TPM - interesting read "First Thoughts on the November Election"

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/election

By John Judis
|
November 8, 2020 4:22 p.m.
A lot of people, including me, were misled by opinion polls into thinking that Democrats would make out like bandits in this election the way they did in 2018. As the “blue wave” has receded, many Democrats have gone to the opposite extreme and pronounced that outside of getting rid of Trump, the election must be counted as a failure. My own view is that the Democrats did about as well as could be expected given the political divisions in the country.

Start of course with Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump. We are no longer, in the words of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “in a free fall to hell anymore.” Biden’s victory also revealed Democratic inroads in the South and Southwest. And Biden won about 35 percent of the so-called white working class vote (and higher in Midwestern swing states), reversing the precipitous decline that began in 2010 and climaxed in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won a bare 29 percent of this vote.

In the Senate races — in a year where the geography was not particularly favorable to Democratic challengers — Democrats have already netted one seat, and could pick up one or two in Georgia’s special election on January 5. Biden’s victory showed that Democrats can win statewide votes there. In the House, Democrats will have lost a handful of seats they won in 2018 and came close to losing others, but they won a majority of House seats. I’d sum up these national races this way: since 1996, the Democrats and Republicans have enjoyed what Walter Dean Burnham called an “unstable equilibrium.” One party enjoyed temporary advantage over the other because of superior candidates and officials (or the contrary), circumstances (the pandemic), and superior organization (which, as the pro-Democratic labor movement has declined, was particularly important for Republicans in midterm and state and local races).

The greatest Republican disadvantage in 2020 (and in 2018) was Trump. Trump’s victory in 2016 was a fluke — the product on an opponent who ran a particularly inept campaign, the Comey letter, and voter fatigue with the same party having already controlled the White House for two terms. As president, Trump proved inept as a politician (making no attempt to reach beyond his fevered supporters), a policy-maker (deferring to Tea Party Republicans on health care and to business Republicans on taxes), and chief executive (bungling the response to the pandemic). In 2018, with a buoyant economy lifting them up, the Republicans should at worst have lost a few House seats, but Trump’s performance dragged them down. In this election, a less bilious Republican president who had pursued most of the same policies as Trump and handled the pandemic competently (like several northern Republican governors did) would have been re-elected.


snip

last paragraph

To sum up: We are a divided country politically, and the results in 2020 reaffirm that. Democrats, on the average, did better than Republicans in 2018 and 2020 because of the unpopularity and ineptitude of Donald Trump and probably, too, because of Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer will face formidable obstacles in preventing Republicans from winning back the House in 2022 and the Presidency in 2024. They are going to have to either pass a huge stimulus bill that will abet a recovery or make sure (as Barack Obama failed to do in 2009-10) that the public blames the Republicans for the failure. Many of the other things Democrats have to do — from reinstating policies on climate change to giving labor unions a better chance to organize — Biden will have to do that through the executive branch without help from Congress. Will Biden be up to it? One hopes.


well worth the time to read and ponder.

[Hoyt]

1. We are infinitely better off than before. No question, the pandemic isn't going away, the economy

will likely fail in the next 4 years, the Senate won’t help unless pressured or offered compromises many will not like, etc.

I believe Biden is equipped to get the best results possible. It’s questionable whether people, particularly trumpsters, will recognize it.