After Action Report on the 2020 Elections

While Shulmaven got Joe Biden winning right, I largely blew it everywhere else. Like too many, I got sucked into believing that the pollsters corrected for their mistakes in the 2016 election. Never again will I make that mistake.

 

I had Biden winning the popular vote by 7 points when it now looks like he will win it by 3 points. I had Biden winning Florida and North Carolina; wrong! I had him winning Arizona and Nevada, likely. And I had him winning Georgia, still too close to call.

 

With respect to the Senate I had the Democrats gaining a net of 5 seats. As of today, the Democrats are up one seat with two seats to be determined in a January runoff in Georgia. Shulmaven would sure like to own a TV station in Atlanta. It is my guess today that the Republicans are likely to hold both seats.

 

In the House I had the Democrats picking up 8-10 seats; it now looks like they will lose 8-10 seats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will soon find out what it was like for her Republican predecessors Ryan and Boehner to run an unruly caucus. It will not be pretty for her. 

To me the big takeaways from the election are:

1.     The Trump tactic of tagging the Democrats as radical leftists worked. Defunding the police and talking about socialism might work in New York, but not too many places elsewhere. Instead of being a plus, “the Squad” turned out to be a huge negative.

 

2.     The notion of a monolithic bloc of “people of color” crashed and burned. There are more differences than commonalities among African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asians. For example, it certainly did not help when Black Lives Matter protestors in Miami carried a flag with Che Guevara’s picture on it. To them it may have been a symbol of liberation, but to Miami’s Cuban and Venezuelan populations it was a symbol of totalitarian oppression.  Outside of Florida Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas shifted markedly towards Trump.

 

3.     Biden’s position on fracking cost the Democrats two rising stars in the House, Kendra Horn from Oklahoma and Xochitl Torres-Small from New Mexico. *

 

4.     California, a state which voted for Biden by a 2-1 majority rallied against liberalism in three key ballot propositions and likely a fourth one. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2020/10/some-thoughts-on-four-controversial.html) Specifically the voters opposed a measure allowing for racial preferences in university admissions and state employment, opposed a measure that would allow for stricter rent control, supported a measure that treats gig workers as contractors rather than employees and thus far the opposition to amending Proposition 13 to allow for much higher taxes on commercial property is heading for defeat.

 

What the election seems to represent is that 2016 was not a fluke. America remains a very divided country and with Donald Trump acting like the world’s worst sore loser is certainly not helping things. We are  a country in a great need of spiritual healing. We must listen to one another, and I pray that Joe Biden will find the strength in him to lead us in that task.

 

*I financially supported her re-election efforts.