On Election Day in Washington, it looked as if there were more police cars than places in the city, maybe 10 of the former to every one of the latter. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but not in terms of the feeling. It was clear that there had never been an election like this one. Partly because of COVID, but mainly because of the combination of an unpredictable pandemic and the most colorful candidate the US has ever known.
A divided America went to vote, but not necessarily to decide. It was a historic, tense, intriguing, fateful election day. The eyes of the world were on Washington, the White House, but were also turned to Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona.
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That is, Americans wanted to determine its character and its future, but had difficulty deciding whether or not the way forward would be to vote out a president after a single term for the first time in nearly 30 years. Generally, America likes to keep the sitting president, if only so he can correct his course. That's how it was with Clinton, when he was given a second term despite the unsuccessful moments of his first one, that even led him to be deeply humiliated; and of course, that's how it was with Ronald Reagan, who won a second term despite the major recession of his first one.
America, the eternal optimist, which likes to change the world for the better and make us all better versions of ourselves, didn't know what to decide on Tuesday, and when this column went to press, was split between the desire to give Trump another chance and putting the economy and the handling of COVID into the hands of the Left.
It was as if the police cars patrolling the streets of Washington were patrolling back and forth, like America went back and forth in thinking about whom to vote for. Because there was also a scenario in which despite the polls there wouldn't be a winner, when the exit polls began to come out in the evening, demonstrators started to go wild outside the White House. They saw it coming ahead of time. All but the results.
The pollsters repeated their error of 2016. One after another, even in key states, they gave us the sense that Biden was gaining momentum and pulling out ahead. Even when, toward the end of the race, the polls showed the lead narrowing, no one thought that Trump could repeat the size of the red wave that washed over the Midwest four years ago.
But that's exactly (or almost exactly) what happened – and Trump, as the week was ending, was still relevant – even if the projections from the TV networks showed that his chances of staying on at the White House were getting smaller by the hour. Trump was claiming, at least on Thursday, that everything was still open, both because the courts could still be convinced by suspicion of irregularities, and because there were votes that would change the picture if they were properly counted.
Either way, whether he has managed to clone the results of 2016 or not, he has gone above and beyond when it comes to the demographic that voted for him. His margins of victory in states were especially big compared to his win in 2016, and in Florida, he not only increased his margin of victory from that of four years ago, but also showed that Biden got less support among Hispanics than Hillary Clinton (and lost support among Hispanics not only in Florida, but across the United States).
Trump improved his position in several demographics, including minorities and women, and even kept his standing among educated white suburban voters. But all these demographic victories couldn't help him in his primary goal: to prevent the rebuilding of the Democrats' "blue wall" in the Midwest. Biden managed to rebuild it some of the way apparently because of who he is – a white man who grew up in Pennsylvania – but in a year in which he could have run an effective campaign against the president, he hid in the basement and found potential on his way to becoming the first president to be elected without a campaign, a default president (if, as we said, he wins).
The blue wall, insofar as it has been rebuilt, is fragile, and will probably come down easily in 2024 if Biden allows his party to keep moving farther to the Left.
The blitz proved itself
The polls, as we've said, misread the street again. During the campaign, we saw that the polls were with Biden, but the people weren't influenced by them – just like they were almost not influenced by the Democrats' attempts to promote tough policy on COVID (although they were disappointed by the president's inconsistent conduct regarding the pandemic).
Biden's remaining in the basement throughout the campaign, his preference for drive-by rallies and his being a candidate lacking in media energy, made Trump's work a lot easier. The president continued his constant campaign, which in effect turned COVID into a tribal issue rather than a medical one.
He held rally after rally in a daily blitz across the US, which proved itself. The early voting (100 million ballots) that the Democrats put their faith in were met with huge rallies day after day, which brought more and more voters into Trump's embrace and eventually to the polling places on election day.
Sometimes, he held five events a day, like he did last Saturday in Pennsylvania, or 14 rallies in the last three days of the campaign. Indeed, that blitz brought him millions of voices. Tens of thousands attended each event, while a few dozen cars attended Biden's drive-by events.
The journey of an ordinary man
Election night started out like a dream for Trump, who won in Florida by a large margin. Florida is a problematic state that in 2000 went down in American electoral history when the tiny difference in votes led to an unending count that was eventually cut off when a court stopped it, making George W. Bush president. Two years ago Florida was once again the focus of interest when it held a gubernatorial election, and then, too, a court intervened.
This year there was no doubt that no recount was needed in the Sunshine State: it stood behind Trump, led by the Cubans and Hispanics who see Trump as a successful president, both in terms of the economy and in foreign policy toward rogue regimes in Latin America. They didn't even blame him for COVID.
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But the night went on to become very problematic for the president. North Carolina and Arizona, which both voted for him four years ago, stuttered until even Fox News rushed to give Biden a historic victory in Arizona (the last Democrat to do that was Clinton); and even in North Carolina had a hard time deciding. Georgia did not automatically give its votes to the reds, the first time since 1992.
But as we've already said, the Midwest will decide, like it did in 2016. It's no coincidence we saw both candidates killing themselves over Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania has already declared that it won't be announcing its results until Friday.
On Tuesday America went to bed without a winner, without a sense of change, and without a sense of continuity; mainly, it went to bed with a feeling of uncertainty that fit in with the mood I sensed in my journey across America these past two weeks. A tour of America by an ordinary man who found himself in the heart of America, in its immense spaces.
But we woke up to a situation very similar to the one we had in 2016, with the Midwest once again deciding the American election. But unlike 2016, the Midwest is just the stage dressing. The star is COVID.
Republicans improved their position
Despite what people think, Trump actually liked the fact that the election was a referendum about him, because he knew that it would bring millions of "shy" voters to the polls, in spite of the predictions. But it never occurred to him that the referendum could end in a decision not to decide.
Trump could have been disappointed. We'll never know how the campaign would have gone if it hadn't been for COVID, whether or not the economy would have made him into a president who was guaranteed a second term. But in that case, would as many people have flocked to the polls as did this week? Would he have enthralled them if he had run a standard campaign on issues and substance, and not about style?
COVID upended everything and put America into a pessimistic mood, and a sense of helplessness. From a flourishing economy and extremely low unemployment, America suddenly found itself in deep trouble. The Democrats managed to pin the responsibility for the virus on Trump, even if that was totally wrong. It's no coincidence Trump called COVID "the Chinese virus."
His declarations mocking the virus and his attitude toward masks, despite the criticism of it, helped him maintain his base and once again position him as a representative of the common man vs. the elites and the doctors who he said wanted to shut down the economy and hurt the soul of America, which hold creativity, liberty, and adventurousness sacred.
With Trump, there is content and there is style. Many like the essence of his policy, but not his style. On Tuesday his base voted for the style, and left-wing voters voted against the content. But everyone voted wishing for something that doesn't exist anymore: America before COVID.
In two and a half weeks in America, I didn't see people going to vote for Biden out of joy, admiration, or love. For Trump, yes. Masses of them.
I also need to say that despite the talk about racial tension in America, I didn't feel that it was higher in Black neighborhoods like Liberty City in Miami, where I visited. On the other hand, I saw almost no Black people at Trump's rallies, unlike Jews, women, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. That's something to think about, too.
The question that could change Trump's situation is whether he will be able to prove that there was massive voter fraud against him. Trump's campaign mostly thinks that the distance voting system – in this year's enormous numbers because of COVID – is tainted by irregularities and in any case cannot be counted accurately and invites fraud (such as by stealing the identity of the dead). Trump is claiming that even confirming voters' identities by verifying signatures is problematic and inaccurate, as is tracking ballots from the moment they are sent out to the moment they are returned to the election officials.
Everything can go wrong, and Trump fears that many of the people who ordered mail-in ballots took advantage of their democratic right to tamper with the celebration of democracy on a large scale and vote in other people's names or for people who are not eligible to vote.
The fact that the court allows ballots to be counted without proof that they were filled out on time is just as problematic. But what is certain is that no blue wave washed over America. We didn't see the wave of radical leftism that is going to change the face of America. The Republicans even strengthened their position in the House of Representatives, although the Democrats are still in the majority.
In the Senate, Chuck Schumer is not going to be the majority leader. Mitch McConnell kept his seat, even though the Republican majority will be smaller in the upper house of Congress.
What does that actually mean? That if Biden becomes president, he will have a contrarian Senate. And the Supreme Court will continue to challenge him because of the conservative majority created by Trump. America certainly wasn't hoping for four years of paralysis.
Not an accident in the history of politics
If Trumpism continues to have its say thanks to the conservative bastion Trump has managed to leave behind him, Biden could find himself cooperating with the 45th president's base, because at the end of the day, he tried – and failed – to appear like that same base when he marked himself in the election as a white man from Pennsylvania. But as this was being written, nothing was closed yet, not until the electors vote on Dec. 14 and until Congress counts those votes on Jan. 6.
We've learned on thing from this election. Trump is not an accident of American political history. He has a lot of supporters and he is leaving a legacy. He has a solid, strong political base, even though he was never given credit by the media, who hated him from day one. But Trump didn't need the media, he has the love of the audience, like I saw it at three different rallies in the US. "We love you," they shouted at one of the rallies. And he answered, "Don't make me cry."
Trump's success in taking America by storm and capturing the beating heart of rural America, America of the workers, the America that was left behind and forgotten as poor towns between the two liberal coasts, is the most impressive achievement in politics since Bill Clinton successfully rebranded the Democratic Party in the 1990s, and since a mediocre actor named Ronald Reagan managed to conquer America with a message of optimism about a new American purpose. The big question is what Biden has to offer and whether the voters were convinced, other than being anti-Trump. We might know in a few days.
