2020 Election: The Game Is Over; TheTable Is Set

 

2020 Election: The Game Is Over, The Table Is Set

Peter Schultz

 

            The presidential election has been decided even all the votes have not been counted. Trump is out, as the numbers remaining aren’t in his favor. His lawsuits in different states will, I predict, go nowhere. The Republican mainstream has not and will not support his charges of electoral fraud. Even if he were to take a case to the Supreme Court, he would lose. It’s one thing for the Supremes to award the presidency to George Bush; it’s another thing entirely for the Supremes to award the presidency to Donald Trump. Trump’s “credentials,” such as they are, work against him, as does his behavior or misbehavior as president. On the other hand, George Bush’s “credentials” worked for him in 2000. He had been governor of Texas and, after all, he was the grandson of Prescott Bush and the son of George Herbert Walker Bush. This lineage counts for a lot in the District of Columbia and with its reigning elites. Just ask Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon.

 

            And, as it stands now, the table is set for a return to “normalcy.” Given the closeness of the presidential election, the Democrats can and will argue that now is not the time for what they consider “radical” or even “leftish” measures. Such measures, it will be argued, could prove costly in four years when the next presidential election will occur. There will be no “pushing Biden to the left.” In fact, what is called the Democratic left will be forced to move to the right, to protect the party’s flank. Moreover, if as seems likely the Republicans hold their majority in the Senate, then the Democrats will argue that, even if they wanted to move to “the left,” they wouldn’t be able to get such measures past the Senate.

 

            The “beauty” of the outcomes of what was to many “the most important election in their lifetimes” is that, for all important purposes, the nation is back to where it was prior to Trump’s election in 2016. One may even say that Trump’s presidency and his defeat in this election has served to fortify those political forces that were struggling to maintain their legitimacy after Obama’s bland and utterly forgettable presidency and after Bush’s post 9-11’s fiascos, meaning the invasion and occupation of Iraq, torture, Guantanamo, and the economic collapse of 2008. So if this has been the most important election in our lifetimes, it should not be said that that is the case because its outcomes put the nation on the road to a different and healthier politics.