As of now, it looks most likely that Biden will eventually prevail. But this still wasn’t and isn’t what Democrats were looking for. The D’s were expecting, and wanting, a blue landslide that decisively repudiate Trump and Trump-ism once and for all, and they got nothing of the sort. If anything, this election has actually vindicated Trump; it showed that the polls were wrong just as he and his supporters insisted, and that Trumpism remains strong despite a pandemic, recession, thousands of gaffes, scandals, lies insults and an impeachment. Republicans also appear likely to hold the Senate.
Losing an election isn’t vindication.
It shows that there are still a bunch of children that demand that they get dessert without eating their vegetables.
But barely losing isn’t a repudiation either. I can see Velocity’s point and I am kind of disappointed in a big chunk of the US voting populace this morning.
I was wrong when I’d been saying for three years now that the majority of people who voted for Trump were going to vote for him again no matter who the Democrats put up this time around, and the Dems need to go after the Apathy Party – those who failed to vote at all in 2016 – rather than trying to court the Trumpets.
Well, according to what I’m hearing this morning, we’ve had the biggest turnout in a century but the extra voters have gone Biden/Trump in about the same proportions as the committed voters went Clinton/Trump four years ago.
I’m in agreement with Velocity. I was hoping that Trump would get hammered. I wanted Trump to lose so bad that any party would work hard to keep someone of his (non) caliber from getting the nomination.
Right now it’s hard to see how the GOP won’t look back on Trump as a general success.
Just Democrats, or any American who still values honesty, integrity, and honor?
I wonder if the next republican candidate can gather the same rabid energy as Trump even if they are a Trump clone.
I need to feel a little bit optimistic.
I’m sorry, but maybe a little less optimism and a lot more constructive pessimism is in order here, considering what optimism over our ability, and the Republican’s willingness, to rein in Trump has done over the last few years.
The OP is absolutely correct. It was not the repudiation I hoped for, even if Trump loses.
I am seriously worried that the Ds will conclude that vile lying attacks on one’s opponent is the way to win an election.
The election showed how stark the urban/rural divide is. There’s one side that thinks cities are poorly run hellscapes, and there’s the side that lives there.
In some ways I wanted a blue landslide (blue wave), in other ways I wanted Biden to win, but Trump to clearly lose be close enough to cause Trump to tantrum himself off the deep end be a total infantile embarrassment that the vindication takes place by the performance of Trump and the time out he gets.
And that’s the side that pays for the subsidies for the rural areas to live in their poorly run communities.
It’s just take, take, take with them. They live by the motto, “Ask not what your country can do for you, because you don’t ask, you demand!”
For me, this shows just how effective foreign operators have been in disrupting both our political system and how we think as a people. They have sown anger and doubt, and driven wedges where few existed. There can be no other explanation, IMO. If you keep telling a group of people that they’re being treated unfairly, they begin to believe it and react accordingly. I’d be willing to bet that China has a printed timeline somewhere that shows exactly when they expect this country to implode, and we’re right on schedule.
I was hoping for a Blue Wave as well, but the OP stated that this was a vindication for Trump. No, it will (hopefully) be a tight electoral college loss, with an even greater popular vote margin. I was hoping for more, and it’s a disappointment, but overall if Biden wins I’ll be very happy.
But it won’t vindicate Trump for the last 4 years.
I don’t often agree with Velocity, but he’s spot-on here.
Trump definitely wasn’t repudiated. Roughly half the country still loves him and wants more. If Biden ekes out a victory as expected, the “Trump 2024” talk will start immediately. Trump will spend the next four years tweeting, holding nonstop rallies, and insisting the election was stolen. Unless he drops dead or goes to prison, he’ll probably be the GOP nominee next time around.
It doesn’t look like the Senate is getting flipped, so little or nothing will get done under a Biden presidency. If SCOTUS invalidates the ACA on a technicality, passing a fix will be impossible. If there’s a SCOTUS vacancy, McConnell won’t let Biden fill it.
Oh, and the Democrats love circular firing squads, so we’ll have loads of finger-pointing and recriminations because the blue wave didn’t materialize. The failure to win Florida and Biden’s weakness with Latinos is going to be a huge sore point.
I’ll be happy if Biden wins; it’s better than the alternative. But this didn’t go the way I hoped—not even close.
I think that’s all correct, but I’d add that a major element–one that amplified the foreign-power poisoned messages–was the ‘right-wing bubble.’
Millions of Americans have NO idea that Donald Trump is a laughingstock for most of the world, that he owes hundreds of millions of dollars to unknown foreign creditors, that he’s likely to be indicted by New York (at least) as soon as he leaves office, that he’s deliberately caged children, that he’s winked at Putin’s bounties on American soldiers, or any of the rest of it.
They have literally never heard any of this.
And that information divide is possibly going to prove fatal to our democracy, even assuming Biden is inaugurated on January 20. As noted, he will have an epically intransigent GOP Senate blocking his every attempt to undo Trump’s destructive measures. And Donny-Boy will be running against him non-stop, assuming that cash or threats are able to stop the NY AG from bringing charges against him.
60 or 70 million Americans will go on believing that Donald Trump is a smart, competent, decent man----because they will never encounter a single piece of information that would tell them otherwise.
Rupert Murdoch may well go down in history as the man who brought down the USA (and in the process, made China the world’s sole superpower). I wonder if he’s proud of that?
I for one was (am) looking for Trump to get the boot. If that happens, it’s just what I was looking for.
Obviously this wasn’t a landslide–no duh. To assert that pollsters being “wrong” somehow “vindicates” Trump is a rather obtuse conclusion, (and not really so relevant).
This isn’t about “vindication,” and never was, as far as I’m concerned. All this election shows is that the same large number of Americans are the same dumb-ass suckers that they were four years ago.
Not much of a surprise.
I too wanted a repudiation by way of electoral college wipeout. Biden is expanding his popular vote and has already broken the record for most votes for a candidate but that the electoral college is still up in the air is very frustrating.
That said Biden is on course to rebuild the blue wall, flipped Arizona for the Dems in only the third time since WW2, and may flip Georgia for the first time in 28 years so there’s room for celebration. You look at states like Virginia and Colorado that used to be reliably republican for a long time but once they went blue they have stayed blue. I hope Biden flipping these states will have that impact as it severely damages the Republican’s path to 270 in the post-Trump era.
Assuming Biden does win:
This. What 2016 and 2020 have shown is that somewhere around 40% of the voting public seems to fear and loath the other 60% and want leadership by a raging, flaming asshole, to more perfectly register their displeasure. I’m really not sure how we get from there back to to a nation where we are all, more or less, pulling together.
Re: repudiation, hell yes there was a repudiation, if not a thorough one, of Trump and Trumpism by those who were not of that neutron-star density hard core of followers. Unseating an incumbent is a relatively rare event, but four years of Trump pissed off enough people, outside of that hard core, to unseat him.
With that said, the failure to flip the Senate seems very likely to monkeywrench a Biden admin for at least the next two years. Shame, that.