vox--2020-11-06--How reality caught up with the reality TV president

Most people who lose their jobs get to do so privately .
But there are a few exceptions .
Contestants on The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice got fired on national TV .
And so did President Donald Trump , who was able to ride a lifelong preoccupation with image and branding to the White House , but not to a second term .
If a celebrity is “ a person who is known for his well-knownness , ” then Donald Trump was the equivalent for wealth .
He was not the richest person in the world , or even the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Forbes ’ s most recent US wealth rankings .
His businesses are not the most famous or most successful ; unlike Jeff Bezos , he does not run the most popular store in the world , and even in the hotels business , the Trump Organization was a much smaller presence than Marriott or Hilton or Hyatt .
But perhaps no wealthy person in America was better at projecting an image of wealth and extravagance than Trump .
When rappers from Raekwon to Cam ’ ron to Mac Miller wanted to brag @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t reference Bezos or Bill Gates ; they referenced Trump .
When reality show producer Mark Burnett needed a human embodiment of financial success to helm a new business-themed reality show , he enlisted Trump .
“ I bet you when Donald Trump makes a decision , he thinks to himself , ‘ What would a cartoon rich person do ?
’ ” the comedian John Mulaney joked all the way back in 2008 .
The eventual punchline was , of course , “ run for president.
” The White House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more like a TV network trying to get a ratings boost than an administration trying to lead a country .
That ’ s true both literally — Trump harped on TV ratings of his appearances and those of his enemies long after taking office — and metaphorically .
Desperate to stay on TV , Trump made a habit of calling in to Fox & Friends many mornings .
He turned internal administration conflicts into public , Apprentice-style dramas about whom he ’ ll fire next .
He introduced Poochie-style short-lived surprise characters , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tear-gassed protesters to give Trump a nice photo op at a church by the White House .
And most toxically , instead of using his authority as president to actually fix the pandemic , he instead poured his efforts into building a false reality where the pandemic was not a problem , where the country could reopen instantly and safely , where the deaths of more than 230,000 people were minimized rather than mourned .
Behind the scenes , Trump used the trappings of the White House to scam the public .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on taxpayers ’ dime , and made the Secret Service do so too .
His children and son-in-law combine positions of real policy and political influence in Trump ’ s White House with myriad property holdings and deals that create obvious conflicts of interest .
Trump can fairly be understood as one of the most inept presidents in American history , someone whose inability to control a natural pandemic cost hundreds of thousands of his citizens their lives , a death toll higher than all American combat deaths in Korea , Vietnam , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it inept is perhaps too forgiving .
Trump ’ s presidency was characterized by a pervasive attitude of indifference and cruelty that shaped real policy , especially where nonwhite Americans were concerned .
On January 20 , 2017 , Trump took office with an inaugural address that consciously rejected the hopeful , sweeping precedent of Lincoln ’ s “ malice toward none ” address or Franklin Roosevelt ’ s admonition that “ the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
” Instead , he described an America with “ rusted-out factories @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our nation ” and “ crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives ” but promised “ this American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
” Former President George W. Bush , whose own disastrous presidency would come to be eclipsed by Trump ’ s in the public imagination , turned to Hillary Clinton at the event and remarked , “ That was some weird shit.
” Indeed , the years that followed did not feel like a normal presidency .
Past Republican administrations had indulged in racist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made them more explicit , and brought in advisers on the outskirts of the alt-right , like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon , who were united in a conviction that the mainstream right was too indulgent of immigrants , of African American criminals , of Muslims .
This had major , highly visible policy consequences , from the administration ’ s abhorrent treatment of migrants and especially migrant children to its indulgence of white nationalist figures and movements .
But what has sometimes been obscured by his abnormal behavior as president was that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ typical Republican president .
His administration pursued deregulation across the board , especially on the environment and climate change ; among other moves , he moved to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord .
His abandonment of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria , leading to some 5,000 deaths , echoed Bush ’ s disastrous response to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina .
Trump ’ s first legislative initiative was an effort to fulfill longstanding Republican ambitions to repeal and replace Obamacare , only to find himself foiled by a last-minute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
Trump and his allies succeeded , though , in slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent , and more mildly cutting income taxes ( especially for top earners ) , in December 2017 .
The promised effects on business investment did not come to fruition .
And — perhaps of greatest interest to conservatives — Trump validated Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ’ s plan to keep Antonin Scalia ’ s Supreme Court seat in Republican hands by appointing Neil Gorsuch in 2017 , and turned the Court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kennedy with the more conservative Brett Kavanaugh .
Gorsuch and Kavanaugh , like Trump ’ s final nominee , Amy Coney Barrett , were conventional picks that any Republican president would have made .
Foreign affairs were a more complicated story .
Trump was less hawkish than some of his advisers , like former National Security Adviser John Bolton , who left the administration frustrated that Trump would not engage in military strikes against North Korea and Iran .
But Trump was no dove either , engaging in limited strikes against Syrian strongman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attacks , assassinating Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani , and dramatically increasing civilian deaths from American raids and airstrikes in Afghanistan and in the drone war ( especially in Somalia ) .
Trump ’ s highly public entreaties to North Korea , including the first American presidential visit to the country , resulted in no progress toward denuclearization or normal relations .
His decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal was followed by Iran rapidly increasing its stocks of enriched uranium .
Much of Trump ’ s presidency was dominated by questions about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The conclusion of former FBI director Robert Mueller , who was eventually brought in as special counsel to investigate the matter , was “ that the Russian government tried to help Trump win , that the Trump campaign was eager to benefit from hackings targeting Democrats , that Trump ’ s campaign advisers had a host of ties to Russia , and that President Trump tried again and again to try to impede the Russia investigation , ” as Vox ’ s Andrew Prokop has summarized .
But Mueller stopped short of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ justice .
When Trump eventually was impeached in December 2019 , it was not for actions regarding Russia .
It was for actions regarding Ukraine , specifically his attempts to get a Ukrainian prosecutor to pursue Hunter Biden , the son of his eventual general election opponent .
That was easily enough to get House Democrats to impeach him , but the Senate , controlled by his allies , predictably voted to acquit .
But the impeachment and Russia dramas only scratched the surface of the Trump administration ’ s culture of corruption @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frequent comparisons to the Harding administration , the previous high watermark of blatant White House graft .
Trump ’ s failure to divest from his hotel business has made them a lucrative cash cow .
Trump has directed at least $ 2.5 million to his properties through his and his children ’ s travel , which entails bringing Secret Service agents along and having them pay for rooms .
That ’ s pocket change compared to what domestic allies and lobbyists and foreign governments have paid Trump , through his businesses , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Along the way , he ’ s repeatedly demanded that the Justice Department prosecute his political enemies , purged inspectors general investigating his administration , and launched an investigation into the investigation of his ties to Russia , a meta-investigation so blatantly politicized that Trump ’ s attorney general demanded results in time for the election .
Throughout it all , Trump maintained a constant commitment to posting on Twitter .
When Barack Obama tweeted , it was to send out anodyne best wishes and carefully massaged statements .
When Trump tweeted , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and often to amplify his most bigoted supporters or to assail enemies from the Federal Reserve to Jeff Bezos to the NFL .
The president ’ s … unorthodox communications style helped feed the constant feeling of political crisis throughout his presidency , even when the actual policy stakes were normal for a president .
It was an eventful presidency , but one that , heading into 2020 , presided over a thriving economy ( overseen by Trump ’ s excellent , loose-money Fed chair pick , Jerome “ Jay ” Powell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looser ) and no catastrophes on the scale of the Iraq War costing hundreds of thousands of lives .
As recently as February 2020 , unemployment was at a mere 3.5 percent , its lowest point in over 50 years .
Wage growth was strong , especially for the lowest-income workers .
In normal times , with a normal president , that could be a recipe for an easy reelection .
This being Trump , he was nonetheless struggling in public polling ; leading economic indicators were already starting to slow through 2019 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the situation got much worse for him in March , as the Covid-19 pandemic reached the United States .
Trump failed to coordinate a national policy to respond to the pandemic .
He announced restrictions on entry to the US from China that were , in practice , extremely porous ( thousands of people still entered ) and beside the point , as community spread in the US had already started .
As the country faced a shortfall of personal protective equipment , his administration inexplicably did not use the means at its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ refusing a firm ’ s offer of 1.7 million masks per week back in January because it thought it unnecessary .
Trump ’ s overall attitude was indifferent and pollyannaish , declaring the virus “ very much under control ” in late February , as its spread had only just begun .
Trump did one big thing right , signing a massive stimulus package in March to address the economic crisis that lockdowns throughout the country had precipitated .
But even that was not an unqualified triumph — he let the stimulus expire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did not push for more until it was too late .
More important , his administration failed to contain the virus in the intervening time , all but guaranteeing its resurgence even as millions continued to be devastated by the economic crisis .
That the country now heads into a lame-duck season with the pandemic raging as fiercely as ever — with little hope of passing new stimulus for struggling Americans — is a devastating failure of governance .
Throughout the crisis , Trump was always more interested in projecting an image of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the hard choices to deal with the pandemic that was strangling the economy .
From the beginning , he was obsessed with “ reopening ” the economy and tried to rush through lockdowns , stay-at-home orders , and other necessary measures for controlling the disease .
Barely a month into the crisis , he decried Michigan and Virginia for pursuing responsible lockdown measures , whipping his fans into an anti-isolation , anti-mask frenzy .
As a result , the US had among the worst outbreaks in terms of deaths of any developed nation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ single wave of the pandemic , but three waves to date : the first in February/March , a second wave in June/July ( where new daily cases were nearly double the first wave ) , and the surge we are currently in .
Trump responded to the most recent coronavirus surge by leaning into his alternate reality , painting an optimistic picture with packed rallies and recurring declarations that the country was “ rounding the turn.
” Indeed , at times he took actions highly likely to cause cases to spike , most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ swing states , which were sometimes followed by an increase in Covid-19 cases .
In spite of the president ’ s wishful thinking , and because of his actions , the virus persisted .
And Americans noticed .
The public has overwhelmingly viewed Trump ’ s response as a failure .
As of October 28 , polls showed that 57.4 percent of Americans disapproved of his handling of the crisis , and only 39.8 percent approved .
So when the disease finally made its way to the White House , and to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was less of a surprise and more of a reckoning .
There was a certain poetry to it : The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , which offered the Trump administration a historic and rare opportunity to shift the Court to the right , led them to throw themselves a big party resulting in two dozen-odd Covid-19 cases in the White House and White House press corps — including the president himself .
RBG had failed to retire under a Democrat and protect her legacy .
But she managed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might expect a brush with the virus he failed to conquer would change Trump ’ s mentality — but of course , it didn ’ t .
If anything , the reverse happened , with Trump telling voters , “ Don ’ t be afraid of Covid .
Don ’ t let it dominate your life.
” The catch , of course , was that Covid-19 does dominate our lives .
We are afraid of it , and for very good reason .
It has killed more than 230,000 people .
And all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the world couldn ’ t paper over that .

Most people who lose their jobs get to do so privately. But there are a few exceptions. Contestants on The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice got fired on national TV. And so did President Donald Trump, who was able to ride a lifelong preoccupation with image and branding to the White House, but not to a second term.
If a celebrity is “a person who is known for his well-knownness,” then Donald Trump was the equivalent for wealth. He was not the richest person in the world, or even the country; he came in at 339th on Forbes’s most recent US wealth rankings. His businesses are not the most famous or most successful; unlike Jeff Bezos, he does not run the most popular store in the world, and even in the hotels business, the Trump Organization was a much smaller presence than Marriott or Hilton or Hyatt.
But perhaps no wealthy person in America was better at projecting an image of wealth and extravagance than Trump. When rappers from Raekwon to Cam’ron to Mac Miller wanted to brag about their wealth and power, they didn’t reference Bezos or Bill Gates; they referenced Trump. When reality show producer Mark Burnett needed a human embodiment of financial success to helm a new business-themed reality show, he enlisted Trump.
“I bet you when Donald Trump makes a decision, he thinks to himself, ‘What would a cartoon rich person do?’” the comedian John Mulaney joked all the way back in 2008.
The eventual punchline was, of course, “run for president.”
The White House during Trump’s term often looked more like a TV network trying to get a ratings boost than an administration trying to lead a country. That’s true both literally — Trump harped on TV ratings of his appearances and those of his enemies long after taking office — and metaphorically. Desperate to stay on TV, Trump made a habit of calling in to Fox & Friends many mornings. He turned internal administration conflicts into public, Apprentice-style dramas about whom he’ll fire next. He introduced Poochie-style short-lived surprise characters, like “The Mooch.” Park police tear-gassed protesters to give Trump a nice photo op at a church by the White House.
And most toxically, instead of using his authority as president to actually fix the pandemic, he instead poured his efforts into building a false reality where the pandemic was not a problem, where the country could reopen instantly and safely, where the deaths of more than 230,000 people were minimized rather than mourned.
Behind the scenes, Trump used the trappings of the White House to scam the public. He stayed in his own hotels and resorts on the taxpayers’ dime, and made the Secret Service do so too. His children and son-in-law combine positions of real policy and political influence in Trump’s White House with myriad property holdings and deals that create obvious conflicts of interest.
Trump can fairly be understood as one of the most inept presidents in American history, someone whose inability to control a pandemic cost hundreds of thousands of his citizens their lives, a death toll higher than all American combat deaths in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined. Calling it inept is perhaps too forgiving. Trump’s presidency was characterized by a pervasive attitude of indifference and cruelty that shaped real policy, especially where nonwhite Americans were concerned.
The reality of Trump’s record
On January 20, 2017, Trump took office with an inaugural address that consciously rejected the hopeful, sweeping precedent of Lincoln’s “malice toward none” address or Franklin Roosevelt’s admonition that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Instead, he described an America with “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation” and “crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives” but promised “this American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
Former President George W. Bush, whose own disastrous presidency would come to be eclipsed by Trump’s in the public imagination, turned to Hillary Clinton at the event and remarked, “That was some weird shit.”
Indeed, the years that followed did not feel like a normal presidency. Past Republican administrations had indulged in racist appeals and policies before, but Trump made them more explicit, and brought in advisers on the outskirts of the alt-right, like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, who were united in a conviction that the mainstream right was too indulgent of immigrants, of African American criminals, of Muslims.
This had major, highly visible policy consequences, from the administration’s abhorrent treatment of migrants and especially migrant children to its indulgence of white nationalist figures and movements.
But what has sometimes been obscured by his abnormal behavior as president was that Trump governed in many ways like a typical Republican president.
His administration pursued deregulation across the board, especially on the environment and climate change; among other moves, he moved to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. His abandonment of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, leading to some 5,000 deaths, echoed Bush’s disastrous response to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Trump’s first legislative initiative was an effort to fulfill longstanding Republican ambitions to repeal and replace Obamacare, only to find himself foiled by a last-minute defection by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
Trump and his allies succeeded, though, in slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, and more mildly cutting income taxes (especially for top earners), in December 2017. The promised effects on business investment did not come to fruition.
And — perhaps of greatest interest to conservatives — Trump validated Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan to keep Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat in Republican hands by appointing Neil Gorsuch in 2017, and turned the Court rightward again by replacing the retiring Anthony Kennedy with the more conservative Brett Kavanaugh. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, like Trump’s final nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, were conventional picks that any Republican president would have made.
Foreign affairs were a more complicated story. Trump was less hawkish than some of his advisers, like former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who left the administration frustrated that Trump would not engage in military strikes against North Korea and Iran. But Trump was no dove either, engaging in limited strikes against Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad in retaliation for chemical weapons attacks, assassinating Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and dramatically increasing civilian deaths from American raids and airstrikes in Afghanistan and in the drone war (especially in Somalia).
Trump’s highly public entreaties to North Korea, including the first American presidential visit to the country, resulted in no progress toward denuclearization or normal relations. His decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal was followed by Iran rapidly increasing its stocks of enriched uranium.
The reality of Trump’s corruption
Much of Trump’s presidency was dominated by questions about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The conclusion of former FBI director Robert Mueller, who was eventually brought in as special counsel to investigate the matter, was “that the Russian government tried to help Trump win, that the Trump campaign was eager to benefit from hackings targeting Democrats, that Trump’s campaign advisers had a host of ties to Russia, and that President Trump tried again and again to try to impede the Russia investigation,” as Vox’s Andrew Prokop has summarized. But Mueller stopped short of recommending Trump be impeached for obstruction of justice.
When Trump eventually was impeached in December 2019, it was not for actions regarding Russia. It was for actions regarding Ukraine, specifically his attempts to get a Ukrainian prosecutor to pursue Hunter Biden, the son of his eventual general election opponent. That was easily enough to get House Democrats to impeach him, but the Senate, controlled by his allies, predictably voted to acquit.
But the impeachment and Russia dramas only scratched the surface of the Trump administration’s culture of corruption, which was so pervasive it invited frequent comparisons to the Harding administration, the previous high watermark of blatant White House graft.
Trump’s failure to divest from his hotel business has made them a lucrative cash cow. Trump has directed at least $2.5 million to his properties through his and his children’s travel, which entails bringing Secret Service agents along and having them pay for rooms. That’s pocket change compared to what domestic allies and lobbyists and foreign governments have paid Trump, through his businesses, to get a seat at the table.
Along the way, he’s repeatedly demanded that the Justice Department prosecute his political enemies, purged inspectors general investigating his administration, and launched an investigation into the investigation of his ties to Russia, a meta-investigation so blatantly politicized that Trump’s attorney general demanded results in time for the election.
Throughout it all, Trump maintained a constant commitment to posting on Twitter. When Barack Obama tweeted, it was to send out anodyne best wishes and carefully massaged statements. When Trump tweeted, it was unpredictable, at odd intervals, and often to amplify his most bigoted supporters or to assail enemies from the Federal Reserve to Jeff Bezos to the NFL. The president’s… unorthodox communications style helped feed the constant feeling of political crisis throughout his presidency, even when the actual policy stakes were normal for a president.
The reality of Covid-19
It was an eventful presidency, but one that, heading into 2020, presided over a thriving economy (overseen by Trump’s excellent, loose-money Fed chair pick, Jerome “Jay” Powell, whom Trump pushed to be even looser) and no catastrophes on the scale of the Iraq War costing hundreds of thousands of lives.
As recently as February 2020, unemployment was at a mere 3.5 percent, its lowest point in over 50 years. Wage growth was strong, especially for the lowest-income workers. In normal times, with a normal president, that could be a recipe for an easy reelection. This being Trump, he was nonetheless struggling in public polling; leading economic indicators were already starting to slow through 2019, further complicating his path.
Then the situation got much worse for him in March, as the Covid-19 pandemic reached the United States.
Trump failed to coordinate a national policy to respond to the pandemic. He announced restrictions on entry to the US from China that were, in practice, extremely porous (thousands of people still entered) and beside the point, as community spread in the US had already started. As the country faced a shortfall of personal protective equipment, his administration inexplicably did not use the means at its disposal to address the problem — even refusing a firm’s offer of 1.7 million masks per week back in January because it thought it unnecessary. Trump’s overall attitude was indifferent and pollyannaish, declaring the virus “very much under control” in late February, as its spread had only just begun.
Trump did one big thing right, signing a massive stimulus package in March to address the economic crisis that lockdowns throughout the country had precipitated. But even that was not an unqualified triumph — he let the stimulus expire at the end of July, and did not push for more until it was too late. More important, his administration failed to contain the virus in the intervening time, all but guaranteeing its resurgence even as millions continued to be devastated by the economic crisis. That the country now heads into a lame-duck season with the pandemic raging as fiercely as ever — with little hope of passing new stimulus for struggling Americans — is a devastating failure of governance.
Throughout the crisis, Trump was always more interested in projecting an image of a thriving economy rather than actually making the hard choices to deal with the pandemic that was strangling the economy. From the beginning, he was obsessed with “reopening” the economy and tried to rush through lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and other necessary measures for controlling the disease. Barely a month into the crisis, he decried Michigan and Virginia for pursuing responsible lockdown measures, whipping his fans into an anti-isolation, anti-mask frenzy.
As a result, the US had among the worst outbreaks in terms of deaths of any developed nation. It has faced not just a single wave of the pandemic, but three waves to date: the first in February/March, a second wave in June/July (where new daily cases were nearly double the first wave), and the surge we are currently in.
Trump responded to the most recent coronavirus surge by leaning into his alternate reality, painting an optimistic picture with packed rallies and recurring declarations that the country was “rounding the turn.” Indeed, at times he took actions highly likely to cause cases to spike, most notably holding large, in-person rallies in swing states, which were sometimes followed by an increase in Covid-19 cases.
In spite of the president’s wishful thinking, and because of his actions, the virus persisted. And Americans noticed. The public has overwhelmingly viewed Trump’s response as a failure. As of October 28, polls showed that 57.4 percent of Americans disapproved of his handling of the crisis, and only 39.8 percent approved.
So when the disease finally made its way to the White House, and to the president, in the fall, it was less of a surprise and more of a reckoning. There was a certain poetry to it: The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which offered the Trump administration a historic and rare opportunity to shift the Court to the right, led them to throw themselves a big party resulting in two dozen-odd Covid-19 cases in the White House and White House press corps — including the president himself. RBG had failed to retire under a Democrat and protect her legacy. But she managed to haunt Trump all the same.
You might expect a brush with the virus he failed to conquer would change Trump’s mentality — but of course, it didn’t. If anything, the reverse happened, with Trump telling voters, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”
The catch, of course, was that Covid-19 does dominate our lives. We are afraid of it, and for very good reason. It has killed more than 230,000 people. And all the marketing and spin and PR magic in the world couldn’t paper over that.


vox--2020-11-06--Kamala Harris makes history as the first woman to become vice president

Share All sharing options for : Kamala Harris makes history as the first woman to become vice president Sen. Kamala Harris is officially the first woman , first Black person , and first South Asian American person to be elected vice president of the United States .
She and incoming President Joe Biden have won their bid against President Donald Trump and will be sworn in this January .
Harris has made history : No woman has ever served as vice president or president in the US .
Her election to the office — and the representation she brings — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She ’ s the first Black woman to be considered vice president of this country , and it means so much to me , being a Black woman who is a leader , who looks up to people like her , ” Brittany Oliver , a women ’ s rights activist and communications director who backed Harris during the primary , previously told Vox .
Harris ’ s nomination for this role was groundbreaking .
As the new vice president , Harris could play a major role in shaping policies and priorities for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strong message about what ’ s possible for other women and people of color .
Some progressives have been conflicted about her nomination , however , given her record on criminal justice and positions she took on wrongful convictions and independent investigations of police shootings when she served as attorney general of California .
Harris spent much of her career as a prosecutor before getting elected to the Senate in 2016 ; she also ran for the presidency before she was named Biden ’ s running mate this summer .
During the presidential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of her candidacy .
“ It really does help to have examples of what can be done and role models , things you can point to , to make it clear that it ’ s not impossible — and that , in fact , it ’ s quite probable that you can do these things and will do those things , ” Harris said in a recent interview with television host Padma Lakshmi .
Harris was named Biden ’ s vice presidential pick in August , and she brings an extensive career in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s served as California ’ s junior senator for nearly four years , and sits on the powerful Judiciary and Intelligence committees .
During her time in the Senate , she ’ s become known for her pointed questions of Trump administration nominees and officials including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions .
Policies that Harris has led as a senator have included the LIFT Act , which would provide monthly cash payments to many middle-class households , and the Justice in Policing Act , a sweeping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legal protections that law enforcement officers currently have .
As a presidential nominee , Harris took more moderate stances on issues including health care , though she is considered liberal relative to most members of the Senate .
One of her first campaign proposals focused on increasing teacher pay , while another sought to bar states from implementing restrictive abortion laws .
She ’ s also been outspoken on immigration reform and proposed executive actions that could establish a path to citizenship for DREAMers , or undocumented immigrants who came to the US @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jamaican and Indian immigrants , both of whom were civil rights activists , Harris has said that combating racial disparities has been a central focus of her career .
She graduated from Howard University in 1986 and the University of California ’ s Hastings Law School in 1989 , and has focused heavily on what she describes as reforming the criminal justice system from within .
Before becoming a senator , Harris served for six years as California attorney general and two terms as San Francisco district attorney .
As Vox ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prosecutorial record as attorney general and district attorney has been criticized for its contradictions : During her presidential campaign , the statement “ Kamala Is a Cop ” was used frequently to question her views on criminal justice reform .
Harris has emphasized that she used her time as prosecutor to hold major banks accountable for the mortgage crisis and implement changes including a database to track police use of force , though activists don ’ t think she was willing to go far enough .
“ There have been prosecutors that refused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prosecute lynchings , disproportionately condemned young Black men to death row and looked the other way in the face of police brutality , ” Harris said at a June 2019 event , Politico reported .
“ It matters who is in those rooms .
I knew I had to be in those rooms .
We have to be in those rooms even when there aren ’ t many like us there.
” Harris energized some voters of color — and sends a hopeful signal about the party ’ s commitment to representation Harris @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black women , and women of color broadly , to the Democratic Party , energizing some voters who were inspired by her candidacy .
“ Kamala , really .
She kicked it into overdrive , especially for what I ’ ve seen in the Black community .
A lot of people were already ... like , ‘ Eh , yeah , I ’ ll vote for him [ Biden ] , I ’ ll do what I got to do.
’ And then when she was put on the ticket , it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ” Christopher Walton , chair of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County , previously told Vox ’ s Sean Collins .
As the country ’ s new vice president-elect , Harris also dramatically expands the scope of leadership roles that women have held in US government .
“ We ’ ve opened up a space and possibility , ” Aimee Allison , founder of She the People , previously told Vox .
This year , a record-breaking number of Black , Latinx , Asian American and Pacific Islander , and Native American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House , according to Rutgers University ’ s Center for American Women and Politics .
And Harris ’ s success could well spur more women to do so , while increasingly normalizing greater representation in these leadership roles .
Voters are also looking to her and Biden to continue addressing racial and gender disparities in the policies they focus on ; Oliver cited Harris ’ s work on maternal mortality legislation as one example of such efforts .
“ It was back in November that she did a debate and talked about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oliver .
“ She used her platform to uplift Black women .
That is exactly what the Democratic Party needs to hear .
”

Share All sharing options for: Kamala Harris makes history as the first woman to become vice president
Sen. Kamala Harris is officially the first woman, first Black person, and first South Asian American person to be elected vice president of the United States. She and incoming President Joe Biden have won their bid against President Donald Trump and will be sworn in this January.
Harris has made history: No woman has ever served as vice president or president in the US. Her election to the office — and the representation she brings — is significant for many voters.
“She’s the first Black woman to be considered vice president of this country, and it means so much to me, being a Black woman who is a leader, who looks up to people like her,” Brittany Oliver, a women’s rights activist and communications director who backed Harris during the primary, previously told Vox.
Harris’s nomination for this role was groundbreaking. As the new vice president, Harris could play a major role in shaping policies and priorities for a Biden administration, while sending a strong message about what’s possible for other women and people of color.
Some progressives have been conflicted about her nomination, however, given her record on criminal justice and positions she took on wrongful convictions and independent investigations of police shootings when she served as attorney general of California.
Harris spent much of her career as a prosecutor before getting elected to the Senate in 2016; she also ran for the presidency before she was named Biden’s running mate this summer. During the presidential campaign, she acknowledged the historic nature of her candidacy.
“It really does help to have examples of what can be done and role models, things you can point to, to make it clear that it’s not impossible — and that, in fact, it’s quite probable that you can do these things and will do those things,” Harris said in a recent interview with television host Padma Lakshmi.
Who is Kamala Harris?
Harris was named Biden’s vice presidential pick in August, and she brings an extensive career in public service to the role. She’s served as California’s junior senator for nearly four years, and sits on the powerful Judiciary and Intelligence committees. During her time in the Senate, she’s become known for her pointed questions of Trump administration nominees and officials including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Policies that Harris has led as a senator have included the LIFT Act, which would provide monthly cash payments to many middle-class households, and the Justice in Policing Act, a sweeping police reform bill that would limit the legal protections that law enforcement officers currently have.
As a presidential nominee, Harris took more moderate stances on issues including health care, though she is considered liberal relative to most members of the Senate. One of her first campaign proposals focused on increasing teacher pay, while another sought to bar states from implementing restrictive abortion laws. She’s also been outspoken on immigration reform and proposed executive actions that could establish a path to citizenship for DREAMers, or undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children.
As the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, both of whom were civil rights activists, Harris has said that combating racial disparities has been a central focus of her career. She graduated from Howard University in 1986 and the University of California’s Hastings Law School in 1989, and has focused heavily on what she describes as reforming the criminal justice system from within. Before becoming a senator, Harris served for six years as California attorney general and two terms as San Francisco district attorney.
As Vox’s German Lopez has written, her broader prosecutorial record as attorney general and district attorney has been criticized for its contradictions:
She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officers’ racial biases, but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings.
During her presidential campaign, the statement “Kamala Is a Cop” was used frequently to question her views on criminal justice reform.
Harris has emphasized that she used her time as prosecutor to hold major banks accountable for the mortgage crisis and implement changes including a database to track police use of force, though activists don’t think she was willing to go far enough.
“There have been prosecutors that refused to seat Black jurors, refused to prosecute lynchings, disproportionately condemned young Black men to death row and looked the other way in the face of police brutality,” Harris said at a June 2019 event, Politico reported. “It matters who is in those rooms. I knew I had to be in those rooms. We have to be in those rooms even when there aren’t many like us there.”
Harris energized some voters of color — and sends a hopeful signal about the party’s commitment to representation
Harris’s nomination highlighted the importance of Black women, and women of color broadly, to the Democratic Party, energizing some voters who were inspired by her candidacy.
“Kamala, really. She kicked it into overdrive, especially for what I’ve seen in the Black community. A lot of people were already ... like, ‘Eh, yeah, I’ll vote for him [Biden], I’ll do what I got to do.’ And then when she was put on the ticket, it was, ‘I’m voting,’” Christopher Walton, chair of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County, previously told Vox’s Sean Collins.
As the country’s new vice president-elect, Harris also dramatically expands the scope of leadership roles that women have held in US government. “We’ve opened up a space and possibility,” Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, previously told Vox.
This year, a record-breaking number of Black, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Native American women have filed to run for the House, according to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. And Harris’s success could well spur more women to do so, while increasingly normalizing greater representation in these leadership roles.
Voters are also looking to her and Biden to continue addressing racial and gender disparities in the policies they focus on; Oliver cited Harris’s work on maternal mortality legislation as one example of such efforts.
“It was back in November that she did a debate and talked about the importance of Black women,” says Oliver. “She used her platform to uplift Black women. That is exactly what the Democratic Party needs to hear.”
Sean Collins contributed reporting.


vox--2020-11-06--3 winners and 4 losers from a very long Election “Day”

Election night 2020 started with a bang : President Donald Trump and down-ballot Republicans blowing through poll-based projections of Florida .
It ended with a whimper as America ’ s news devotees realized we were going to have to go to bed without clear information about the outcome .
But over the course of Wednesday , it became clear that despite the fireworks in quick-counting Florida , Trump was coming up short , including in Arizona , in the quirky Omaha-based House seat that has its own electoral vote , and , most of all , in the three longtime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Pennsylvania that he famously flipped in 2016 .
The real letdown for Democrats was not Biden at all but down-ballot candidates .
Many grassroots Democrats got fired up about Senate races that turned into blowouts , and what they ’ d hoped to be a night of poaching 5 to 15 House seats turned out instead to be a night where a raft of Democratic incumbents faced defeat .
Trump and Trumpism were rejected , but progressives don ’ t even really have the opportunity to argue about the scope of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aren ’ t going to have the seats to enact any of their boldest ideas .
But Trump , the figure who has dominated America ’ s political attention for years , ever since he descended the escalator in Trump Tower to launch what was seen as a stunt campaign , is no longer in power .
Here ’ s who won and who lost .
Fundamentally , when you win the presidential election , you are a winner .
Historians will someday look back on the 2020 campaign and decide it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virtually every day of the primary and literally every day of the general election , and then he won .
Those of us who lived through it know better .
Biden ’ s candidacy experienced a near collapse in the early primaries , and then battled its way through a pandemic , mass protests , and many twists and turns related to the timing of the vote-counting process on the way to victory .
Biden won .
And even though the outcomes down the ballot have disappointed progressives , it ’ s not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
His central promise was always to “ restore the soul of America ” and extirpate the stain of Trump .
Throughout the campaign , he did end up outlining a fairly sweeping policy agenda , but he did not talk about it extensively , and the degree of his personal emotional investment in it is questionable .
Attempting to navigate the congressional politics that await is going to be extraordinarily tricky .
But being essentially forced to sit down and cut deals with Mitch McConnell rather than attempt to lead a highly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to better suit his personal temperament .
Whether Biden ’ s actual presidency will be a success remains to be seen , but his candidacy absolutely was .
The 2020 campaign saw an unprecedented wave of small-donor money pouring into Democratic coffers , often through the ActBlue digital platform .
ActBlue is great as a product , so great Republicans have gotten kind of fixated on it as a boogeyman , but the real reason it drives so much money is that Democrats got hyper-engaged and were extremely eager to finance campaigns .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ t work .
Democrats ended up spending tens of millions of dollars on Senate challengers who didn ’ t even come close to winning .
One of those challengers , Amy McGrath , was running a campaign that never made much sense .
But others , at least at certain moments , appeared to have real shots at victory .
The waste of money is a shame on its own terms .
But the interplay between viral internet fundraising and losing Senate campaigns also raises a broader question .
Democrats ’ big problem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the map is tilted severely against residents of big diverse metro areas .
To win a majority , Democrats need candidates who can find ways to run and win in states that are much more conservative than the national median .
But can candidates like that compete in the fundraising race with less promising candidates who adopt a more donor-friendly posture ?
Few House Republicans , essentially no Senate Republicans , and nobody in GOP congressional leadership actually wanted Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in 2016 .
And the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won the nomination turned into an emotional and political roller coaster .
At several moments , it looked as though Trump and his antics were going to sink the whole party .
But the congressional GOP was almost uniformly unwilling to actually do anything about Trump , Trump ’ s outbursts , Trump ’ s corruption , and Trump ’ s abuses of power .
Democrats hoped they would get their final comeuppance on Election Day and be taught a much-deserved lesson .
But it didn ’ t happen .
Congressional Republicans escape @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cut , a stocked federal judiciary , an absolute stranglehold on the Supreme Court , and almost certainly a majority in the US Senate .
They did lose the House in 2018 and didn ’ t get it back in 2020 , but Democrats ’ majority is now slim .
And Republicans will dominate the redistricting process next year , setting themselves up nicely to make a big run at the majority in 2022 .
Republicans who tell you they are secretly relieved that Trump lost are lying .
The fact is , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worked out well for them , for all its shady tactics .
There were huge fears about the actual administration of the 2020 election , given the pandemic and communities ’ normal reliance on older people to do much of this work .
But a big push to expand mail voting and early voting , the establishment of new polling places , and a drive to recruit new poll workers seems to have gone well .
The election went off more or less without a hitch , even as turnout hit record highs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with an expanded electorate , perhaps in the future they ’ ll be less concerned about the idea of trying to make it safe and convenient to vote and just see it as a nice service to offer citizens .
For years , Democrats dreamed of turning Texas blue by mobilizing the notoriously low turnout population of the heavily Latino counties of the Rio Grande Valley .
In recent years , the dream switched to one powered by growing Democratic clout in the booming suburbs of Dallas and Houston .
The goal wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ win the state ( though they did want to win it ) but to at least compete robustly enough to flip one or two or three House seats and maybe take control of the state House of delegates and thus get a seat at the table in redistricting .
None of it worked .
Trump ’ s 6-point win in Texas was the smallest of any Republican in years , and as urban Texas keeps growing , Democrats will keep competing .
But the Democrats missed all their targets , which means Republicans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year and make it even harder for Democrats to win .
Perhaps most embarrassingly , Trump actually flipped a bunch of those heavily Hispanic counties while making what appeared to be significant inroads with Texas Latinos .
This phenomenon has been less discussed than Democrats ’ weakness with Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade County in Florida but is in some ways an even worse portent for the party because it can ’ t be linked to eccentric foreign policy views .
The Texas opportunity remains tantalizingly close , and the state is simply so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will take more bites at the apple .
But to do it , they need to find ways to make gains in both booming suburbs and low-income South Texas counties , and so far they ’ re finding that circle hard to square .
Between 1988 and 2018 , Democrats won zero Senate elections in Arizona .
Since then they ’ ve won two , and both times against Martha McSally .
Having secured the nomination to try to succeed Jeff Flake two years ago and fallen short in the face of that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ McConnell then persuaded the state ’ s governor to appoint her to fill the vacancy opened up by John McCain ’ s death .
Once in office , even though she ’ d literally just lost the election for this seat , she proceeded to do nothing to establish an image for independent thought or action .
The national political climate got a little better for Republicans in 2020 but not really a lot better .
And up against a formidable contender in former astronaut Mark Kelly , she lost by a larger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Before Election Day , I looked long and hard at the polls and the models and came away with the happy news for Democrats that Biden would likely win the election even if there was a really big polling error .
It ’ s hard to know exactly what went wrong with the polls were until we count all the votes , but early election calls indicate something was awry .
National polling averages showed Biden up by 8 or more points .
Ultimately , it looks like Biden will win nationally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but possibly as much as 6 .
This means those final national polls were off by a bit , which happens .
But the state polling in many critical races appears just really , really bad .
In the FiveThirtyEight polling average : • Biden was up by 8 in Wisconsin , where he in fact won in a squeaker .
• He led by 2.5 points in Florida , which he ended up losing by roughly as large a margin .
• Trump led in Iowa by just 1 point , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about 7 or 8 .
• Ohio was considered a dead heat , but Biden ended up losing by 7 or 8 points .
These polls were often bad in the exact same places where it had gone awry in 2016 and where errors were only partially corrected in 2018 .
More than anything else , this created an emotionally deflating couple of days for Democrats , who , instead of being excited by Biden ’ s win , were disappointed that he didn ’ t win by as much as they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s of course not Biden ’ s fault that the polls were too bullish on him — indeed , the Biden campaign itself spent the last couple of weeks of the campaign assuring voters that they did not in fact have gigantic leads across the Upper Midwest .
It would be comforting to think that meant they had super-accurate private polling .
But even though my reporting indicates that Senate Democrats ’ private polling was more accurate than the public polling , it still wasn ’ t very accurate .
And by all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ races thought Democrats would be on offense rather than defense .
Declining response rates are making it very hard to do accurate polling , and the struggles are starting to be visible .
The most accurate pollsters , like Iowa ’ s Ann Selzer , build their polls atop a great depth of local knowledge .
But that only underscores how poorly the survey methodologies are working , since in principle the whole point of a statistical public opinion survey is that you can find out what people think without having any strong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wake of all this , it ’ s fashionable to say journalists should pay less attention to polls and complicated data analysis and just go talk to real people .
But without any reliable statistical information about broad trends , it ’ s hard to contextualize individual human stories or understand their significance .
We are simply flying blind to a greater extent than is comfortable .

Election night 2020 started with a bang: President Donald Trump and down-ballot Republicans blowing through poll-based projections of Florida. It ended with a whimper as America’s news devotees realized we were going to have to go to bed without clear information about the outcome.
But over the course of Wednesday, it became clear that despite the fireworks in quick-counting Florida, Trump was coming up short, including in Arizona, in the quirky Omaha-based House seat that has its own electoral vote — and, most of all, in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that he flipped in 2016.
The real letdown for Democrats was not Biden, but down-ballot candidates. Many grassroots Democrats got fired up about Senate races that turned into blowouts, and what they’d hoped to be a night of securing five to 15 House seats turned out to be a night where a raft of Democratic incumbents faced defeat. Trump and Trumpism were rejected, but progressives don’t even really have the opportunity to argue about the scope of their mandate — the fact is they just aren’t going to have the seats to enact any of their boldest ideas.
But Trump, the figure who has dominated America’s political attention for the last four years, ever since he descended the escalator in Trump Tower to launch what was seen as a stunt campaign, is no longer in power.
Here’s who won and who lost.
Fundamentally, when you win the presidential election, you are a winner. Historians will someday look back on the 2020 campaign and decide it was very boring — Biden led the polls virtually every day of the primary and literally every day of the general election, and then he won.
Those of us who lived through it know better. Biden’s candidacy experienced a near collapse in the early primaries, and then battled its way through a pandemic, mass protests, and many twists and turns related to the timing of the vote-counting process on the way to victory.
Biden won. And even though the outcomes down the ballot have disappointed progressives, it’s not entirely obvious that that disappointment disappoints Biden. His central promise was always to “restore the soul of America” and extirpate the stain of Trump. Throughout the campaign, he did end up outlining a fairly sweeping policy agenda, but he did not talk about it extensively, and the degree of his personal emotional investment in it is questionable. Attempting to navigate the congressional politics that await is going to be extraordinarily tricky. But being essentially forced to sit down and cut deals with Mitch McConnell rather than attempt to lead a highly partisan norm-busting wave of structural change seems to better suit his personal temperament.
Whether Biden’s actual presidency will be a success remains to be seen, but his candidacy absolutely was.
Loser: Democratic small donors
The 2020 campaign saw an unprecedented wave of small-donor money pouring into Democratic coffers, often through the ActBlue digital platform.
ActBlue is great as a product, so great Republicans have gotten kind of fixated on it as a boogeyman. But the real reason it drives so much money is that Democrats got hyper-engaged and were extremely eager to finance campaigns.
The problem was, it didn’t work. Democrats ended up spending tens of millions of dollars on Senate challengers who didn’t even come close to winning.
• SC: Jaime Harrison raises $109m — loses by ~11 points
• KY: Amy McGrath raises $90m — loses by ~20 points
• ME: Sara Gideon raises $70m — loses by ~9 points
• TX: MJ Hegar raises $24m — loses by ~10 pointshttps://t.co/ZxAD7ThMMd — Axios (@axios) November 4, 2020
One of those challengers, Amy McGrath, was running a campaign that never made much sense. But others, at least at certain moments, appeared to have real shots at victory.
The waste of money is a shame on its own terms. But the interplay between viral internet fundraising and losing Senate campaigns also raises a broader question. Democrats’ big problem in the upper house of Congress is that the map is tilted severely against residents of big diverse metro areas. To win a majority, Democrats need candidates who can find ways to run and win in states that are much more conservative than the national median. But can candidates like that compete in the fundraising race with less promising candidates who adopt a more donor-friendly posture?
Winner: Congressional Republicans
Few House Republicans, essentially no Senate Republicans, and nobody in GOP congressional leadership actually wanted Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in 2016.
And the four and a half years since he won the nomination turned into an emotional and political roller coaster. At several moments, it looked as though Trump and his antics were going to sink the whole party. But the congressional GOP was almost uniformly unwilling to actually do anything about Trump, Trump’s outbursts, Trump’s corruption, and Trump’s abuses of power. Democrats hoped they would get their final comeuppance on Election Day and be taught a much-deserved lesson.
But it didn’t happen. Congressional Republicans escape from the Trump years with a tax cut, a stocked federal judiciary, an absolute stranglehold on the Supreme Court, and almost certainly a majority in the US Senate. They did lose the House in 2018 and didn’t win it back in 2020, but Democrats’ majority is now slim. And Republicans will dominate the redistricting process next year, setting themselves up nicely to make a big run at the majority in 2022.
Republicans who tell you they are secretly relieved that Trump lost are lying. The fact is, their strategy for navigating the Trump era worked out well for them, for all its shady tactics.
Winner: Poll workers
There were huge fears about the actual administration of the 2020 election, given the pandemic and communities’ normal reliance on older people to do much of this work.
But a big push to expand mail voting and early voting, the establishment of new polling places, and a drive to recruit new poll workers seems to have gone well. The election went off more or less without a hitch, even as turnout hit record highs. And since Republicans basically did fine with an expanded electorate, perhaps in the future they’ll be less concerned about the idea of trying to make it safe and convenient to vote and just see it as a nice service to offer citizens.
Loser: Blue Texas
For years, Democrats dreamed of turning Texas blue by mobilizing the notoriously low turnout population of the heavily Latino counties of the Rio Grande Valley. In recent years, the dream switched to one powered by growing Democratic clout in the booming suburbs of Dallas and Houston.
The goal wasn’t even necessarily for Biden to win the state (though they did want to win it) but to at least compete robustly enough to flip one or two or three House seats, and maybe take control of the state House of delegates and thus get a seat at the table in redistricting. None of it worked.
Trump’s 6-point win in Texas was the smallest of any Republican in years, and as urban Texas keeps growing, Democrats will keep competing. But Democrats missed all their targets, which means Republicans will get to redraw the maps next year and make it even harder for Democrats to win. Perhaps most embarrassingly, Trump actually flipped a bunch of those heavily Hispanic counties while making what appeared to be significant inroads with Texas Latinos.
For all the talk of Texas being in play at the presidential level, @joebiden is on track to win the fewest counties (21) of any top-of-ticket Democrat in years #tx2020 pic.twitter.com/UwqRcIWxHq — Evan Smith (@evanasmith) November 4, 2020
This phenomenon has been less discussed than Democrats’ weakness with Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade County in Florida, but is in some ways an even worse portent for the party because it can’t be linked to eccentric foreign policy views. The Texas opportunity remains tantalizingly close, and the state is simply so large that you have to figure Democrats will take more bites at the apple. But to do it, they need to find ways to make gains in both booming suburbs and low-income South Texas counties, and so far they’re finding that circle hard to square.
Loser: Martha McSally
Between 1988 and 2018, Democrats won zero Senate elections in Arizona.
Since then they’ve won two, and both times against Martha McSally. Having secured the nomination to try to succeed Jeff Flake two years ago and fallen short in the face of that year’s blue wave, Mitch McConnell then persuaded the state’s governor to appoint her to fill the vacancy opened up by John McCain’s death. Once in office, even though she’d just lost the election for this seat, she proceeded to do nothing to establish an image for independent thought or action.
The national political climate got a little better for Republicans in 2020 but not really a lot better. And up against a formidable contender in former astronaut Mark Kelly, she lost by a larger margin the second time.
Loser: The polls
Before Election Day, I looked long and hard at the polls and the models and came away with the happy news for Democrats that Biden would likely win the election even if there was a really big polling error. It’s hard to know exactly what went wrong with the polls until we count all the votes, but early election calls indicate something was awry.
National polling averages showed Biden up by 8 or more points. Ultimately, it looks like Biden will win nationally by about 4 or 5 points, but possibly as much as 6. This means those final national polls were off by a bit, which happens.
Polls miss by about 3 points in an average year. That's what they missed by in 2016 and I think that's where we'll end up with this year, too, once all votes are counted. Biden's going to win the popular vote by 4 or 5 points most likely, maybe 6. https://t.co/u4LxOEnt9C — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2020
But the state polling in many critical races appears just really, really bad. In the FiveThirtyEight polling average:
Biden was up by 8 in Wisconsin, where he in fact won in a squeaker.
He led by 2.5 points in Florida, which he ended up losing by roughly as large a margin.
Trump led in Iowa by just 1 point, but ended up winning by about 7 or 8 points.
Ohio was considered a dead heat, but Trump ended up winning by 7 or 8 points there, too.
These polls were often bad in the exact same places where it had gone awry in 2016 and where errors were only partially corrected in 2018.
More than anything else, this created an emotionally deflating couple of days for Democrats, who, instead of being excited by Biden’s win, were disappointed that he didn’t win by as much as they’d been expecting.
Indeed, the Biden campaign spent the last couple of weeks of the campaign assuring voters that they did not have gigantic leads across the Upper Midwest. It would be comforting to think that meant they had super-accurate private polling. But even though my reporting indicates that Senate Democrats’ private polling was more accurate than the public polling, it still wasn’t very accurate. And by all accounts, both sides in the House races thought Democrats would be on offense rather than defense.
Declining response rates are making it very hard to do accurate polling, and the struggles are starting to be visible. The most accurate pollsters, like Iowa’s Ann Selzer, build their polls atop a great depth of local knowledge. But that only underscores how poorly the survey methodologies are working, since in principle the whole point of a statistical public opinion survey is to find out what people think without having any strong prior view of it.
In the wake of all this, it’s fashionable to say journalists should pay less attention to polls and complicated data analysis and just go talk to people. But without any reliable statistical information about broad trends, it’s hard to contextualize people’s stories or understand their significance. We are simply flying blind to a greater extent than is comfortable.


vox--2020-11-06--Vox live results: Joe Biden wins the presidency

A clear picture of the results of the 2020 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden came into view on Friday , days after Election Day .
Trump racked up early victories in Florida , Ohio , and Iowa , but Biden had more paths to 270 Electoral College votes than the president .
Biden won three Midwest states that proved pivotal : Michigan , Wisconsin , and Pennsylvania — the same ones that helped sink Hillary Clinton ’ s bid in 2016 .
Biden ’ s other paths were favorable , too : He is ahead in Nevada and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ morning , Biden has taken a very slim lead over Trump in Georgia as the final votes are tallied .
Based on this outlook , Biden projected optimism , saying on Thursday , “ We have no doubt that when the count is finished , Sen. Harris and I will be declared the winners.
” Trump , however , has falsely claimed victory and sought to stop vote counting .
He says he will take the matter to the Supreme Court , promising again to do so in a Thursday evening speech .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ on that front , however : Continuing to count outstanding votes is a legal and necessary part of the process .
Nevertheless , he spent much of Wednesday and Thursday tweeting attacks against election officials in swing states who ’ ve stated commitments to continuing the count , as well sharing conspiracy theories about improper ballot processing .
You can follow Senate live results here and House live results here .
Finally , here ’ s how Vox ( and other media outlets ) will be making calls .

Joe Biden has won the presidency.
A clear picture of the results of the 2020 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden came into view on Friday, days after Election Day. Vox’s partner Decision Desk called the election Friday morning. And on Saturday, CNN, NBC, the Associated Press, and Fox News all called the election for Biden.
Trump racked up early victories in Florida, Ohio, and Iowa, but Biden had more paths to 270 Electoral College votes than the president. Biden won three Midwest states that proved pivotal: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — the same ones that helped sink Hillary Clinton’s bid in 2016.
Biden’s other paths were favorable, too: He is ahead in Nevada and Arizona. And Biden has taken a very slim lead over Trump in Georgia as the final votes are tallied.
Based on this outlook, Biden projected optimism, saying on Thursday, “We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Sen. Harris and I will be declared the winners.”
Trump, however, has falsely claimed victory and sought to stop vote counting. He says he will take the matter to the Supreme Court, promising again to do so in a Thursday evening speech.
It’s unlikely he could prevail on that front, however: Continuing to count outstanding votes, even now that the election has been called, is a legal and necessary part of the process. Nevertheless, he spent much of Wednesday and Thursday tweeting attacks against election officials in swing states who’ve stated commitments to continuing the count, as well sharing conspiracy theories about improper ballot processing.
You can follow Senate live results here and House live results here. Finally, here’s how Vox (and other media outlets) will be making calls.
Counting all the votes is not fraud
Heading into the election, it was pretty clear that President Trump was poised to engage in some shenanigans to try to cast doubt on any potential unfavorable outcomes to him, and even potentially falsely claim he’d won. And that’s what he did.
In remarks early Wednesday, Trump said he’d already won in Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, even though those states have not yet been called. Saturday, he claimed on Twitter to have won the election. And he’s the election reflected “major fraud in our nation.”
Twitter and Facebook wound up having to label his false claims that the election is being “stolen” and that no votes can be counted after the polls close. The Trump campaign’s lawsuits in multiple states are a continuation of this rhetoric.
To be clear, there is not widespread election fraud going on, nor is the election being stolen from the president. Candidates cannot claim states for themselves, as Trump suggested in a Wednesday tweet. States are just counting the votes, as they are legally obligated to do. And they will continue to do so, tallying provisional ballots and working through mail-in votes until their counts are 100 percent complete.


vox--2020-11-06--Joe Biden has won. Here’s what comes next.

Joe Biden — a former two-term vice president under Barack Obama and 36-year Senate veteran — will be the 46th president of the United States .
His running mate , California Sen. Kamala Harris , will become the first woman , first African American , and first Indian American to serve as vice president .
The Democratic nominee is the projected winner in enough states to win 270 electoral votes .
The state of Pennsylvania , which Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 , was called for Biden just before 9 am ET on November 6 , clinching the electoral win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ historic turnout .
The victory comes as a massive relief to Biden ’ s supporters after an anxiety-ridden few days during which a record amount of mail-in ballots were tallied .
It also serves as a promise — though certainly not a guarantee — that the high-octane drama of the Trump years might finally be coming to an end .
Trump , for his part , has signaled he may not go quietly , calling into question the legitimacy of the late-counted votes that arrived by mail in the states that clinched it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the victory marks the end of the campaign — but the beginning of an even more daunting challenge .
Biden , who enters the White House as both the chief executive with the most experience in public service in US history and the oldest man to assume the presidency , will assume his duties amid a historic crisis , a pandemic that has already claimed more American lives than World War I , Korea , and Vietnam combined and has produced the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression .
And Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a Republican Senate .
As of this writing , the small chance of a Democratic Senate hinges on runoff elections in Georgia in January and uncalled races in North Carolina and Alaska .
A slight majority for Republicans is very likely .
A Democratic failure to take the upper house — even if they hang on to the House of Representatives as expected — could effectively end Biden ’ s agenda before it has a chance to take form .
Biden won the presidency by partially rebuilding the so-called “ blue wall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states of Michigan , Wisconsin , and Pennsylvania .
He also planted a Democratic flag in the Sunbelt , with Arizona , Georgia , and North Carolina all still in play ( Biden leads in the first two and is behind in the third ) .
As of this writing , he has amassed 73.7 million votes to Trump ’ s 69.6 million — a spread of 50.5 percent to 47.7 percent — and can lay claim to the record for most votes in US history .
As the scale of the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earlier this year , the Biden campaign signaled that the candidate wanted an “ FDR-sized ” administration .
He touted a plan to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic by expanding testing , fostering better coordination between states , and organizing rapid development and deployment of a vaccine .
He put forward a program to fight the economic crisis created by Covid-19 , including funding for states and localities , cash and unemployment insurance for individuals and households , and grants and loans to small businesses like bars and restaurants .
All that seems fairly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much , much harder if McConnell keeps the Senate .
In 2009 , McConnell decided that a posture of absolute obstruction , meant to block any and all Obama legislation meant to rescue or reform the economy , was the best approach for Senate Republicans .
At that time , his Republicans were in the minority , so total obstruction was harder .
This time , he may have a Senate majority — and he is likely to take that posture again .
Without the Senate , Biden ’ s ability to enact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even if there are executive actions he can take to move the ball on a few fronts .
He will have a little more latitude in foreign affairs , where he ’ ll seek to undo Trump ’ s reversal of the Obama-Biden foreign policy by re-engaging with Cuba and Iran , negotiating a new arms control deal with Russia , and addressing the threat North Korea poses to South Korea and Japan .
Biden will also have to decide how to handle the legacy of his predecessor : whether to let bygones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attitude toward George W. Bush , or to seek to prosecute , or at least investigate wrongdoing from the Trump years under a new attorney general .
All these questions will have to wait until we know the outcome in the Senate .
For now , at least , Democrats can celebrate winning the presidency .
Trump ’ s defeat comes as an enormous relief to the majority who voted against Trump four years ago , to those harmed by his policies from forced family separation to the botched Covid-19 response , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dangerous autocratic tendencies .
To the Americans who elected Biden , it feels like the ending of a dark chapter in our nation ’ s history , and potentially the beginning of a moment of great opportunity .
But for that opportunity to be fulfilled , Biden and Harris will need to work fast — and we won ’ t know if they ’ ll be able to do that until we know the results in the Senate .
At stake is an agenda that rivals any previous Democratic president ’ s program @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Covid-19 disaster is called “ Build Back Better.
” It doesn ’ t have quite the same ring as “ New Deal ” or “ Great Society , ” but it captures what Biden is aiming to do : rebuild from the wreckage left by the Trump administration ’ s failure to contain the virus and willingness to let it spread to 9 million cases and over 230,000 deaths .
That failure has led to the highest unemployment since the Great Depression ( 14.7 percent in April ; and 7.9 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Meanwhile , as the pandemic raged , the Trump administration responded to protests for racial equality in about the worst and most divisive way imaginable .
The Biden-Harris victory is an enormous relief to the majority who voted against Trump four years ago That ’ s the baseline , and the Biden-Harris team has committed to massive spending programs , both on Covid-19 and other challenges from climate to caregiving , to rebuild from it .
To tackle Covid-19 , Biden has promised nationwide testing , a 100,000-person Public Health Jobs Corps , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccine stockpiles produced ahead of approval for the speediest deployment , and much more .
On the economy , Biden is proposing a bevy of plans that collectively amount to the most ambitious agenda for a Democratic candidate in decades .
The plans are oriented in particular around rebuilding ( green ) manufacturing in the US , building on the safety net expansions made by Obama , and dramatically expanding access to child , disabled , and elder care services .
His economic recovery plan to address the Covid-19 downturn would pay health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offer middle-class parents and caretakers $ 8,000 a year for child or long-term care support , spend $ 700 billion on manufacturing and R & D to expand jobs in those sectors , and make it easier to organize unions .
His climate plan features $ 2 trillion in investments in clean energy and a clean electricity standard mandating that electricity production in the US not produce any carbon by the year 2035 .
But even if Democrats end up taking the Senate , the path ahead for the Biden-Harris agenda remains tricky @ @ @ @ @ @ @ led by Mitch McConnell would likely repeat McConnell ’ s 2009-2011 strategy of attempting to block every one of the new Democratic administration ’ s initiatives .
That strategy meant the Obama-Biden administration and its allies in Congress were forced to compromise on elements of financial reform , abandon a public option for health care , and dramatically shrink a major stimulus package , prolonging the Great Recession as a consequence .
To prevent repeating that fate , Biden and a hypothetical Democratic Senate majority would have to abolish the filibuster , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Leader Harry Reid have strongly urged .
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has been very clear that abolishing the filibuster is “ on the table ” in the new Congress .
Biden will also have to deal with a hostile Supreme Court , especially now that Amy Coney Barrett has been confirmed to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg .
Things look even worse for Biden if Republicans keep the Senate .
Much of his agenda is likely to be dead on arrival .
In that case , Biden will have to decide how to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like the ability to force a government shutdown , to pressure McConnell , and he will have to decide which issues he will use that pressure to push .
Biden will also lean on his reputation as a moderate , bipartisan dealmaker to get things out of Congress .
When I spoke to Biden economic adviser Benjamin Harris , he explained that Biden plans to leverage his relationships in the Senate to pass his agenda with bipartisan support .
“ I ’ ve spent a lot of time in the vice president ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I sat there when he called Democratic members , and I sat there when he called Republican members , ” Harris recalled .
“ That ’ s what happens when you spend so many decades in the Senate is you build these friendships and you build these relationships and you build this credibility.
” In that scenario , McConnell will also have to decide just how obstructionist his Senate GOP caucus can be without incurring public blame for inaction .
Given the narrow margin , and the fact that 21 Republican seats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for election in 2022 , Senate Republicans will also need to put together a defensible record of governance if they hold the body .
Bringing the curtain down on the Trump presidency Joe Biden has won the presidency , but it ’ s far from clear if he will be able to form a government , in the sense of commanding enough legislative votes to regularly pass budgets and other essential legislation .
He will likely also face Senate obstruction with his picks for key Cabinet positions necessary to run the government effectively @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most rich countries , which typically use a parliamentary system where a failure to assemble a governing coalition triggers new elections .
In America , however , over the past 30 years , the same party has controlled the House , Senate , and presidency only one-third of the time .
This dysfunctional system gets defended as Americans wisely preferring divided government ( only a small minority of Americans actually do ) .
But our system has tremendous costs .
It brought the US to the brink of default in 2011 , because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capacity to simply enact their agendas .
While the parties were able , remarkably , to come together and pass a massive stimulus in March , they ’ ve failed to renew it since August , at immense human cost .
Both parties have plans , but a divided government has meant none of them get passed .
If Biden and McConnell are forced to negotiate the next stimulus package , a similar stalemate might ensue .
But that ’ s all still ahead of us .
For now , Americans can mark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaign — and a presidency that a majority of the country has rejected .
The last four years have been consequential for the lives of Americans , from policy changes in the normal range of Republican presidencies ( like Trump moving the Supreme Court markedly rightward and curtailing environmental and public safety regulations ) to ones well outside it ( like Trump ’ s enormous crackdown on legal immigration and his failed pandemic response ) .
The public has also endured truly unprecedented levels of executive branch corruption and arguably criminality , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden ’ s victory is America ’ s first step away from those changes and the crew who made them .
But it ’ s only a first step .
It won ’ t instantly clean up the wreckage of the Trump administration , let alone the problems that enabled Trump to win and thrive in the first place .
And the scale of his achievement will depend entirely on the Senate outcome in a handful of states .
Biden and Harris supporters are entitled to celebrate .
Americans traumatized by the Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Then it ’ s time for them , and the new president , to get to work .

Joe Biden — a former two-term vice president under Barack Obama and 36-year Senate veteran — will be the 46th president of the United States. His running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, will become the first woman, first African American, and first Indian American to serve as vice president.
The Democratic nominee is the projected winner in enough states to win 270 electoral votes. The state of Pennsylvania, which Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, was called by our partners at Decision Desk for Biden just before 9 am ET on November 6, clinching the electoral win in a tightly contested vote that drew historic turnout. On November 7, other decision desks, including those at the Associated Press and many television networks, followed. (For more on how Decision Desk and other outlets call elections, read our explainer here.)
The victory may come as a massive relief to Biden’s supporters after an anxiety-ridden few days during which a record amount of mail-in ballots were tallied. It could also serve as a promise — though certainly not a guarantee — that the high-octane drama of the Trump years might finally be coming to an end.
Trump, for his part, has signaled he may not go quietly, calling into question the legitimacy of the late-counted votes that arrived by mail in the states that clinched it for Biden.
Related Kamala Harris makes history as the first woman to become vice president
For Biden and Harris, the victory marks the end of the campaign — but the beginning of an even more daunting challenge. Biden, who enters the White House as both the chief executive with the most experience in public service in US history and the oldest man to assume the presidency, will take on his duties amid a historic crisis, a pandemic that has already claimed more American lives than World War I, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined, and has produced the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression.
And Biden and Harris may have to take power with a Republican Senate. As of this writing, the small chance of a Democratic Senate hinges on runoff elections in Georgia in January and uncalled races in North Carolina and Alaska. A slight majority for Republicans is very likely. A Democratic failure to take the upper house — even if they hang on to the House of Representatives as expected — could effectively end Biden’s agenda before it has a chance to take form.
Biden won the presidency by partially rebuilding the so-called “blue wall” for Democrats — the industrial Midwestern states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. He also planted a Democratic flag in the Sunbelt, with Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina all still in play. Biden currently leads in Arizona and Georgia, but is behind in North Carolina, with tight margins in all three states. In Georgia, the margin is so thin — less than half a percent — that state election officials have already announced they will hold a recount. As of November 8, Biden had amassed 75.3 million votes to Trump’s 71 million — a spread of 50.5 percent to 47.7 percent — and can lay claim to the record for most votes in US history.
As the scale of the pandemic and its economic damage started becoming clear earlier this year, the Biden campaign signaled that the candidate wanted an “FDR-sized” administration. He touted a plan to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic by expanding testing, fostering better coordination between states, and organizing rapid development and deployment of a vaccine. He put forward a program to fight the economic crisis created by Covid-19, including funding for states and localities, cash and unemployment insurance for individuals and households, and grants and loans to small businesses like bars and restaurants.
All that seems fairly doable under unified Democratic control — but much, much harder if Sen. Mitch McConnell keeps the Senate. In 2009, McConnell decided that a posture of absolute obstruction, to block any and all Obama legislation meant to rescue or reform the economy, was the best approach for Senate Republicans. At that time, his Republicans were in the minority, so total obstruction was harder. This time, he may have a Senate majority — and he is likely to take that posture again.
Without the Senate, Biden’s ability to enact his agenda will be severely constrained, even if there are executive actions he can take to move the ball on a few fronts. He will have a little more latitude in foreign affairs, where he’ll seek to undo Trump’s reversal of the Obama-Biden foreign policy by re-engaging with Cuba and Iran, negotiating a new arms control deal with Russia, and addressing the threat North Korea poses to South Korea and Japan.
Biden will also have to decide how to handle the legacy of his predecessor: whether to let bygones be bygones, as was the Obama-Biden attitude toward George W. Bush, or to seek to prosecute, or at least investigate wrongdoing from the Trump years under a new attorney general.
All these questions will have to wait until we know the outcome in the Senate. For now, at least, Democrats can celebrate winning the presidency.
Trump’s defeat comes as an enormous relief to the majority who voted against Trump four years ago, to those harmed by his policies, from forced family separation to the botched Covid-19 response, and to the many who worried Trump harbored dangerous autocratic tendencies. To the Americans who elected Biden, it feels like the ending of a dark chapter in the nation’s history, and potentially the beginning of a moment of great opportunity.
But for that opportunity to be fulfilled, Biden and Harris will need to work fast — and we won’t know if they’ll be able to do that until we know the results in the Senate.
The Biden-Harris agenda
At stake is an agenda that rivals any previous Democratic president’s program.
Biden’s plan to respond to the Covid-19 disaster is called “Build Back Better.” It doesn’t have quite the same ring as “New Deal” or “Great Society,” but it captures what Biden is aiming to do: rebuild from the wreckage left by the Trump administration’s failure to contain the virus and willingness to let it spread to almost 10 million cases and over 237,000 deaths in the US, as of November 8.
That failure has led to the highest unemployment since the Great Depression (14.7 percent in April; 7.9 percent in September) and surging poverty. Meanwhile, as the pandemic raged, the Trump administration responded to protests for racial equality in about the worst and most divisive way imaginable.
The Biden-Harris victory is an enormous relief to the majority who voted against Trump four years ago
That’s the baseline, and the Biden-Harris team has committed to massive spending programs, both on Covid-19 and other challenges like climate and caregiving, to rebuild from it.
To tackle Covid-19, Biden has promised nationwide testing, a 100,000-person Public Health Jobs Corps, hazard pay for essential workers, massive vaccine stockpiles produced ahead of approval for the speediest deployment, and much more.
On the economy, Biden is proposing a bevy of plans that collectively amount to the most ambitious agenda for a Democratic candidate in decades. The plans are oriented in particular around rebuilding (green) manufacturing in the US, building on the safety net expansions made by Obama, and dramatically expanding access to child, disabled, and elder care services.
His economic recovery plan to address the Covid-19 downturn would pay health insurance costs for newly unemployed people, offer middle-class parents and caretakers $8,000 a year for child or long-term care support, spend $700 billion on manufacturing and R&D to expand jobs in those sectors, and make it easier to organize unions.
His climate plan features $2 trillion in investments in clean energy and a clean electricity standard mandating that electricity production in the US not produce any carbon by the year 2035.
But even if Democrats end up taking the Senate, the path ahead for the Biden-Harris agenda remains tricky. A GOP in the Senate minority led by Mitch McConnell would likely repeat McConnell’s 2009-2011 strategy of attempting to block every one of the new Democratic administration’s initiatives. That strategy meant the Obama-Biden administration and its allies in Congress were forced to compromise on elements of financial reform, abandon a public option for health care, and dramatically shrink a major stimulus package, prolonging the Great Recession as a consequence.
To prevent repeating that fate, Biden and a hypothetical Democratic Senate majority would have to abolish the filibuster, as former President Obama and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have strongly urged. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has been very clear that abolishing the filibuster is “on the table” in the new Congress.
Biden will also have to deal with a hostile Supreme Court, especially now that Amy Coney Barrett has been confirmed to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Things look even worse for Biden if Republicans keep the Senate. Much of his agenda is likely to be dead on arrival. In that case, Biden will have to decide how to use what little leverage he has, like the ability to force a government shutdown, to pressure McConnell, and he will have to decide which issues he will use that pressure to push.
Biden will also lean on his reputation as a moderate, bipartisan dealmaker to get things out of Congress. When I spoke to Biden economic adviser Benjamin Harris, he explained that Biden plans to leverage his relationships in the Senate to pass his agenda with bipartisan support.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in the vice president’s office when he was vice president. I sat there when he called Democratic members, and I sat there when he called Republican members,” Harris recalled. “That’s what happens when you spend so many decades in the Senate is you build these friendships and you build these relationships and you build this credibility.”
In that scenario, McConnell will also have to decide just how obstructionist his Senate GOP caucus can be without incurring public blame for inaction. Given the narrow margin, and the fact that 21 Republican seats and only 13 Democratic ones are up for election in 2022, Senate Republicans will also need to put together a defensible record of governance if they hold the body.
Bringing the curtain down on the Trump presidency
Joe Biden has won the presidency, but it’s far from clear if he will be able to form a government, in the sense of commanding enough legislative votes to regularly pass budgets and other essential legislation. He will likely also face Senate obstruction with his picks for key Cabinet positions necessary to run the government effectively.
This is an unusual situation in most rich countries, which typically use a parliamentary system where a failure to assemble a governing coalition triggers new elections. In America, however, over the past 30 years, the same party has controlled the House, Senate, and presidency only one-third of the time. This dysfunctional system gets defended as Americans wisely preferring divided government (only a small minority of Americans actually do).
But our system has tremendous costs. It brought the US to the brink of default in 2011, because neither Obama nor House Republicans had the capacity to simply enact their agendas. While the parties were able, remarkably, to come together and pass a massive stimulus in March, they’ve failed to renew it since August, at immense human cost. Both parties have plans, but a divided government has meant none of them get passed. If Biden and McConnell are forced to negotiate the next stimulus package, a similar stalemate might ensue.
But that’s all still ahead of us. For now, Americans can mark the end of a vicious and interminable campaign — and a presidency that a majority of the country has rejected.
The last four years have been consequential for the lives of Americans, from policy changes in the normal range of Republican presidencies (like Trump moving the Supreme Court markedly rightward and curtailing environmental and public safety regulations) to ones well outside it (like Trump’s enormous crackdown on legal immigration and his failed pandemic response).
The public has also endured truly unprecedented levels of executive branch corruption and arguably criminality, not to mention a historic presidential impeachment.
Biden’s victory is America’s first step away from those changes and the crew who made them. But it’s only a first step. It won’t instantly clean up the wreckage of the Trump administration, let alone the problems that enabled Trump to win and thrive in the first place. And the scale of his achievement will depend entirely on the Senate outcome in a handful of states.
Biden and Harris supporters are entitled to celebrate. Americans traumatized by the Trump presidency can breathe a sigh of relief. Then it’s time for them, and the new president, to get to work.