We assume that times of great social upheaval and human peril produce equally dramatic political reactions: uprisings, counter-revolutions, new deals and civil wars. The one and only thing that most Americans agree about is that we are living in such a time, the greatest national crisis since 1932 or even 1860. Against a background of plague, impeachment, racist violence and unemployment, one party espouses a vision of autocratized government and a return to the happy days of a white Republic. The other offers a sentimental journey back to the multicultural centrism of the Obama years. (Biden’s promise of a ‘new new deal’ was for gullible progressives’ ears only.) Both parties are backward looking, solipsistic and unanchored in economic reality, but the first echoes the darkest side of modern history. The vote, held on a day when more than 100,000 Americans tested positive for covid-19, was supposed to deliver a definitive verdict on Donald Trump. Indeed the President’s increasingly frenetic attempts to delegitimize the election seemed to signal his apprehension of a Democratic landslide. In the event a projected 160 million ballots were mailed in or cast in person, representing the highest turnout rate in 120 years. A stunning judgement was expected.
Instead the election results are a virtual photocopy of 2016: all the disasters of the last four years appear to have barely moved the needle. Biden eked out a slim victory, in some states only by microscopic margins, that won him 306 electoral votes, the same as Trump four years ago. A mere 256,000 votes in five key states purchased 73 of those votes. Meanwhile much of his popular vote majority of approximately six million, like Clinton’s previous 3 million, was simply wasted in blue trash bins like California, Massachusetts and New York without adding electoral votes. 
If Biden, as projected by Edison Research, has increased Clinton’s percentages amongst white men and possibly Catholics, Trump has improved his 2016 vote by similar margins amongst Black men, Asians and the upper middle class. Different exit polls give different estimates of the gender gap, but Edison showed only a one per cent increase (slightly more in the case of Black voters) compared to 2016. White women actually increased their preference for Trump while Latinas were more favourable to Biden than to Clinton—in both cases by 3 per cent. Although 60 per cent of ballots were still cast by people 45 or older, the under-30 vote was the one result that actually matched pre-election predictions: an increase in turnout from 42 per cent in 2016 to 53 per cent this year.footnote1Otherwise ground was gained or lost by inches, not yards. However the results are spun, the House Divided remains standing with only some furniture moved around.
Despite an enormous campaign treasury, the Biden campaign only really struck fire where it converged with existing popular movements willing to take matters in hand: outstanding examples include Fair Fight, Stacey Abrams’s extraordinary voter coalition in Georgia, and Living United for Change in Arizona (lucha)—a Latino and labour united front built during the long struggle against the neo-fascist regime of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County (greater Phoenix). On the other hand, the Democratic infantry—the thousands of union members who traditionally go door-to-door for the Party—were on the whole stood down. Individual unions such as Nurses United, the American Federation of Teachers, the Las Vegas Culinary Workers and other locals of unite here undoubtedly made decisive contributions to Biden’s victory in certain states, but the national union profile was the lowest in modern history.
The Trump camp, in contrast, was willing to sacrifice some cadre to covid-19, and unleashed hordes of often unmasked mega-church faithful on the suburbs. While the liberal media was riveted on the unnerving spectacles of Trump’s virus-spewing mega-rallies, a huge grassroots campaign financed by his billionaire allies was rousing old supporters and adding new ones to its ranks. (The more important issue of non-Trump-core voters who rallied to his economic ‘recovery’ will be discussed later.) The effort increased his 2016 national vote by more than 8 million and preserved his 2016 winning margins in three key battleground states that Obama had won in 2012 and Biden had hoped to recapture. Democrats have to wonder whether these important ‘purple’ states have not now turned convincingly red. 
Meanwhile the down ticket results were disastrous for those expecting a landslide. On the eve of the election the Democratic House Campaign Committee was boasting it would enlarge the party’s delegation by ‘five, 10 or even 20 seats’; instead they lost nine or more seats, leaving them with only a fragile majority. (The Democrats also failed to win a single one of the 27 races that the New York Times had labeled as ‘toss ups’.)footnote2 ‘Moderate’ Democrats in the so-called Blue Dog Caucus, who had won seats in 2018, were the principal victims. The chair of the Campaign Committee, Cheri Bustos (d-il), admitted that she felt ‘gutted’ by the losses while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez flailed the Committee for its incompetence in employing digital media.footnote3
The billion-dollar Democratic crusade for control of the Senate also dismally failed expectations, producing only one victory and leading to the strange outcome that the body’s future will be decided by two run-off elections in Georgia in January, each a longshot for Democrats. (They haven’t won a runoff election in the state in 30 years.) If they do defy the odds and win control, Mitch McConnell, the most ruthless and successful Senate leader since lbj, can savour his extraordinary accomplishment of filling every single vacancy in the federal judiciary, from district courts to the Supreme Court, with bona fide members of the rightwing Federalist Society. He’s locked the federal court doors against Democrats for a generation and thrown away the key.