DETROIT – There is one final thing to be determined about the election, which is finally, mercifully over. Well, almost over; there are still some uncounted votes and provisional ballots being processed in a few states, mainly New York and California.
There are a few seats in Congress in doubt and, of course, the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia. But essentially, we know what happened. Joe Biden will be the next President; Democrats will hold on to a reduced majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and, barring disaster in Georgia, Republicans will still control the Senate.
But is there a deeper meaning behind the results?
What do they tell us about our future?
With divided government in Washington, what kind of power will President Biden be able to wield to deal with the pandemic, the economic crisis and whatever other problems lay ahead?
Did this election hint at where we are going politically?
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We are apt to learn how strong the Biden presidency will be in the next few months. Assuming government stays divided, President Biden will need every ounce of the skills he honed and the connections he made during 44 years in the Senate and as Vice-President to get anything substantial done.
However, his first months are bound to be mainly consumed by the out-of-control pandemic. While that is a crisis like none other in modern history, it may be relatively easy for the Biden administration to look good, here especially in comparison to what we’ve had before.
President Biden may make verbal gaffes from time to time, perhaps embarrassing ones. But don’t expect him to proclaim that the virus is about to disappear “like a miracle” or suggest injecting disinfectants under the skin.
Instead, expect this President to establish, calm, consistent and rational leadership, probably with a single spokesperson on the topic. Negotiations for a new stimulus package may actually succeed; Biden and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have known each other nearly 40 years.
What happens beyond that is anyone’s guess, and if there is a new vacancy on the Supreme Court and Republicans control the Senate, look for something resembling World War I trench warfare.
As far as the future goes, Republicans are counting on historical patterns to reassert themselves. That would mean big gains for the party out of power – the GOP – in the 2022 midterm elections, giving them solid control of both houses of Congress.
That would be followed by two years of gridlock. After that, GOP strategists think they may be in a good position to defeat the oldest President in history, if he runs again.
That is, if they can find a candidate who is sufficiently conservative but doesn’t insult handicapped people, dead war heroes or engage in other Trump-like behaviors that turned off so many otherwise conservative voters, especially women.
Democrats know very well that could happen. But they also know there are exceptions. If the coronavirus pandemic is solved, the economy revives and the President projects calm, expectations could be upended. Democrats overcame the normal rhythms to do well in the midterm elections of 1998; Republicans did the same in 2002.
What is clear is that right now, we have no idea what prevailing conditions will be in 2022, let alone 2024, with one exception: Republicans will again be defending far more seats in the Senate.
But what did the election say about how this nation is evolving politically? Both parties were hoping for something different than they got. Democrats were hoping a major realignment was taking place, spurred by demographics and revulsion at Donald Trump.
They didn’t get that. Instead, they were stunned and dismayed to find that Trump apparently did considerably better with Hispanic voters and slightly better with black voters than in 2016.
Thanks to this, Biden lost Florida by more than three times as many votes as Hillary Clinton had. Democrats had some hope of winning Texas. They didn’t come close. Biden did reduce Trump’s margin from nine points to just under six, but still fell a substantial 648,000 votes short.
Still, President-elect Biden did win, by rebuilding the “blue wall” and taking back the three states Trump had taken — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — to win the White House in 2016. But it wasn’t the predicted landslide; his margins in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were tiny and almost uncannily identical to Trump’s four years before. Biden “flipped” two other states by even smaller margins: Arizona and Georgia, both of which have been undergoing demographic changes that favor Democrats.
But Republicans had an even bigger disappointment: Their incumbent President lost, the first time that’s happened since 1992, when H. Ross Perot cost the first George Bush reelection.
Joe Biden clearly won; he will have a margin of something like six million votes when all the returns are in. But on the other hand, it may sobering for Democrats that the election was so close, given the raging pandemic and a President who daily exhibited some of the most irrational behavior the White House has ever seen.
There were no major realignments at work in this presidential election; only slow shifts. In fact, it resembles most closely President Obama’s 2012 second-term triumph over Mitt Romney. In both cases, the popular vote was about 51 to 47 percent. Biden won two states that Obama did not – Arizona and Georgia. President Trump carried three states Obama had – Florida, Iowa and Ohio.
Otherwise, everything turned out the same – except for clearly increased bitterness and polarization and the refusal of millions on each side to accept the other as legitimate. That, not the coronavirus, may be the biggest threat to democracy and America itself.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
