National Post (National Edition)
For Biden, it may not be much of a prize
Though a few key states remain in the balance, it is becoming increasingly clear that Joe Biden will likely be the next president of the United States. Donald Trump does have a path to victory, but it's very, very challenging; Biden, meanwhile, seems on the brink of flipping
Pennsylvania thanks to strong support in Philadelphia, and may also flip Georgia as votes from Atlanta and Savannah come in. Nothing's over until it's over, and 2020 seems an unusually risky year to make guesses more than a moment or two into the future. But Biden's position is strong enough that it's prudent to at least ponder what his presidency might look like.
A Biden presidency is, of course, unquestionably good news for the Democrats. Victory is certainly preferable to the alternative. But Biden faces enormous challenges. China is pushing hard to expand its influence and power, and they aren't bothering to play nice. The Middle East remains a powderkeg, as ever, and it seems that many of the region's players frankly preferred Trump — whatever you might think of the man, Trump delivered tangible results in the region that had eluded his bipartisan predecessors for decades. And there remains, of course, the pandemic, and its gigantic economic cost. These challenges, alone but especially combined, would be a struggle for any president, in any circumstance. And Biden's circumstances are far from ideal.
The Democrats may seem set to capture the White House, but the Republicans performed much better than many were anticipating. There has been no collapse in the Republican vote; Trump overperformed his 2016 vote tally. The GOP seems to have held the Senate — there is, at least, no easy path for the Democrats to overturn it — and have actually picked up seats in the House. There is a six-to-three conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Can Biden get stuff done, even against all this opposition? Sure. Can he get much done, or do the things he would really like to do? Let's ask Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham what they think about that.
Both sides will have to reflect and lick their wounds and ponder what to make of this year's result. But even at this early date, it is clear that there has been no widespread repudiation of the Republican Party. If anything, while there are clearly early signs of a rupture between the Trump family and the GOP — both Eric and Don Jr. were tweeting angrily about a lack of Republican support for their father on Thursday afternoon — that's probably good news for the GOP. A largely intact voter base, an energized group of activists, a hemmed-in Democratic president and no more Donald Trump must sound awfully good to many senior Republican officials.
In short, there really isn't any reason for the GOP to play ball with Biden, or to learn any particular lessons. As difficult as many pollsters and pundits may find it to believe (I must confess to some degree of this myself ), a significant percentage of the American public liked what they saw these past four years, including a degree of support among minority voters that it seems no one saw coming. If the Republicans can figure out a way to continue their inroads with Black and Hispanic voters, and do it without varied and various complications Trump himself presents, that's a major threat to the Democrats.
This may actually be the storyline of the 2020 election. Should Biden catch all the breaks, his Electoral College victory will actually be quite robust. The lamenting of the polls and the anxiety of these uncertain days will be forgotten in time. And what we'll be left with is a Democratic Party whose core assumption of recent years — that America's growing diversity will inevitably erode the GOP's electoral position — has been badly, perhaps fatally, compromised. A better-led GOP with growing support among minority voters is a GOP that can keep winning over and over again.
Consider again the facts: the GOP seems set to hold the Senate, it improved in the House and it was competitive in the presidential race ... against Donald Trump, during a pandemic and massive economic collapse. Biden was the right choice for 2020 for the Democrats, and seems set to edge out Trump by a fairly narrow margin. There was no double-digital popular vote lead, no landslide. Texas and Florida remained unflipped. And I repeat: his opponent was Trump, mid-pandemic. If not for what Trump likes to call “the China virus,” he'd have been re-elected.
Biden genuinely seems to be a decent man. I would be relieved to see him in the Oval Office. But it's hard to imagine that he would be able to accomplish half as much as he would want, and will struggle to accomplish anything at all that the party's hard-left flank will expect. Democrats have already struggled to balance their need to appeal to the broad swath of moderate American voters with the need to keep The Squad happy, or at least co-operative. It will be fun to see how satisfied they'll prove with whatever the Republican senate is prepared to let Biden have.
So yes, it seems that Biden is likely to be the next president of the United States. Like I said, good luck. He'll need it.