Leaders 13M
onths of frantic electioneering,$13.9bnofcampaign
spending, a raging pandemic and mass protests over race:
in spite of all the sweat and tears, America was still determining
as we went to press if its next president really would be Joe Biden
or whether Donald Trump might somehow wrangle a second
term. Congress is likely to be split between a Democratic House
and a Republican Senate—though even that result may remain in
doubt until a run-off in January.
In the coming days politicians should take their cue from vot-
ers, who turned out in greater force than in any year since 1900
and who made their choice without violence. Vote-counting
must run its course and disputes between the two campaigns be
settled within the spirit of the law. The biggest threat to that
comes from Mr Trump, who used his election-night party to
claim falsely that he had already won, and to fire up his suppor-
ters by warning that victory was being stolen from him. Coming
from a man sworn to safeguard America’s constitution, such in-
citement was a reminder why many, including this newspaper,
had called for voters to repudiate Mr Trump wholesale.
With Mr Biden’s victory they would take a crucial first step in
that direction. Only once in the past 40 years has a president
been denied a second term. Mr Trump will lose the popular vote
by, we reckon, 52% to 47%—only the electoral college’s bias to-
wards rural voters saved him from a crushing
defeat. That is a repudiation of sorts.
A Biden White House would also set a wholly
new tone. The all-caps tweets and the constant
needling of partisan divisions would go. So
would the self-dealing, the habitual lying and
the use of government departments to pursue
personal vendettas. Mr Biden is a decent man
who, after the polls closed, vowed to govern as a
unifier. His victory would change American policy in areas from
climate to immigration. That is a form of repudiation, too.
And yet the unexpected closeness of the vote also means pop-
ulism will live on in America. With this election it has become
clear that Mr Trump’s astonishing victory in 2016 was not an ab-
erration but the start of a profound ideological shift in his party
(see Lexington). Defying expectations and covid-19, he has won
millions more votes in the huge turnout of 2020 than he did in
2016’s moderate one. Far from being swept away in a blue wave,
Republicans have gained seats in the House and seem set to keep
control of the Senate. The Republican Party, which fell under Mr
Trump’s spell while he was in office, is not about to shake itself
out of the trance now. It is even conceivable that Mr Trump, or a
member of his family, could run for the White House in 2024.
The outside world, which has been watching this contest
with rapt attention, will draw two conclusions from America’s
failure to reject Trumpism more decisively. The first will be
among populist nationalists who look to Mr Trump for inspira-
tion and who will now reckon that their brand of politics has a
brighter future outside America, too. An abject defeat for Mr
Trump may have spelled trouble for politicians like Jair Bolso-
naro in Brazil and Marine Le Pen in France. Instead Nigel Farage,
formerly the leader of the Brexit Party, is busy planning hiscomeback(seeBritainsection). The persistence of Mr Trump’s
support suggests that the rejection of immigration, urban elites
and globalisation, which gathered pace after the financial crisis
of 2008-09, still has further to run.
The second conclusion is to be wary of relying on America. Mr
Trump has been a disruptive, transactional force in foreign af-
fairs, contemptuous of alliances and multilateralism. Mr Biden,
by contrast, is steeped in the traditional values of American di-
plomacy from his time in the Senate. He would doubtless seek to
restore close ties with allies and to strengthen global gover-
nance, by for instance, remaining in the World Health Organisa-
tion and rejoining the Paris agreement on climate change. But
after this election result, everyone will know that it could all re-
vert again in 2024.
At home the picture is more complicated, but it contains les-
sons for both parties—and for their stewardship of America. The
hardest message is for the Democrats. Their failure to take the
Senate means that Mr Biden will struggle to pass bills or appoint
judges. An infrastructure bill, health-care reform and environ-
mental laws could all be blocked by Congress.
That failure partly reflects the Democrats’ inability to attract
white, non-college-educated voters, especially in rural America.
They also fared less well than expected among young African-
American men and Hispanic voters in Florida
and Texas. These losses undermine the Demo-
crats’ assumption that, just because America is
becoming less white and more suburban, they
are destined to win elections. Rather, they will
need to earn support by countering Republican
claims that they are against free enterprise and
that fringe obsessions with identity politics are
becoming an oppressive Democratic orthodoxy.
Republicans face lessons, too. Trumpism has its limits. If they
block all legislation in the Senate so as to discredit Mr Biden, it
will mark yet another electoral cycle in which the gridlock and
the zero-sum logic of partisanship prevent America from grap-
pling with its problems. Republicans will tell themselves that
discrediting the Washington machine helps the party that
claims to stand for limited government—however swampy the
Trump administration proved. That view is as short-sighted as it
is cynical.Red-lesson day
Those black and Hispanic voters who came over to their side this
week suggest that Republicans can win minority support and
that ethnic groups are not monoliths. Republicans are seduced
by a dangerous identity politics of their own, which stirs up
white fears of a multiracial country. How much better if they
made a positive case for their party, seeking to expand their base
by earning their share of the credit for, say, bills to reform crimi-
nal justice or upgrade America’s creaking infrastructure.
This election has once again shown that America is a divided
nation. Many of its politicians set out to feed the divisions, and
none has divided more than Mr Trump. We hope that his defeat
will stand as a lesson that it doesn’t always work. 7When every vote counts
What the 2020 results say about America’s futureLeaders