumed that there would be a big Biden blowout but the numbers are so tight that nothing is clear.
By the end of the long evening, we find America balanced precariously between starkly different outcomes and neither should fill us with much hope. The choice is between continued chaos or nothing much getting done.