40 Time November 16, 2020
On The mOrning Of elecTiOn Day, ameri-
cans faced two competing narratives. On the
one hand, there was a veritable avalanche of
polling data indicating the possibility—even
probability—of a blue-wave election not seen
since Barack Obama’s 2008 rout of John McCain.
On the other hand, we had decades of data and
experience telling us that America was closely
(and intensely) divided. Americans are by and
large entrenched in their political and cultural
tribes, and virtually nothing can budge them.
As the votes started to roll in, and the hopes
of a blue-wave election dissipated, the electoral
outcome grew momentarily cloudy just as the un-
derlying national realities grew ever more clear.
Once again, the polls were wrong. America re-
mains deeply polarized, few voters are truly per-
suadable, and angry gridlock will likely dominate
Washington.
Rarely in American history has so much hap-
pened and still changed so little. In the past year
alone, the House impeached the President; a pan-
demic killed more than 232,000 Ameri-
cans and seriously sickened countless
more; we endured a historic economic
collapse; and a shocking act of police
brutality in Minneapolis ripped the
scabs off America’s racial divisions,
leading to protests and civil unrest in
cities and towns from coast to coast.
Any one of those events would be
historic and traumatic. All of them together have
rendered 2020 uniquely painful for the Ameri-
can public. Yet politically, it’s remarkable how
these seismic events have led to very little politi-
cal change.
Take a look at the exit polls. In 2016, Donald
Trump won 58% of the white vote. In 2020, he won
57%. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 89% of the Black
vote. In 2020, Joe Biden won 87%. In 2016, Clinton
won 66% of the Hispanic vote. In 2020, Biden won
66%. Yes, the total margins adjusted very slightly—
and those slight adjustments can make the differ-
ence between winning and losing in closely divided
swing states—but the overall message was crystal
clear. Our tribal loyalties remain intense.It’s worth notIng here the role of the Electoral
College and the Senate. It’s virtually certain that
the GOP has lost the popular vote for the seventh
time in the past eight presidential elections, yet
at the same time, it has no real reason to believe
that either the presidency or the Senate is slipping
from its grasp. The result is a sense of increasing
political frustration from a majority of the nation,
with no real path to reform the system.
And so the nation’s politics looks like a ver-
sion of trench warfare, where massive effort is ex-
pended to achieve the most incremental gains and
the costs of stalemate only escalate.
Those emotional costs may well be the
most consequential. As the Pew Research
Center has noted, partisan antipathy is
growing “more intense, more personal.”
A super majority of Democrats and Republi-
cans view their opponents as “more closed-
minded.” A super majority of Republicans
view Democrats as “more unpatriotic.”
But data is inadequate to capture the pain and in-
tensity of human feelings. Our social media timelines
are full of stories of broken relationships and fractured
families. Many of us can tell stories of old friendships
grown cold.
The presidency may change hands, but the fun-
damental reality of American politics and culture
remains the same. Our nation is deeply divided,
our partisans are very angry, and there is no imme-
diate prospect for change.French is a columnist for TIME^
Competing political
signs dot the lawn of
the Blue Ball Barn,
an event space in
Wilmington, Del.THE NATION’S
POLITICS LOOKS
LIKE A VERSION OF
TRENCH WARFARE
POLARIZATION
PREVAILED,
AGAIN
Our tribal loyalties remain too intense
for one election to change anythingBY DAVID FRENCH