Behind the bluster, Trump was beatable and Biden was the man to do it

[marmar]

Behind the bluster, Trump was beatable and Biden was the man to do it
Richard Wolffe

Biden won by a margin similar to Obama and Bill Clinton, which should bury the myth of Trump as some sort of electoral genius


(Guardian UK) It is time, after all these many hours of anxious vote counting, to revise the snap judgments that constitute The Political Lessons of the 2020 Election.

Among the many mirages of the last four years, few seemed so lifelike and so tangible as the notion that Donald Trump might just be on to something.

It was repeated so loudly, so many times, by so many people, that it was surely plausible. Trump appeared to understand something about the people that the rest of the political class could never fathom. His populism was such a force of nature that nothing – not his impeachment, not his abuse of migrant children, not his disregard for a pandemic – would get in the way.

In the immediate hours after the polls closed on Tuesday, that storyline was turbocharged because the instant result didn’t match Democratic expectations.

But when you lose a presidential election by around four points and maybe 5m votes, you have definitively lost the debate about connecting with voters. ............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/07/biden-beat-trump-margin-won

[dalton99a]

1. "Like Peronism in Argentina, the magic formula of fascism is a taste that is never fully forgotten."

Still, Trumpism will survive the loss of Trump. Even in defeat, there are Republicans who believe there are enough Trumpers out there, and their modest wins in the House – combined with a deadlocked Senate – will lead them to stay the course.

The relatively close nature of election night – because of the delay in counting votes – reinforced the feeling of greatness that comes with the white supremacist dream of Making America Great Again. Like Peronism in Argentina, the magic formula of fascism is a taste that is never fully forgotten.

There’s a reason why Primo Levi wrote about surviving Auschwitz as a warning to future generations about hating foreigners. Fascism, he said, was a “latent infection” waiting to re-emerge. With Donald Trump, it has infected large parts of America and the world, and it will re-infect us again.

But not for the next four years, even as President-elect Biden battles against a real infection and a Senate whose balance of power probably won’t be known until Georgia decides in January. That will lead to mounting frustration for voters on all sides, but especially the wave of young voters expecting structural change from a Biden presidency.