 |
| Why Democrats lost ground in the election (Politico) |
What should not be forgotten, however. is that the country is as divided as ever. More people voted for the current President than any other Republican President in American history. So it is not entirely correct to say ‘the American people have spoken’. It is more correct to say that MOST of the American people have spoken. Nearly half the country said something else. They wanted the current President to remain in office.
What exactly does that mean? Is half the country the ‘deplorables’ that Hilary Clinton called them in 2016? Are the over seventy million people that voted for Trump the disgusting human beings Clinton described in a moment of truth? (She later apologized for making that comment)
I don’t think anyone really believes that. The truth is that there are a lot of very fine people on both side (Yes, I know that was used in another context by the President. But unless you are a complete idiot, it is an accurate statement in this case.)
But that begs the question for many of those who voted for Biden. How indeed can anyone vote for Trump unless they actually are a ‘deplorable’ - since they see the man they voted to be more than deplorable?
There is another explanation which I also believe to be inaccurate. It is that even decent people can be easily manipulated to support a racist bigot if they think it will help the country. Much the same way the people of Germany could be convinced to support Hitler back in the 30s. They might concede that the person they support is a racist but that he won't act on that. And that he is otherwise good for the country. That is how Hitler was voted into power in 1930s Germany. Which was of course a miscalculation of major impact resulting in the Holocaust! Is history repeating itself - at least to the extent of the unprecedented numbers of people that voted for Trump?
To many Biden voters, that might be how they understand how good people might vote for someone like Trump. They may not excuse it, but at least they can explain it.
I don’t think either of those explanations are accurate. At least not for the majority of the Trump vote. I think that a lot of that vote was a rejection of the hard left turn the Demcratic Party appears to have taken.
Now it might be true that Democrats' did not turn as hard left as was advertised prior to the election. But based on all the media attention the left wing of their party received that is how they were perceived.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a first term congress woman who is a hard core leftist was given a far greater public platform by the media than any first term public servant would normally be given. Her constant presence on the airwaves and that of avowed socialist Bernie Sanders was hard to miss. It did not escape the minds of voters that these people would have an inordinate influence on a Democratic President.
The left wing of that party has already claimed credit for Biden’s victory because of their increased numbers at the polls. They are demanding a place at the Presidential table and they will get one. How large a place remains to be seen. But it would not surprise me to see a cabinet position or 2 given to one of them.
The ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests helped Biden too. BLM saw Trump as a racist that would perpetuate the systematic racism in this country. And they saw Biden as the key to a complete overhaul of a country they say was founded by racists who established a country based on racism and white privilege. They want to change how American history is taught to show just how racist our founding fathers were. That resonated with a lot of sympathetic BLM supporters. Who thought that by doing so America would finally be able to realize the promise made by the Declaration of Independence. That all men are created equal. Not just white men Starting with defunding police departments all over the country. And eventually replacing American history textbooks with the truth about the racism upon which this country was built by its racist founders.
The vast majority of the American people reject the kind of thinking. I believe that is the main reason Trump got so many votes. They do not want to reject America’s great heritage and replace it with a narrative that all of America's success was built on the backs of an enslaved black race. While slavery was definitely an issue. That was not the reason for America’s success. That is why Trump got so many votes.
In fact I don’t think Biden really ‘won’ the election. I think Trump ‘lost’it. Biden won because the majority of people that voted for him were really voting against Trump. They might have even liked many of Trump’s polices but did not believe a man like that should continue to lead the country.
That is reflected in how the rest of the vote went. Democrats did not do well in the down ballot races. They had hoped to increase their numbers in the House and win back the majority in the Senate. Neither of those things happened. Athough still a majority, Democrats lost seats in the House. And they are not likely to win back the Senate. There are currently 50 Republican senators. Georgia has a run off election for both senetors. It is likley that at least one of the two Republicans will win and the Seabte will then retain its majority.
It is true that in the unlkiley event that both Republicans lose in the runoff the Senate will be divided equally and Vice-Presdient Kamela Harris will be the deciding vote. And that is tantamount to having a majority . But that assumes that every Democrat will automatically vote for whatever liberal piece of legsilation the administration puts forward. I do not believe all that the Senate Democrats will vote for legostaion that is too far to the left.
That is hardly a mandate for the left. Far from it. If the President-elect is smart, he will take note of that and govern from the middle rather than pander to the left wing of his party. If he doesn’t, his party will lose in a landslide next time around. Which might happen anyway considering his victory can be attributed to the anti Trump sentiment of normally center-right voters that voted for him.