Time for Americans to face some facts

It's time to face the facts about the U.S. election. If only we knew what they were. Then we could put four years of hallucinatory division and abuse behind us and move on to, as they say, four more years. But if we don't yet know who won, or why in the home of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple it's hard to count mail-in votes fast, we can say there's more to this phenomenon than “Orange Man Bad.”

He is. But to get anything useful out of this election, and “President Joe Biden” doesn't count, here's one fact we must face: Donald Trump did not elect himself.

His strength is real and enduring. In 2020 Arizona and Wisconsin flipped from 2016 and if the late mail-in ballots break as expected, so will Michigan, and you can call Joe “Mr. President.” But it doesn't change the fact that we're in a new political era.

For years I have committed punditry using colourful maps showing the Electoral College shifting slowly against the GOP, just as it had shifted slowly toward them over the half-century from FDR's first election (where it shifted brutally against the party) to Ronald Reagan's second one (where Republicans owned the thing). But the demographic trends working relentlessly against the Republicans for a third of a century are no longer moving that way.

For instance the BBC, typically, set up its election coverage with columns of “Solid Democratic,” “Lean Democratic,” “Tossup,” “Lean Republican” and “Solid Republican” states. And the solids went as predicted. But the BBC said no states lean Republican, and then every so-called tossup went … Republican (if Trump hangs on in North Carolina and Georgia). And one “Lean Democrat” went Republican while the rest were very close.

Which brings up several other facts to be faced. Or, as usual nowadays, several alternative facts. People who spent the past four years tweeting “Orange Man Bad” and, especially in Canada, despise an electorate that dares talk back, will be tempted to say that nearly half of U.S. voters, some 70 million Americans, are horrible people and indeed outside the “Clinton Archipelago” (Google it) you find little else.

If you reject that offensive stereotype, here are two other disquieting facts to face about the breaching of the Midwestern “Blue Wall.” First,

Republicans are now the party of the “outs.” And second, a lot of Americans hate identity politics.

Democrats won't believe either. They're convinced they've been the party of the little guy since at least 1932. But don't say guy, it's sexist. And for years now they have defined people in collective terms. It was bundles of victims they intended to ride to one leisurely victory after another: blacks (sorry, Blacks), Latinx (formerly Latinos and before that Hispanics), women (a social construct), homosexuals (ditto) and now boutique intersectional groups, too, while angry white males dwindled to well-deserved insignificance.

Is this a good time to mention a New York Times poll saying women named Karen actually favoured Biden by 20 percentage points? Probably not. But this whole strategy depends on the notion that people vote their identity; thus Biden's unguarded snarl at a Black radio host, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't Black.” Which is, if I might make an observation here, an insulting stereotype. And just possibly one increasingly rejected by its supposed beneficiaries: exit polls suggest Trump did better in 2020 than 2016 in every demographic except, gosh, white men.

So how do we stagger forward? It's not easy, especially if we discover significant mail-in ballot error or even fraud, or the Hunter Biden story blows up immediately because the legacy media and online giants only suppressed it to swing a close election to the elite party. But here goes.

First, especially if Biden wins, it would be very constructive if the people who hate Trump could admit that his voters were not all evolution's mistakes, that for all his grievous personal and political flaws there were good reasons to back him. I don't just mean specific policy triumphs from taxation to Mideast peace, though pundits sure would have praised them in a Democrat.

I mean many Americans have legitimate grievances with modernity, from postmodernism to radical gender-fluid theory to big stupid government to the hollowing-out of the economy to the insistence that after 60 years of major changes of hearts and laws, the land of the free is an appalling racist swamp.

On the other side, it would be very constructive if the people who love Trump could admit that if he himself was not evolution's mistake it wasn't for want of trying. A liar, lecher and bully, he was an awful man and an appalling president.

Lots of facts to face. If we dare.

CONSTRUCTIVE IF THE PEOPLE WHO HATE TRUMP COULD ADMIT THAT HIS VOTERS WERE NOT ALL EVOLUTION'S MISTAKES.