Biden is reported by the Mainstream Media as having won the 2020 presidential election. On January 20th, he just might be inaugurated as the 46th president of the U.S. As it stands today, he received 306 electoral votes and more than 80 million popular votes, the most of any presidential candidate in American history. But President Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of an election he declares was stolen is unique in American history, underscoring how divided the country has become — and will remain.
Trump himself won the second-largest number of popular votes in American history (74 million), and Republicans won enough votes down ballot to make inroads in the House of Representatives as well as critical gains in statehouses and legislatures. Remember: that came as Democrat Party leaders in Congress projected a massive legislative “Blue Wave” for November 3rd. Nothing could be further from the truth. Add Trump’s success in creating a decisively conservative Supreme Court, most recently with Justice Amy Coney Barrett replacing the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Biden will emerge with the weakest mandate since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Few political historians believe he will run for reelection in 2024.
A challenge for Democrats that few have mentioned is that Trump’s popularity extends well beyond his most vocal supporters. He received 11 million more votes than he did in 2016 and, in so doing, constructed a broader electoral coalition that includes more Hispanics and Black Americans: you know, those “people of color” that Democrats have “owned” (pun intended) for generations. A significant piece of that coalition sees Trump’s refusal to concede as a display of courage, not an assault on democratic norms.
While many Republican Party elders don’t like Trump, public opinion is the reserve currency of politics. He will leave office as (by far) the most popular and influential figure in the GOP. The last-minute push by Congress members to delay or derail the election certification serves as a foreboding sign of what’s to come. As long as a significant portion of Trump’s voters remains loyal, he will cast a long shadow, compelling Republican leaders to support him to avoid alienating his backers. For them, Biden will be #NotMyPresident and considered illegitimate.
Facing a jilted opposition loyal to the Trump brand, Biden will find it more challenging to govern than under the “normal” conditions of split government. There will be neither a badly needed large stimulus package nor long necessary changes to the U.S.healthcare system. Progressive priorities like a higher national minimum wage, a new voting rights act, and filibuster reform are non-starters. Markets typically welcome divided government because it creates hurdles to tax increases and new regulations. Still, gridlock will be worse than in the past as Republicans block Biden’s judicial appointments and challenge left-of-center executive branch appointments, hampering agencies that have critical functions.
If the vaccine rollout proceeds as hoped, the pandemic subsides, and the economy rebounds strongly from the recession, Biden may win some political capital with Republicans. Still, there are massive challenges ahead for the most ambitious vaccination campaign in US history. And every day, new “problems” hit the headlines with a vengeance, evidencing that Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines might leave something to be desired. If the vaccine process flops and the country’s health and economic emergency extends deep into 2021, Republican opposition will intensify and grow more rigid.
The major risks of “46” — again if it’s Biden — are domestic, but the consequences of no-holds-barred party warfare extend beyond America’s borders. Aside from the shared desire of Republicans and Democrats to punish China for decades of technological and economic advancement at the expense of America’s intellectual property and manufacturing workforce, they disagree sharply — with each other and among themselves — over the objectives of U.S. foreign policy. Washington’s mismanagement of the pandemic, meanwhile, is compelling its friends to ask why they should entrust it with the far bigger task of revitalizing the nation’s foreign policy, which many think Trump moved way forward. At the same time, detractors swore he could never do it. Biden will try to reassert American leadership in global affairs re-embracing the leftist utopia of a “Global Nation” that puts the “America First” mantra in a grave. But polarization and an inability to manage crises at home mean the U.S. won’t inspire as much new confidence as Biden hopes. (Can anyone imagine an international crisis and Biden calmly handling all parts of it without starting a war?) Europe decided in advance to buck Biden’s goals by agreeing to a comprehensive agreement on investment with China.
Also, the size of Trump’s base and the demographic broadening of his political following will force allies to reckon with the possibility of another “America First” president taking office four years from now and overturning commitments made by the Biden administration. That’s why Biden, a man with decades of experience in the Senate, must try to secure the kind of bipartisan buy-in on foreign policy that Obama, his Democratic predecessor, and former boss, could not. Fat chance that will happen!
Summary
Staunch political polarization and declining global alignment make for a sobering foreign view from the White House. Both of those will be more pronounced, though, if the office of the presidency is permanently delegitimized, which is possible if Biden runs the show for four years. It’s not just Trump and his top surrogates, after all, who claim 2020’s contest was rigged: 70% of Republicans polled afterward said the election was not “free and fair.” An opposition that believes Biden stole the election will be far more aggressively rejectionist than one that merely wishes Trump had prevailed. Don’t be tricked into believing that a Biden presidency will evoke a “let’s just all get along” movement! MAGA folks are hot under the collar and will be for a long time if Joe moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
In short, following a Trump presidency that many Democrats still believe Russian agents won for him, (even knowing that Hillary paid the Russians to spy on Trump!) Biden’s term will open the era of the asterisk presidency, a time when the occupant of the Oval Office is seen as illegitimate by roughly half the country and by the lawmakers these election skeptics send to Congress. Such a political reality has never occurred in another G7 country, but it’s the reality of the world’s most powerful democracy today IF we have a Biden inauguration.
Praise God that He is in control and that many many people are returning to sanity as they’re eyes are open wide now to what the agenda of the evil people is planning IF …