And the results are in, America lost and it lost big.
With the final tallies now being counted it appears that Joe Biden will become the 46th President of the United States and that the Donald Trump experiment is now over.
The current aftermath is that there will be legal challenges from team Trump, which are likely to drag on for months (for the leaders of the free world). Whether Biden does become the next President, or Trump (unlikely as it sounds) does manage to pull things back from the brink, the only sound conclusion anyone can make is that America and the Democrats lost, and they lost bad.
I thought the Democrats won?
I do not mean that the Democrats lost in the sense that Trump thinks they lost, it is clear that Joe Biden has won enough Electoral Votes to be named President, but the fact that they failed to win so many of the states they were aiming for, and the huge amount of people that STILL voted for Trump is tantamount to failure. A President as divisive and incompetent as Trump should have been slammed at the polls, but this was far from the case. This election has merely succeeded in showing just how divided the nation is, with the right very unlikely to take this lying down.
Why was Biden such a poor candidate?
You could write a hell of a lot on this subject, but Biden represents one of the worst candidates ever put up by the Democratic Party. How did they manage to find an older candidate with less of a personality, worse kids and an even shadier business past than Trump?
The fact was that Biden was and is a puppet candidate for vested interests and the status-quo of the military industrial complex and neoliberalism. There was no different message, the Democrats merely gambled on people preferring the swamp and the old normal to the chaos of Trumpism, a huge gamble that has seemingly only just paid off.
The identity politics left of the US will see this as victory, but the reality is that it shows just how absent the oft touted concept of American democracy is. Trump is what he is, but in some ways he demonstrated that “anyone” could be president. Biden has just proved that in fact American Democracy is very much a closed club, and interlopers are very much unwelcome. And as such America lost its right to dictate to others.
Why did the pollsters get it so wrong again?
Scholars will continually debate this one for months and years ahead and certainly until the next time that they manage to screw it up again, but the answer is plain simple and staring us squarely in the face, and it is identity politics and the shaming of individuals.
Polls rely on people being honest when asked about who they have voted for, or intent to vote for. Mainstream media has not only painted every Trump supporter as a racist, but also pushed a number of other politically correct narratives, such as toilets for transexuals that if you do not agree with you are instantly shamed. This undoubtedly leads to people voting for candidates, such as Trump, but not admitting it publicly for fear of persecution. That’s right persecution for who you voted for in a democracy.
People are sick and tired of identity politics and one can only hope that with the incredibly slim election victory Biden can be a president for all.
The left lost and it lost big
The Democrats managed to rig two elections against Bernie Sanders, Biden and the Democrats may have won, but whilst Trump might have been right-wing, Biden is centre-right at best. Trump whilst not doing all that much probably did more for working class and black people than Obama managed, Biden is likely to do equally as little. Biden is the corporate candidate sent in to steady the ship for business. The left might be rejoicing at victory, but the best you could even call it is the slightly lesser of two evils. Sorry but the left of America lost too.
Can America lead the world again? And does the world want it?
Trump obviously made some huge mistakes on the grand scale when it came to foreign policy, but he also seemed to be the first President in much of US history to be interested in bringing troops home, lessening the chances of war and trying to keep the big nose of America out of everyones business.
Democrats and indeed some Republicans have been yearning for the US going back to its interventionist “leading” of the “free world”. What this actually means is telling countries what to do and wars based on natural resources, rather than democracy.
We have been told for decades that the US wants to spread its own version of Democracy. I’ll ignore how badly that has worked out in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan and just concentrate on what countries such as China, Russia, and others must think, see and indeed tell their populations after watching this election – American Democracy is a complete myth.
And the winners are? The Military Industrial Complex
This is where the left in America really fall flat, Obama had class, he also did a few good things, but he is light years away from the deity he has been painted out to be. Obama dropped more bombs in his term than Bush did. Let that sink in for a moment.
Iran, North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan (again)? Who knows, but an active America and its war machine is back, and so are the old school politics that came with it.
The establishment won, so don’t complain when your lives don’t improve.
