One of
the consequences of having had a presidential election six days ago is that
people in the news are talking about politics slightly more than usual. (Circumstances
being what they are, “slightly more than usual” is the only intensifier that
makes any sense). I already wrote last week about how I don’t expect Biden’s win to
have much practical benefit for Democrats – without the Senate, they can’t
enact their agenda, and since the President’s party tends to do badly in
midterm elections, there’s no reason to expect them to regain the Senate.
That
being said, here are some other things I have noticed over the last few days.
1.
Donald Trump Is Making An Ass Of Himself
President
Trump probably went to bed on Tuesday thinking that he was going to win and
then woke up the next morning to realize that he wasn’t in the lead anymore. So
did a lot of Republicans, including myself. It was a big disappointment.
Honestly,
though, I wouldn’t have guessed that almost a week later he would still be
holed up in the White House, munching on an endless train of fast food and
attended by only the most sycophantic members of his staff, as he carried on
tweeting things like “STOP THE COUNT!” and “I WON BY A LOT!”
One
might be forgiven for thinking that the President has stepped into the role of
the evil overlord in a children’s cartoon who spends the final minute or two of
the episode pointing to his defeated army and shouting “No! This cannot be! I
am invincible!”
Needless to say, I don’t exactly regard it as
beneficial to the Republican cause that Trump has decided to handle his loss
this way.
As
for the possibility of Trump reversing the outcome through litigation like he was
already threatening to do several weeks before the election? It’s a
pipe dream. There is nobody serious who sees a potential repeat of 2000. To
begin with, George W. Bush was ahead after the first count of the
Florida ballots, and to win, he only needed to get the courts to halt the recounts,
which he managed to do after a month of lawsuits. Also, the whole election
hinged on just one state – if Bush won Florida, then he would become the next President.
Trump,
on the other hand, will have to flip three or four states in order to come out
on top in 2020. And he will have to flip states where Biden won on the first
count, by much bigger margins than the 537 votes (.009
percent of the total) that were at issue twenty years ago. There is a big gap
between suspicion of fraud – of which there is plenty – and evidence strong
enough to get the courts to disqualify two or three percent of the Democratic
ballots in multiple states. The latter is not going to happen.
Honestly,
we would all be better off if Trump conceded defeat and then spent the next two
months nominating judges, issuing pardons, and doing whatever else an outgoing
President usually does during his final days in office. His present course of
action just makes him look like a jackass.
2.
We Can Expect More Covid Relief When Spring
Comes
Perhaps
you remember how, at the end this summer (though it feels like a year ago) Republicans
and Democrats talked about how they were going to pass a second Covid relief
bill with another round of $1,200 checks for every American, plus other useful
spending? Well, they didn’t pass it.
The
reason is that the first bill, from back in March, gave people on unemployment
insurance an extra $600/month beyond what they were already getting, and
beyond the $1,200 one-time payment that went to everybody. The bill was passed
in such a hurry that nobody had much time to debate the merits of this
provision, but in the second bill, the Republican Senate decided not to
reauthorize it.
After all,
the Republicans said, people on unemployment insurance are already being
paid money to make up for their lack of a job, so why should they get extra money,
when so many people who aren’t on unemployment insurance but are still
struggling – such as those who only had part time work, or who owned floundering
small business – didn’t get anything along the same lines?
Democrats
wouldn’t budge. Faced with the choice between $1,200 checks for everyone and
ordinary unemployment benefits for the unemployed, versus no relief at all,
they went for no relief at all, and went home shouting at the tops of their
lungs about how Republicans hate the poor.
They
could do that because Donald Trump was the President, and so it was his party,
not theirs, that would be held accountable by the electorate for whatever
happened. (One of the consequences of having a profoundly ignorant electorate
is that it is nearly always in the opposition party’s interests to behave as
obstructively as possible).
With
Biden as President, the situation will be reversed. The Democrats will now
benefit from trying to minimize economic hardship and get America back to
normalcy as fast as they can. And most Senate Republicans have enough genuine
love of their country to make a serious attempt to work with them.
Also, Mitch
McConnell and Joe Biden, despite belonging to opposite parties, have a history
of personal friendship. I am genuinely curious to see how far this friendship can
get them.
3.
The Georgia Runoffs Are A Complete Mystery
When I
wrote my last post, I said that Republicans would end up with 52 or 53 seats in
the new Senate (53 turned out to be too optimistic, as Michigan was soon called
for the Democrat). At the time, I wasn’t paying any attention to the Georgia
runoffs; I had assumed that since Georgia was such a red state, the Republicans
would easily win both races in this rare double-special-election.
As it
turned out, Georgia this year made a surprise break for Biden. Neither Senate
election produced a majority, so one Republican and one Democrat will contest
each of them on 5 January. Naturally, Democrats are excited about their chance to get from 48 to 50 Senate seats after all.
There is
a simple rule for predicting the outcomes of special elections, and it goes
like this: The President’s party gets smashed. Just ask yourself why the
Republicans won in Massachusetts in 2010 or the Democrats won in Alabama in
2017. It’s only possible because turnout is very low except among the people
who feel like their party is the underdog and that it desperately needs to win
in order to resist the tyranny of the incumbent President.
It has
been like this for at least three decades. The only special Senate elections in
which the candidate from the President’s party doesn’t get beaten are
the ones where an especially strong candidate is running on his party’s home
turf, like when Cory Booker won in New Jersey in 2013. Even then, the margins
are still smaller than usual.
So if
there is such a simple rule to predict special elections, then why am I
admitting complete cluelessness about Georgia?
The
answer is that at this point, it is impossible to say which party is the
President’s party. From a technical standpoint, it will obviously be the
Republicans, as Biden won’t be sworn in until 20 January. But will the Democrats
still feel like they need to turn out en masse to resist Trump, or
will they act like he’s already beaten and let those seats slip away? And will the
Republicans turn out en masse to resist Biden?
There are
no examples from recent history of a special Senate election held during a
transition, so I can’t answer those questions on the basis of experience.
Speculation is all we have to go by.
Though if, by the time those elections roll around, Trump still hasn’t admitted that he lost, then the Democrats will be in a stronger position.
I think we have to be a bit, or more than a bit, Humean[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/#HumeProb] with respect to predicting the future of American politics, based on its past. Everything is changing. We know some of the changes: the rise of China (which will profoundly affect America), the growth of a new generation of the elite, who despise their own country; the crumbling of the liberal committment to free speech and toleration. But there are no doubt ones with which we are not familiar -- some of which may be favorable, such as the movement of significant numbers of people in America's racial minorities towards an affirmation of traditional American values, as revealed in the recent election. Even if we cannot know everything, we should devote ourselves to a study of these new trends.
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