In a more intense tug of war than four years ago, Biden and won the risk, thus ending Trump's dream of reelection. However, the influence of Trump's ism on American politics and society will not disappear. Healing divisions will be even more difficult for Biden.
Article｜Liu Yi The
generation of Americans has not experienced a situation where the next president has not yet been determined on the fourth day after the election day for 20 years. The last time a similar stalemate occurred in was in 2000, and it eventually led to the controversial Florida recount. However, Twitter and smartphones did not exist in the world in 2000. People used telephone modems to dial-up to access the Internet. Cable TV was the preferred information channel for most Americans to follow changes in elections. Because of this, when voters 20 years ago faced Bush Jr. and Gore , it’s hard to be like those amateur political observers active in global social networks today, with such a strong emotional expression of impulse and sense of substitution-remove Apart from the most devout religious believers, it is hard to imagine that Republican voters will regard Bush’s victory as a sign of the realization of their lifelong ideals. Similarly, even if serious Democratic voters question some of the procedural issues in the Florida ruling, most of them will not believe that there is a "deep state" or a cabal that deliberately persecuted former Vice President Al Gore.
However, such emotional fluctuations, skepticism, and even personal attacks have run through the entire process of the 2020 election. reminds us: is not only the United States, the whole world has become very different. The changes in information technology and information acquisition methods have reshaped ordinary people's views of the real world, especially the part of the world beyond the experience of daily life, and in turn affected their feedback to reality. This is a true "Great Transformation" (The Great Transformation), which helps us understand many new phenomena in world politics since the "Arab Spring" in 2010.
Donald Trump noticed and took advantage of this new change, which was one of the important factors that made him able to unexpectedly defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. The election strategy of Joe Biden and the entire Democratic camp in 2020 is still traditional-common sense tells them that when the current president's smart decision to prevent the epidemic caused the United States to have more than 9.7 million new crowns in less than 10 months After the confirmed cases of pneumonia and the unfortunate death of more than 230,000 people, there will only be few voters who continue to vote for such a government.
The phenomenon of “Suburban Revolt” that began to emerge during the 2018 election and played a key role during the Democratic Party’s primary elections this year has further contributed to the optimism surrounding the Biden-Harris combination : Over the past 20 years Li has always been a traditional Republican ticket warehouse. The surrounding suburbs of the metropolis have flooded into more well-educated, more diverse cultural-racial backgrounds, more female members, and younger generation groups (a considerable part of which are Employees of Internet companies) are now turning into supporters of the Democratic Party’s ideology.
was once reduced to the "victory curse" polling lead in 2016. This time it was carefully picked up again: pro-Republican Fox News collected 1012 survey samples throughout October, showing that, Biden's support rate at the national level reached 53%, 10 percentage points ahead of Trump. A big victory that will wash away the shame of 2016 is already in sight. The final result of
disappointed everyone: there was no "Trump miracle", nor was there an overwhelming "blue tide". In Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and other major "battlefield states", the stalemate that you chase after me lasted to the last minute. The difference in the vote rate of Pennsylvania and was once less than 0.5%. The counting mechanism. It was not until 99% of the votes in Pennsylvania and Nevada were counted on the morning of November 7th local time that the Biden-Harris combination finally crossed the 270 electoral vote "red line" sufficient to win the ruling power. As of the morning of November 8, Beijing time, the balloting results show that the Democratic Party has won 290 electorsThe number of votes in the Republican camp is 214 (according to Bloomberg real-time data). However, because Trump still hopes to win North Carolina and Alaska, the final gap in electoral votes between the two parties may even be closer than in 2016 (77).
"Blue Tide" did not appear: the reality is cross-flowing and disturbed everywhere. The personal dislike of Trump, especially the fluctuations in public opinion caused by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, has made Arizona, one of the most stable Republican votes in the past 20 years, unexpectedly "blue". In the surrounding suburbs of Phoenix and Maricopa County, which has a weathervane significance, the "uprising" in favor of Biden really happened. The "blue wall" composed of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania eventually became the winner of the Democratic Party's "cross the line", but the close votes also meant that their overall situation as "battlefield states" has not changed. It is particularly noteworthy that the "suburban uprising" failed to expand to some smaller metropolitan areas-in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and St. Louis, the Republican Party’s traditional vote-winning advantage has not been significantly challenged, which means that the Senate is "red." The pattern of “strong blue and weak” is very likely to continue. Compared with four years ago, with the overall turnout rate rising significantly, Trump actually got 7 million more popular votes: this is by no means a small number.
Yes, Trump's personal characteristics and values may not be in line with the familiar Republican establishment; but from the perspective of policy orientation, he is just enough "Republican". Whether it is a large-scale tax cut, an increase in military spending, a deregulation of the financial system and the Internet, or shelving of environmental protection issues (shale oil developers must be satisfied with this), even the far strict immigration threshold is a perfect fit. What people expect of any Republican president. In fact, if it were not for the gambling misjudgment on the prevention and control of the new crown epidemic (the basic psychology is to put the recovery economy above social security), most people would have been willing to maintain economic growth and unemployment in the Trump era. Satisfied with the decline. When the Democratic camp directly connects Trump personally with difficult social issues such as the loss of control of the new crown epidemic and the further spread of the "Floyd commotion", they sometimes selectively forget, and it does not cause the target voters of the Republican Party to turn back. It's so easy, and they don't have a mature plan to resolve these problems themselves.
On April 17, 2020 local time, Trump and the US "Captain of Anti-epidemic" Fauci attended the White House New Coronavirus Working Group Press Conference (Picture: People's Vision)
On the other hand, after four years, Trump The Pence team’s campaign strategy has hardly changed. It still uses social media to spread negative information about the “deep state” and the Biden family, thereby creating a focus of public opinion and mobilizing the basics. The 2016 election has already shown that Trump has never been the one who can gain the support of a relatively large number of American voters (he lost nearly 2.87 million votes to Hillary Clinton in the popular vote), and he also refused to "get the majority "As my first choice. The elderly, white blue-collar workers, and Hispanics—especially those in the “battlefield states”—are his main targets. The Republican victory in Florida and Texas partly confirms the effectiveness of this route. For suburban voters, Trump's strategy is to divide.
On the night of the Republican National Convention held in Charlotte on August 24, the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., delivered a threatening speech; he declared that if Biden is elected, the United States is bound to slip into "anarchy" , Violence and oppression." Although these remarks did not mention the ongoing "Freud riots", they clearly linked the negative effects of the riots with the Democratic Party's policy stance, hoping to induce the people by exaggerating the "desperate situation". Change voting preferences. The only problem is that the operation does not seem to be successful.
local time November 7, 2020, Wilmington, Delaware, USA, Biden gave a speech. (Picture: People's Vision)
However, in 2020, the political future of the entire Republican Party has been firmly tied to Trump's advance and retreat. Once, they had the opportunity to take the initiative to get out of this dilemma: After Mitt Romney was defeated by the re-election Democrat Obama in 2012, the Republican National Committee drafted a general reform plan (guaranteeThe Shoupai teased it as an "autopsy report") and suggested changing its inherent position on issues that "millennials" care about, such as immigration policy, minority rights, and LGBT issues, in order to attract more young voters. But as the Republican Party successfully won the Senate in the 2014 mid-election, no one cared about "autopsy" and reform anymore.
In 2016, the Republican Party made a surprise move against the background of its inability to promote a strong enough presidential candidate. It recruited the political veteran Trump to run for the general election. While it was upset and won, it also made the entire political agenda of the party be unreasonable. Manipulated by the mainstream right-wing president. Therefore, people have seen a series of strange phenomena in 2020: When the Biden-Harris camp has noticed the profound symbolism of the "suburban uprising" and tried to take advantage of this trend, the Republican Party is cooperating with Trump to stage a questioning Hunter Biden's "treason" computer records, insinuating Kamala Harris as a "socialist" and other ridiculous farce. The so-called "Republican establishment" seems to no longer exist in 2020.
On September 29, 2020 local time, in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, Trump and the Democratic presidential candidate Biden participated in the first presidential debate in the Health Education Park of Case Western Reserve University. (Picture: People's Vision)
There are no more "non-Trump" Republicans—this is the most important and most profound change in bipartisan politics in the United States in the past four years. Through the introduction of tax cuts, nominations of conservative justices, and individual favors, Trump succeeded in getting the top Republicans (especially Senate leader Mitch McConnell) to accept the reality that the administrative center dominates the legislative machinery, and even Take the initiative to cooperate and welcome. After rejecting the reforms proposed by the "Autopsy Report" in 2012, the Republicans now pin their hopes on the die-hard fans Trump mobilized through extreme speech and social networks: voters who did not have the courage to recruit Trump. Push away. This in turn will cause the continuation of the passive situation: In the past American electoral history, party leaders need to bear personal responsibility for the results of the election failure. But Trump will put the blame on the non-existent "deep government", and he can even render the investigation into his personal abuse of power and tax evasion that will be launched with a high probability in the future as a "political witch hunt" to maintain the fans. Sympathy points.
On this issue, the non-mainstream right-wing "military division" Bannon who helped Trump win the election in 2016 undoubtedly has enough say. In an interview this year, he once said: “There will only be two outcomes in the general election: Either Trump wins or the victory is'stolen'. In the latter case, whether it is Nicky Hayley or Mike Pompeo can only fight for the nomination of the vice presidential candidate in 2024." In other words, , a Trump who "brought his own fans" and broke the consensus of the Republican establishment will never voluntarily leave. . He will signal a "come back" on every possible occasion, prompting the Republican Party to choose him again after four years, and at least he will become the "king maker" in determining the final candidate for the Republican Party. The Republican Party’s last hope of self-reform has been lost when the "Tong Russia" investigation was closed at the beginning of this year. Trump will leave the White House in January 2021, but Trumpism is far from exiting. In the United States where political polarization is still significant, its ghost will emerge from every turbulent corner at any time.
Author profile
Liu Yi
Weekly special editor, former deputy editor of "War History Research", a writer who is not good at chatting and does not have a social network account.
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