Election was early Christmas present for Republicans
Finally.
Finally, the charade is over. Wild conspiracy theories have been put to pasture. Incoherent ravings of a commander-in-chief with a presidential-sized inferiority complex are soon to be history. And finally - thank God - the dragged-out-way-too-long election is in the books.
In casting its ballots on Dec.
14, the Electoral College effectively certified Joe Biden as the next president. Now that Donald Mr. Trump’s legal challenges have been exhausted - including a shootdown by the U.S. Supreme Court - the overall results of the 2020 election can be analyzed free of white noise about rigged ballots and stolen elections. It may come as a surprise to many, but election day was remarkably favorable for Republicans - the president’s loss notwithstanding.
Consider:
1) No analysis would be complete without mentioning the president. This column has already detailed why and how he lost. Simply put, it was a self-inflicted defeat born of arrogance and attitude, combined with the worst campaign in history. Bottom line: Had Mr. Trump exercised just a modicum of restraint while employing common sense, he would have been re-elected in an electoral landslide. Those larger margins would have easily been enough to overcome any “suitcases stuffed with Biden ballots” that may have shown up at 3 a.m. in swing states.
Good coaches tell their teams to be up big in the final quarter, so that bad calls won’t affect the outcome. That’s not always possible, of course. But in the president’s case, not only was it possible to be ahead of Mr. Biden in the states that mattered, but it should have been a “gimme.”
The president has no one to blame but himself.
2) If the election were held today, the president would get smoked, as close margins in swing states wouldn’t be close anymore. Since the election, Mr. Trump’s behavior has been particularly appalling, on numerous fronts. Most disgraceful has been his MIA status during the worst surge of coronavirus. It’s bad enough that he didn’t combat the pandemic effectively, given that he was late to the party, chose politics over science, and downplayed it from Day One - at a time when people and businesses were dying. One would have thought the president would have learned his lesson - that COVID was the real deal - by taking a leadership position, even in defeat. Instead, he went silent and deep, surfacing only to play golf while millions were contracting the virus. Most maddening was listening to the president take credit for the vaccines, when, in fact, Pfizer took no U.S. government money for the development, clinical trials and manufacturing of its compound.
Then there was the president’s constant harping about the election being stolen - without providing any evidence of widespread fraud. To put this lunacy in perspective, look at the statement from Pennsylvania state Rep. (and Appropriations Chairman) Stan Saylor - a staunch Trump supporter - on Facebook, after speaking with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. In his post, Rep. Saylor recounted that Mr. Giuliani promised “to provide me with documents and individuals who will testify under oath about fraud. One week later, I have not received any information from the mayor. Remember, so far not one person has agreed to testify to fraud under oath.”
The fact that the Trump campaign’s legal team couldn’t provide evidence to the very people they were courting to overturn slates of Biden electors - and thus the election - tells you everything you need to know.
For all the good policy decisions Donald Trump made (and there were many), his choice to act un-presidentially did him in. Par for the course, he has never acted so disgracefully than in the time since the election.
3) Predictions were not supposed to be part of this column, but look for Donald Trump’s star to fade after Joe Biden’s inauguration. He will remain a force, of course, but will be consumed with civil and criminal cases. As a more respectful demeanor takes hold in the Oval Office, and vaccine distribution goes into full swing, the nation will welcome a return to normalcy. Americans will revel in calm over antics, preferring an environment that gets the economy chugging again absent disruptive politics- which will surely be the case if the Senate remains Republican.
4) Speaking of politics, election day was unexpectedly stellar for Republicans.
Yes, the president lost, but that’s far from the whole story. He garnered more votes than any other candidate in history (save for Joe Biden), adding millions to his 2016 totals. Mr. Trump’s significant inroad into both the Latino and black communities was a harbinger for future elections, as the GOP’s roadmap to success lies in broadening its appeal to those constituencies. And he made states competitive again - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin - that hadn’t been since the
1980s, while bringing new people of all political stripes into the fold.
Ironically, we saw a reverse “coat-tail” effect, where downticket Republicans won but the president succumbed. The results unequivocally show that Nov. 3 was not a widespread rejection of Donald Trump’s policies, but a repudiation of the man, and only the man. The positions Mr. Trump advocated won the day - funding the police; a strictconstructionist Supreme Court; lower taxes and fewer regulations; tighter border control; get-tough with China; a non-interventionalist foreign policy; and a war on political correctness.
Republican ideas prevailed, proving that it’s not what you say, but how you say it.
5) Democrats spent billions to
not only topple Mr. Trump, but expand their majority in the House, win the Senate, and flip Republican-controlled state legislatures. They failed, across the board.
- House: Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a lot of explaining to do to her caucus. After flipping 41 districts in 2018, the Dems thought that anti-Trump sentiment would propel the party to even bigger gains. But the opposite occurred, as the GOP whipped Democrats across the country, shrinking Ms. Pelosi’s majority to only a few seats. (With several races yet to be determined, Republicans won 211 House seats, where 218 is a majority). This wide-ranging defeat took away Ms. Pelosi’s “working majority,” and forces her to work with Republicans instead of shutting them out, since moderate Democrats will not support a farleft agenda. There is the very real possibility that Republicans could win back the House in 2022, as off-year elections typically favor the party not in the White House.
- Senate: Ditto for Democrats being supremely confident that they would win the Senate. Despite spending insane sums, Democrats are no closer to controlling the Senate than they were before Election Day (pending the outcome of the two runoff races in Georgia). Of particular note is that Democrats spent well over
$300 million in three pivotal races (Kentucky, South Carolina, Maine) - only to lose by a combined 40 points. Ouch.
- State legislatures: The most under-reported election story is the Democrats’ colossal failure to flip state legislative chambers (especially in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina). Because 2020 is a census year, whatever party controls state legislative chambers is the one that will largely determine congressional redistricting - immensely important given its decade-long implications.
Salt in the wound was the GOP taking control of both the state house and senate in New Hampshire. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Tim Storey and Wendy Underhill, “With just two chamber flips so far, it looks like 2020 will see the least party control changes on Election Day since at least
1944, when only four chambers changed hands.”
Assuming that at least one Republican wins in Georgia, the balance of power in Washington will have dramatically shifted to the Right. President Biden will be forced to nominate moderate judges, Speaker Pelosi’s radical agenda is DOA, and none of the laws signed by Donald Trump (such as corporate and personal tax cuts) will be abolished.
The election day messages are clear: Americans overwhelmingly favor Republican policies of limited government, low taxes and personal freedoms, but they want their leaders to exude civility when instituting them.
With that in mind, the Republican casting call for 2024 begins now.