A not-so-average Joe

And breathe out. After four years of fire and fury, the Trump Presidency — the Trump Interregnum — has come to an end. While there are still many uncounted and unconfirmed results, Joe Biden is set to win 270 Electoral College votes, making him the 46^th President of the United States.

It’s fitting that the Scranton native should be taken over the finish line by Pennsylvania, the so-called “Keystone State” — also Biden’s home state — and more specifically by the city of Philadelphia, where the United States of America was born. He has received more votes than any other presidential candidate in US history.

Donald Trump is of course contesting the outcome, but Biden currently leads in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona and his margin in each will likely increase due to the fact that the majority of ballots that remain to be counted are early, urban and suburban ballots (which Biden is winning overwhelmingly). Trump would have to win recounts or lawsuits in both Georgia and Pennsylvania to have any chance. This is highly unlikely.

Biden’s win was forecast, but his victory is remarkable nonetheless. After all, he is the oldest president-elect ever and only the second former vice president to win re-election in a subsequent cycle. Moreover, only four incumbent presidents have been beaten in the past century and Biden has achieved this despite losing the historic bellwethers of Ohio, Florida and Vigo County, Indiana.

So how did Biden do it? He certainly had powerful allies in Wall Street, Washington, Hollywood and Silicon Valley and he outraised and outspent his opponent. It has also been estimated that 92 per cent of Trump’s media coverage has been negative. Much of the media did not investigate and, in the case of social media, actively suppressed, the pre-election story alleging that Biden’s son Hunter had been engaged in murky business dealings. Trump was certainly up against “Big Media”, “Big Money” and “Big Tech”.

But this shouldn’t overshadow the widespread appeal of Joe Biden. In “Middle Class Joe”, a likeable, down-to-earth former Republican for whom the label “Radical Socialist” never quite stuck, Trump faced his most dangerous possible opponent — and he knew it. Trump was impeached because he asked the Ukrainian president for dirt on none other than the Bidens.

To their credit, the Democrats realised it too: their primary voters prioritised “electability” over ideology and it has paid off. And the Biden campaign, though outgunned by the Trump campaign in terms of canvassing and in-person events, made up for “Sleepy Joe” with “Edited Joe” by spending more on television ads than any presidential campaign in US history.

Of course, if Biden has won this election, Trump has also lost it. He is only the third president ever to be impeached and no impeached president has ever been re-elected. His administration presided over the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression, the worst levels of urban violence since 1968 and the highest staff turnover in White House history. Trump’s twitter account alone crashed financial markets, incited domestic insurrection and threatened nuclear war.

And then there’s Covid-19, stupid. Trump’s response to the worst global pandemic in a century, which has led to more American deaths than all of America’s wars since 1945, ranged from the unhelpful (discarding the official government pandemic handbook) to the imbecilic (encouraging the injection of bleach as a treatment).

If this enabled Biden to make significant inroads into Trump’s blue-collar and senior citizen base, it was Trump’s leadership style which lost him the support of the suburbs, where most Americans live. This first became clear with the 2018 midterms and yet Trump never altered his leadership style, not even after his deplorable performance during the first presidential debate. Asking suburban women to “please like me” isn’t exactly leadership.

Finally, Barack Obama’s former vice president, whose presidential campaign was resurrected (after a woeful start) thanks to the endorsement of veteran African American Congressman, Jim Clyburn, also turned out more African Americans than Hillary Clinton in 2016. This proved to be crucial in winning back the “Blue Wall” states and, as it would seem, Georgia.

This is not a “Blue Tsunami” as predicted and Trump is challenging the results across the board. And though the Democrats are now back in the White House, they cannot ignore Trumpism, could still face a Republican Senate, and will have to deal with a conservative Supreme Court. But, if America is a divided country, its checks and balances are working. The Restoration begins.

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