The US election was one of the fraught events of the year. I say ‘one’ since the pandemic has topped every chart for anxiety and misery. Indeed, COVID-19 made the US election even worse than it would have been without it.
Here are just a few lessons we should take away from the presidential race:
1. The Centre is back, baby!
The Biden campaign team re-ran the 2016 Clinton campaign, except under far worse conditions. Although Democratic campaigners were very constrained in terms of organising, the Democrats had the advantage of running against a disastrous president during the worst health crisis for 100 years.
Now the Biden administration will set about re-asserting the centre ground that was displaced and fractured in 2016. We can expect President Biden and VP Harris to run the show like Clinton and Obama did. It’s a safe bet that the left-wing of the Democratic Party will be sidelined.
2. Trump may be defeated, but Trump voters aren’t going away
President Trump was defeated, however, the race showed that the electoral coalition he mobilised is not going anywhere. More than 70 million Americans lined up to vote for a man who presided over 300,000 avoidable deaths in less than a year. This is an appalling fact in itself.
The GOP machine will be considering this evidence closely for future campaigns. We can expect a Trump 2.0 in 2024 and Trump 3.0 in 2028. The outgoing president has redefined what they can get away with. This is not over. Complacency would be a terrible response to the result.
3. Demographic change DOES NOT guarantee progress!
The Trump coalition was composed of a lot of angry white folks and a surprisingly large number of Latinx voters in 2016. Four years on, the coalition has expanded and deepened its reach into ethnic minority communities. This is not to say that the Trump platform was not racist and grounded in white nationalist appeals – it was in 2020, just as it was in 2016.
However, the evidence suggests that there is a multiethnic coalition for Republican populism in the US. Even after many years of turmoil, Trump managed to reach out to more black and brown voters, even Native American, Jewish and Muslim voters as well. He has outperformed Republican presidential candidates among minorities going back decades.
The reasons why ethnic minority voters would back Trump should be studied closely, particularly in terms of class. Small business people will be open to a kind of populism no matter their skin colour. Nevertheless, the idea that diversity and multiculturalism will guarantee a progressive political settlement has been undermined by this result.
4. Coronavirus swung voters in two ways
The US election was always going to be shaped by the biggest crisis of the day and this time it was the coronavirus pandemic. Trump had badly mismanaged the crisis for his own political reasons. Yet this is partly what held together the GOP electoral coalition.
Trump’s message to right-wing voters was that the crisis is dire and the US needs to keep the economy going or far more people will die. This is why Republican voters ranked the economy as their biggest concern.
Meanwhile Democratic voters were mobilised against the lack of crisis management itself. Biden pledged safety, security and a return to normality. This was a comforting message for millions of Americans, especially after 300,000 deaths.
5. Crisis is the new normal
As much as the US is facing a dire health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic is just the most pressing calamity. In many ways, the health crisis has exposed the lack of medical infrastructure in the country and this should be impetus for implementing Medicare-for-All.
So the pandemic is interconnected with other crises at play. The social disasters of poverty, inequality and the lack of a functional health system were a daily reality for millions of Americans long before the coronavirus outbreak.
This is on top of an antiquated political order, complete with a crisis of representation via the Senate and the electoral college. Meanwhile the Supreme Court has far too much power and little to no accountability.
I’ve not even got to the institutional racism of the police and violence against civilians. These crises are not going away with the end of the Trump era. If anything, each crisis might become more severe in the years ahead.
Joshua White 