Like so many others who enjoy following U.S. politics, now that the presidential election is finally over, it has to be said that, in the end, things didn't turn out so bad. It's pretty safe to say that we can finally sigh in relief and look forward to the future at least a bit.
Indeed, even though Joe Biden wasn't that good of a candidate, he still managed to defeat President Trump in the general election. He managed to gather enough support in the crucial swing states in order to claim the presidency and beat the incumbent.
At the same time, there's no question that Biden's electoral college victory, that was almost as slim as Trump's victory over Hillary in 2016, didn't come easily. Trump managed to do way better than what the polls predicted and wasn't actually that far from winning the election.
Indeed, had Trump gotten roughly one hundred thousand more votes total in some of the swing states, he would have won the race. This would have happened, even though Biden is going to end up winning the popular vote by more than 6.5 million votes.
So when it comes to the presidential election and its results, how did we get here and why did things happen the way they did? What were the things that contributed to Trump's loss and how on earth did Joe Biden not win the election with bigger margins than he did?
To give you an answer, in a nutshell, the election happened the way it did for two major reasons. The first one has to do with Trump and his response to the global Covid-19 outbreak, whereas the second has to do with Joe Biden and his lackluster platform-free campaign.
So the first and perhaps the most import aspect of the election, not that surprisingly, had to do with the global Covid-19 outbreak. There's no question that Trump's administration completely bungled their response to the outbreak and did not know what they we're doing at all.
By that I mean is that as most countries took the responsible route with the virus by doing lockdowns and quarantines, the United States did not do that. For Trump, especially at the start, the outbreak was basically a Chinese hoax and not a problem at all.
Indeed, as the death toll kept steadily climbing up, that didn't faze the president. His selfish and ignorant attitude towards the virus was so blatant that it took six months before he even started using a face mask to protect himself (he got the virus a month before the election).
In hindsight, had the Trump administration taken the 'Wuhan flu' more seriously (free masks, lockdowns, more stimulus packages etc.), they would have been in good shape for the election. The backlash - top issue for 20% of the voters - wouldn't have been as severe as it was.
At the same time, even though Trump and his administration screwed up royally, that doesn't mean that Joe Biden did that much better either. There's no question that democrats and the DNC dropped the ball big time when it came to them running their campaign.
Indeed, as incredible as it might sound, in this election Joe Biden had no nationwide 'policy based' campaign against Trump. They had no issue based messaging that would have given them direction and energy especially in the down ballot races (house + senate).
In practice, what this meant was that instead of running on surefire winners like 'medicare for all', 'green new deal' or 'free college', they did nothing. Even though most of these issues are super popular (70%+), the party 'elites' chose not to go with them.
The really unfortunate thing about this 'orange man bad, but not all republicans are' is that you had almost nothing to vote for. Why would you vote for democrats in house & senate races when you would get nothing in return (most voted against Trump, not for Biden).
Not that surprisingly, even though polls predicted that democrats would gain seats in the house and the senate, that didn't happen. Democrats actually lost some seats in the house and only gained (so far) one senate seat, which isn't enough to give them the majority.
In contrast, every single incumbent democrat in congress who actually ran on stuff like medicare for all won their races. Not one of them lost their re-election and this included 'squad' members AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who all coasted to victories in their districts.
In that sense, when you look at the election as a whole, it's pretty clear that this race was full of stupid stuff and unnecessary unforced errors. Both parties did completely ridiculous mistakes that turned out to be costly (fortunately Trump, unfortunately Biden).
Indeed, in Trump's case, even though his situation was challenging but not completely hopeless, he managed to make every possible mistake during the election season. He was absolutely pathetic in every imaginable way with handling the pandemic.
Also, in Biden's case, even though he had so many advantages over Trump, he almost bungled his chances too. The fact that he didn't run on a policy like medicare for all, especially during a pandemic like this, was just mindboggling and idiotic.
Still, when you look at the election as a whole, considering that Biden ended up narrowly winning the race, the election from my point of view was a success. The fact that Biden managed to beat Trump and his neo-fascist cronies (like Stephen Miller) was certainly a good thing.
After all, even though I have tons of issues with Biden and his corporate policies, there's no doubt that he's still better than Trump with his racist anti-science administration. There's no question that Biden's win is at least a some sort of an improvement to the situation.
In that sense, in the end, now that we're waiting for Biden to get his transition team going, I can only hope that things will go smoothly. I hope that as he starts to think about who are going to be in administration, he's able to make good decisions about his team.
After all, even though my hopes aren't that high for his presidency, it's clear the country deserves better. The U.S. as a whole deserves better and hopefully President Biden - despites his flaws - is able to do good things and is able to give the country the change that it needs.
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