I find it a bit perplexing that some people (mostly Republicans) are having a hard time coming to terms with why Trump lost the election. He seems utterly mystified by the outcome himself!
Let’s see, where shall we begin?
His behavior and beliefs were abhorrent to millions of Americans. Remember, he did not win the popular vote in 2016 even when he won the Electoral College. In short, he never had a popular majority supporting him in the first place. And yet he and his followers appear to have a hard time grasping his resounding defeat in 2020!
What’s curious about this rigid inflexibility of the ex-president’s mental state is how obvious the answer is for tens of millions of Americans. When one begins to make a list of reasons, it certainly grows rapidly. I won’t claim the following list is anywhere near complete but a few of the more obvious reasons should include:
- Mishandling of the pandemic response
- Lack of compassion for American families suffering deaths from the coronavirus
- Lack of compassion for American families suffering economic hardship
- Narcissism: his brash arrogant personality and non-stop egotism
- Attacks on individual journalists and the free press (“fake news”)
- Unwarranted and alarmist attacks on facts and ideas not to his liking
- Penchant for engaging in bombastic exaggerations, half-truths, and outright falsehoods
- Verbal attacks on critics in a manner beneath the dignity of the office
- Willingness to serve as the leader of a cult-like movement with himself as its leader
- Willingness to tolerate extremist elements, such as white supremacists, within his base; his refusal to criticize or repudiate right-wing elements infiltrating the Republican Party
It was apparent to all that the Republicans won the presidency in 2016 due to their capture of the swing states. By 2020, the Democratic Party knew they had to address this issue. They didn’t take the swing states for granted; quite the contrary, the party worked hard to win back those states.
2020 ELECTION: TACTICS AND STRATEGIES
The Democrats nominated former vice-president Joe Biden, himself a native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, a swing state. Biden came from a modest background, not one of wealth and privilege. He knew firsthand the challenges for people of the working-class and middle class (and thus compared favorably to Trump whose father was a multi-millionaire).
Biden was a moderate, had excellent name recognition and a proven record of knowing how to work in a bi-partisan manner while he was a Senator; he also had eight years’ experience as Obama’s vice-president in areas of both national and foreign policy. The vast majority of the Democrats in the country determined early on to support their party’s nominee whoever it was, summed up succinctly in a bumper strip that read “Anybody but him” [“Anybody but Trump”!]
The anti-Trump sentiment ran deep among Democrats and energized them; it also included the lion’s share of independents and even a small group of Republicans who all believed Trump was a divisive braggart and a danger to America’s constitutional democracy. The swing states soon became blue but the tidal reversal didn’t stop there; several red states were flipped like Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia.
The fact that Trump lost the election did not come as a surprise to millions of Americans. They were sick of his boasting and his inability to tell the truth. They were fed up with his lies and his divisive policies. They did not approve of his huge tax cuts for the rich. They did not like his reliance on Executive Orders as a way to circumvent discussion and debate on Congress.
They did not like his ignorance of the law as he attempted to enact policies that were repeatedly delayed, modified, or struck down by the courts. They did not enjoy his flagrant hypocrisy or the GOP’s endless attempts at voter suppression. They were shocked by hi separation of families and the caging of young children.
They didn’t care for his infamous gambler’s “double down” approach, never admitting he could be wrong or showing any willingness to compromise and work in a cooperative manner with persons or groups holding views different than his own.
He surrounded himself with yes men, firing those who did not do his bidding; he showed little or no tolerance for diversity of opinion. The millions of Americans who voted against him came to see Trump and his party as morally bankrupt, engaging in the rankest sort of hypocrisy and contradictory behavior.
This hypocrisy went well beyond the norm; President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in March 2016. The Republican Party in the Senate (under Mitch McConnell) refused to give Garland a hearing and carry out its constitutional duty. When a party no longer follows the Constitution unless it suits their purpose, they are laying the groundwork for undermining the very foundations of our republic.
The hypocrisy and contradictions were no longer accidental or some anomalous byproduct of a particularly discordant battle in Congress and, worse yet, they were increasing in frequency and intensity. They were forming a consistent, constant, and unmistakable pattern of anti-democratic practices in thought and action.
The GOP policies and shift to the far right were not accidental or unintentional blunders; there was no innocent explanation left to explain how they began to contradict themselves from one day to the next. Trump was seen not only as a leader of a cult but as a man who showed the potential to become a demagogue; the blind and slavish subservience of a good number of his followers suggested as much.
Trump led the charge against facts, truth, and reality itself and did so with no sense of compunction or regret. In the twentieth century, these were the same ideological and subversive steps by which fascist dictators emerged triumphant over democratic institutions.
I regret not having the time to develop several of these themes further but my intent was not to write a biography or even a policy critique of Trump and his four years in office. My only intent here was to suggest a few of the reasons tens of millions of Americans were eager to vote against him and in favor of the Democratic Party.
His mishandling of the pandemic was so awful it could take up all the space in a book: promoting a drug that had shown no efficacy, suggesting a person could drink bleach, lying about the severity and spread of the virus, belittling and demoting scientists who should have been given the authority to fight the pandemic, not understanding how to proceed with testing and tracking, not knowing how to increase the nation’s research and production of medical supplies . . . . the list virtually writes itself!
He never held elected office before; he obviously did not know how to unite and inspire; his Narcissism got the best of him time and time again; he didn’t even bother to wear a mask himself! When he became infected with the virus, which was predictable, it was likely the expert medical care available to presidents that saved him from a potentially far worse fate.
The economic woes brought on by the pandemic are another matter entirely and too large an issue to tackle in so short a piece. Suffice it to say he never seemed to take either the pandemic or economic crisis seriously enough to know how to plan immediate, effective, and long-term counter measures.
Sure, I get it: the biggest egotist who ever occupied the White House can’t understand why he lost; he refuses to admit it even to this day! How much farther out of touch with reality can one man become? We saw the results when he inspired a mob to organize an attack and an insurrectionary riot against our government in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2020.
Yes, I am aware that mob riot took place after the election and can’t count as a reason people voted against him, or can it? The point is, the fact that he was capable of inspiring such treacherous behavior did not surprise millions of Americans who had already concluded that he was unfit to be president. The riot confirmed what they already suspected; they now had stunning confirmation of what a truly grave danger he posed to our constitutional democracy.
A majority of American voters saw through his pretense and egotism, his petty hates and prejudices, his narrow-minded inflexibility and intolerance, his ignorance and incompetence, his mean-spirited temperament and, at its core, his self-centered and selfish nature.
Trump and his base may be “perplexed” by why he lost the 2020 election but for tens of millions of Americans, the reasons are abundantly clear!
weend�o�CW
