Five reasons for Biden’s victory

Perhaps Biden’s biggest reason for winning the presidency was completely out of his control.

The coronavirus pandemic, in addition to claiming more than 230,000 lives, also transformed American life and politics in 2020. And in the closing days of the general election campaign, Donald Trump himself seemed to acknowledge this.

“With fake news, everything is covid, covid, covid, covid,” the president said at a rally last week in Wisconsin, where cases have increased in recent days.

However, the media’s focus on the coronavirus was a reflection and not a driver of public concern about the pandemic, resulting in unfavorable exit polls on how the president handled the crisis.

One, conducted last month by Pew Research, suggested that Biden had a 17 percentage point advantage over Trump when it came to confidence in how to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

The pandemic and subsequent economic decline overshadowed the Trump campaign’s message on growth and prosperity.

Biden also took the opportunity to highlight the concerns that many Americans had about the Trump presidency, about its occasional lack of focus, tendency to question science, disorderly handling of small and large-scale policies, and prioritization of sectarianism.

The pandemic played a big role in Trump’s approval ratings, which according to Gallup, another research institute, fell to 38% at one point in the summer, something that Biden’s campaign was able to exploit.

Throughout his political career, Biden has earned a well-deserved reputation for getting into trouble. His penchant for gaffes derailed his first presidential campaign in 1987 and helped ensure he never got too many chances when he ran again in 2007.

In his third attempt to win the White House, Biden still had his fair share of verbal stumbles, but they were so rare that they never became more than a short-term problem.

Part of the explanation for this, of course, is that Trump was a relentless source of turmoil in the news cycle. Another factor was that there were bigger stories – the coronavirus pandemic, the protests following the death of George Floyd (a black man suffocated by a white police officer) and the economic crisis, dominating national attention.

But at least some credit should be given to Biden’s combined campaign strategy for limiting his candidate’s exposure, keeping a moderate pace in the campaign and minimizing the chances that fatigue or carelessness will create problems.

Perhaps in a normal election, when most Americans would not care to limit their own exposure to a virus, this strategy would have failed. Perhaps then Trump’s mockery of Biden in hiding would have taken its toll.

The Democrat’s campaign then sought to remove him from the Trump-wielding circus and let the Republican be betrayed by his own language, a strategy that ultimately paid off.

In the week before Election Day, Biden’s campaign unveiled its final television spots with a message remarkably similar to that delivered in his initial campaign last year, and his acceptance speech for the presidential race nomination in August.

The election was a “battle for the soul of the United States,” he said, and an opportunity for the country to leave behind what it has characterized as the division and chaos of the past four years.

Behind this motto, however, there was a simple calculation. Biden bet his political fortune on the claim that Trump was highly polarized and inflamed, and that what the American people wanted was a calmer and more stable leadership.

“I am exhausted by the attitude of Trump as a person,” said Thierry Adams, a Frenchman who, after 18 years living in Florida, voted for the first time in a presidential election in Miami last week.

Democrats managed to make this election a referendum on Trump, not a binary choice between the two candidates.

Biden’s winning message was simply that “it wasn’t Trump.” A common chorus of Democrats was that a Biden victory meant Americans could go weeks without thinking about politics. It was a joke, but it contained a real heart.

During the campaign to be the Democratic nominee, Biden’s competition came from his left, with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who led well-funded and organized campaigns that mobilized crowds.

Despite pressure from his liberal flank, Biden maintained a centrist strategy, refusing to support state-subsidized public health, free college education, or a tax on large fortunes. This allowed him to maximize his appeal to dissatisfied moderates and Republicans during the general election campaign.

This strategy was reflected in Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate, when he could have chosen someone with greater support from the party’s left wing.

The only issue Biden reached out to Sanders and Warren on was the environment and climate change, perhaps reckoning that the benefits of attracting younger voters for whom the issue is a priority were worth the risk of distancing himself from voters. in the states. pendulum with industries dependent on traditional energy sources. But it was the exception that confirmed the rule.

“It is no secret that we have criticized Vice President Biden’s plans and commitments in the past,” said Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the environmental activist group Movimento Sunrise in July. “He responded to many of those criticisms: he dramatically increased the scale and urgency of the investments, provided details on how he would achieve environmental justice and create good union jobs, and promised immediate action.”

Earlier this year, Biden’s campaign coffers were empty. He entered the general election campaign at a decisive disadvantage for Trump, who had spent nearly his entire presidency amassing a campaign war chest that was approaching $ 1 billion.

Beginning in April, however, Biden’s campaign became a fundraising monster and, in part due to the extravagance of Trump’s campaign, he ended up in a much stronger financial position than his opponent.

As of early October, Biden’s campaign had $ 144 million more in cash than Trump’s, making it possible to bury Republicans in a torrent of television publicity in nearly every major state where the battle would be decisive. .

Money isn’t everything, of course. Four years ago, the Clinton campaign had a sizable monetary advantage over Trump’s strict operation. But in 2020, when the door-to-door campaign was restricted by the coronavirus and Americans across the country spent considerably more time with the media at home, Biden’s financial advantage allowed him to reach voters and get his message across to the end.

This caused him to broaden the electoral map, putting money in what appeared to be remote states, such as Texas, Georgia, Ohio and Iowa. Most of those gambles didn’t pay off, but it put Trump on the defensive, defeating what some It was once the trusted conservative in Arizona and remaining highly competitive in Georgia.

Money brings options and campaign initiatives, and Biden has put his advantage to good use.