Biden Was The Only Candidate Who Could Hold The Center

 

Before the self-righteous, and usually wrong, pundits start telling President-elect Joe Biden what he ‘must’ or ‘should’ do let us take a moment to honour what he has already done.

Time to honour him for what he has achieved

 First, he was the only Democratic candidate who could have beaten Donald Trump. Of course he benefitted from the strong negative feelings about Trump, but without Biden’s positive message reconciliation, calm, evolution instead of revolution I doubt the Democrats would have won.

 Second, he flipped at least four if not five states. This is an incredible achievement against an incumbent president. Most startling of all was the transformation in Georgia where the count continues. Currently Biden is leading by a slender margin. If this holds he will be the first Democrat since 1992 to carry Georgia.

 Third, while Biden’s margins in some states were slim so were Donald Trump’s in 2016. In some states the difference was large. In 2016 Trump beat Hillary Clinton by almost 11,000 votes in Michigan. In this election Biden beat Trump by almost 148,000 votes. The difference in Pennsylvania was the mirror image of 2016 when Trump won by 44,000 votes. So far, Biden is ahead by about 40,000. Could be more when the count is finished. But Georgia was the standout. Trump won this state by 211,000 votes in 2016. This year Biden holds a slim 10,000 vote lead and the state is headed for a recount. However that turns out the result is a dramatic move toward the Democrats.

 Biden flipped four if not five states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and maybe Georgia

 

Some of the hand-wringing pundits on both sides of the Atlantic are already whinging that the relatively close results of this election show how America is ‘irreconcilably’ divided. Instead of the giant Blue Wave of tsunami proportions they had hoped for what they got were gentle blue waves lapping on the shore. These twittering pundits are making the fundamental political error of blaming the voters for a less-than-desirable outcome. They need to stop considering all Trump voters as nothing more than inbred extras from the film Deliverance. In fact, there were a great many people who accepted that Trump is a deeply flawed person but held their noses and voted for him because they intensely disliked some of the loonier ideas such as defunding the police, packing the Supreme Court, or sharply higher taxes proposed by many of the so-called progressives in the Democratic Party. Even though Biden steered well away from these ideas Trump was successful in scaring a lot of people into voting for him by screaming about the looming cataclysm of a Democratic victory.

 Rather than irreconcilable divisions this election could show a massive move toward the center, away from extremes on both sides. I think Biden’s real strength is that he, above all else, represents this center. He is in a position to capitalize on this massive, shifting center and build a strong movement around it – a movement that can withstand the inevitable splits by the far left and the far right.

 There is also a lot of Democratic hand-wringing (A suggestion for these people. Stop agonizing. You won.) over the less-than-expected gains with America’s very large Hispanic community. They should read Fareed Zakaria’s excellent essay in theWashington Post, Once Again, Democrats Have Misunderstood Minorities. Unlike the Blacks, the Hispanics didn’t come to America against their will bound in chains destined for a life of slavery and repression. They, like most of the other immigrant groups, chose to make the often very difficult move away from poverty and political brutality to a place that offered a chance, however, slim for a better life. They worked hard and by now millions of these immigrants have attained a share of that good life. They love capitalism with its chance to make some money and move up in the world. They hate the very idea of socialism which, for many of them, means nothing more than the state stealing everything they have earned. And they tend to be extremely patriotic Americans who appreciate law and order as much as the farmer in Iowa. It is time to drop the patronizing, condescending attitude of so many urban liberals with their ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach toward the incredibly diverse universe of immigrants.

 

Biden will obviously face real challenges dealing with Republicans in Congress, but he will also face challenges from the ‘progressives’ in his own party who are already screaming for radical change. They will be disappointed. After nearly 50 years in Washington Biden understands that the key to political success is compromise, accepting the country as it is and focusing on evolution not revolution. His incremental moves will infuriate extremes on both sides for whom compromise is a four-letter word. Very likely they will retreat in a huff to their respective citadels and spend the next four years loudly proclaiming the virtue of their causes. Meanwhile, if Biden can keep the center intact, the country will do just fine.