he 2020 Loss — A Blessing In Disguise?
Let’s be totally
frank: if on election night 2020 a total of just over 40,000 votes across
Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona had gone for President Donald Trump instead of
Biden it would have eventuated in a complete disaster for both Trump and the GOP
with the latter likely out of the presidency for a dozen years or more.
Trump’s 269/269 Electoral College tie
“win” i.e., being put into office by a majority of state delegations in the
House of Representatives even though he had lost the popular vote by an
unprecedented seven million votes, 4.3% behind the “loser,” would have made the
2016 protests against his, also minority popular vote win, seem a Sunday
picnic.
The media, already hateful, would have
turned venomous, and the atmosphere leading up to the House meeting and
determining him re-elected would have been filled with commentary calling on
the House delegates to switch their votes, further inflaming the environment.
But should the constitutional process
have worked its way through on strictly partisan basis, including
Vice-President Mike Pence casting the deciding vote for himself, a sullen quiet
would have descended on the country.
Again, being frank, the current
inflationary economy commenced its stark rise, caused in the main by the
massive creation of money, just after Biden’s inauguration along with the
supply chain bottlenecks. Trump would have owned all of it.
Now, if in this current economy
President Trump were in charge, it is difficult to imagine the political
environment as being anything other than a complete and utter disaster for
Trump and the GOP. Even with a still more or less compliant media supporting
Biden and overlooking his lapses, he still manages to be around the 41%
approval rating for all of this year to date.
If Trump were in office today, he would
be lucky to be in the high 20s. The Dems and media would be hitting the
“illegitimate president.” The GOP “establishment” would be completely emboldened
and would be fracturing what would be left of any messaging cohesion from the
Trump administration.
If Putin had invaded the Ukraine the
media/Dems response would be unimaginable. After four years of, without cause,
calling Trump “Putin’s puppet,” the rhetoric would be through the roof. If
Trump did not take any overt action, he would be called worse than a traitor
“enabling the death of democracy.” If he had taken strong action, then “Trump
is leading us into World War Three.”
As bad as the midterms currently
look for the Dems, the prospect of a near complete annihilation of the GOP
would make their outlook appear just like the normal, historical swings. There
would have been the very real prospect of a filibuster proof 60+ Dem senate and
a two-thirds House majority if not in 2022, then most certainly in 2024.
Whoever was the unfortunate Republican
presidential candidate would go down to a Mondale-type defeat and what was left
of the GOP would be out of the presidency, possibly up to 12 years. Such
massive across-the-board rejection would have seen the most radical Democratic
party legislation rammed through with every progressive agenda wish passed completely
and finally changing the polity to a bicoastal ultra-liberal one.
What would have been particularly
tragic for the GOP would have been the loss of the current marked swing to
their ranks by Hispanics which would also have put Texas in play for the Dems
in such a massive swing environment.
As it stands now, should they lose
control of the House next year, Democrats will have a more emboldened
progressive caucus, having lost many moderate and swing district
members. This will present the electorate with a stark choice: a
continuation of the current progressive inspired economy, illegal immigration
and “woke” social mores, or a return to the pre-COVID booming
Trump economy, especially for Blacks and Hispanics.
In contrast to the potentially
disastrous political situation for the GOP which a narrow 2020 win would have
engendered, the prospect for both Trump and the entire Republican party for
2022 and 2024 looks bright.
In fact, looking even further out, 2028
would not be marked by the usual two-term election malaise as the
political reality in that respect is that it would appear for Trump’s successor
as a follow on from a single term.
Sometimes a loss, no matter how much it
hurts, can turn out to be a blessing in disguise, and 2020 is very much that
blessing. The Biden administration’s policy plans have been waylaid by Omicron,
Manchin and Sinema, inflation, Putin’s war, rising urban crime and internal
party divisions. So far Biden’s 2020 win has not inflicted too much damage than
can’t quickly be fixed in 2022/24
About forty thousand votes in two
presidential elections in a row will have determined the American landscape for
a generation after the midterms — such are the imponderables of fate in a
polarized society.
