The story of American politics in the 21st century
has been one of escalating polarization and gridlock,
a nihilistic feedback loop that has made the country
all but impossible to lead. For years, a chaos-ridden
nation has waited to deliver its verdict on Trump’s
unorthodox presidency. But this is 2020—the year
when up was down and real was fake, the year of the
plague, the year of the unexpected: of course it would
not be that easy. Both sides hoped for a knockout
blow, a landslide that would forever settle the ques-
tion of which version of America is the true one. In-
stead, our identity crisis continues.
The campaign unfolded over a year so convulsive
that the third presidential impeachment in history
now seems a distant memory. COVID-19 upended
Americans’ lives and drained their bank accounts.
Millions of people, from all walks of life, took to the
streets to protest police violence. The West Coast’s
sky was blotted by fire for weeks, while the East
was battered by a record hurricane season. And yet,
against this backdrop of chaos there was an odd po-
litical stasis: Trump’s standing in polls remained
about where it had been when Biden first entered
the race—a sign, Democrats believed, that Trump
had little chance of persuading an electorate that had
long since rejected him.
Not that he particularly tried. Strategists of both
parties believe the campaign was winnable for the in-
cumbent if he had embraced a more traditional strat-
egy and style—something his entire presidency has
shown him to be uninterested in doing. Discarding the
advice of the political professionals, Trump insisted
on rerunning the 2016 election, down to the leaked
emails and antiestablishment rhetoric. He made little
alteration to his bull-in-a-china-shop attitude, even
though the hellscape he raged against was now one
that unfolded on his watch. “COVID certainly didn’t
help, but this election was about the President’s per-
formance over the last four years, not just the last nine
months,” says Brendan Buck, a former top adviser to the
GOP ex–House Speaker Paul Ryan. “It was four years
of bumbling his way through every issue, alienating
everyone who didn’t agree with him, and never being
able to use the tools he had for any particular good.”
As Trump careened from one outrage to another,
Biden limited his campaign to theatrically cautious
appearances: masked speeches to small, distanced
groups; “drive-in” rallies where attendees sat in their
cars. The longtime pol known for his garrulousness
ELECTION
2020
