What will happen after the presidential elections?

Supporters of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris celebrate the victory of their candidates in Time Square in New York.

Andrew Kelly / Reuters

The latest developments

• The German Chancellor congratulates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their electoral victory. He likes to remember good conversations and encounters with Biden, Angela Merkel said in a short speech on Monday (November 9). The newly elected president has decades of experience in domestic and foreign policy. Harris, on the other hand, is an inspiration to many as the daughter of two immigrants and as the first woman in the role of vice president. Merkel advocated that Germany and Europe should “assume more of their own responsibility” for security matters and wished the newly elected duo much “strength, success and God’s blessing.”
• Future President Joe Biden wants to present a Corona task force on Monday (November 9). The first personnel decisions have already been known. The expert council should have dual leadership, as a Biden spokeswoman said on NBC News. It is said to be made up of Vivek Murthy, who was the government’s health director from 2014 to 2017, and the former head of the US FDA, David Kessler. Meanwhile, current Vice President Mike Pence has announced that he will chair a meeting of the White House Crown Task Force on Monday afternoon, the first in about two weeks.
• Donald Trump is apparently planning events where he wants to solicit support for his legal action against the election results. This was confirmed by the spokesman for Trump’s election campaign team on Sunday (November 8) to the Reuters news agency. Trump wants to take action against the election results in several member states. Trump’s spokesman did not say when these events should take place.
• Jill Biden will be the first wife of an American president to continue her career. He has taught English at North Virginia Community College for ten years. A spokesperson for the future First Lady confirmed on Sunday (November 8) that she would continue to teach there.
• On Twitter, Trump complains that the big media are proclaiming themselves the winner of the elections. “Since when has the Lamestream media been determining who will be our next president?” Read one of his tweets on Sunday (November 8). “We have all learned a lot in the last two weeks.” “Lamestream media” is an art term for Trump that aims to amalgamate the mainstream media criticized by him and “lame” (lame). In the US, it is common for presidential elections to be decided on the basis of forecasts by large media companies and news agencies.
• Former US President George W. Bush congratulated Biden on winning the presidential election. He had spoken with “president-elect” Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris, the last remaining former Republican president said Sunday. “Although we have political differences, I know that Joe Biden is a good man.” Bush also congratulated the defeated Trump and his supporters on their campaign. “He won the votes of more than 70 million Americans, an exceptional political achievement.”

Joe Biden has achieved his goal: to become the 46th American President. With the victory in the state of Pennsylvania on Saturday, November 7, Biden surpassed the decisive limit of 270 voters’ votes. The results of some of the member states are still pending, but they can no longer change Biden’s election.

However, it will be more than two months before the inauguration on January 20, 2021. The first challenge for the newly elected president will be, unusually, to overcome the legal challenges of the current president. After that, Biden has to reunite his government team in the transition period. Only then should it gradually become clear what course and what changes you will really strive to achieve.

Acting President Donald Trump does not acknowledge his defeat and has stated that he will take legal action against the results or a higher count of the votes cast. Trump poses as the victim of systematic election fraud with no evidence to back up his claims.

President Trump is counting on the help of the courts to be able to miraculously triumph in the end. But there is hardly any threat of a repeat of the epic argument in 2000. At that time, a Supreme Court decision only clarified in December that George W. Bush and not Al Gore had won the election. In contrast to the electoral battle in Florida 20 years ago, the decision in the White House race does not depend on a single state this time.

In a written statement that circulated on Saturday (November 7), Trump noted that Biden had only been proclaimed by the media, but not yet on the basis of an official final result. The president ignores the preliminary results published by the state authorities and claims that “illegal ballots” are counted.

The aim is apparently to undermine the credibility of the election and to prepare a protracted legal battle that will help Trump maintain power. But this is opposed by the fact that Biden leads in various “transition states.” Counts can be requested, but these almost never change the overall result. Trump’s attorneys have filed lawsuits against voting by mail in every controversial state, but they didn’t get very far because there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Democrats have succeeded, albeit narrowly, in beating two of the Midwest states that made a decisive contribution to Trump’s victory four years ago. The voters of Wisconsin and Michigan, along with those of Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, were decisive for his electoral victory. Biden can also point to a solid gap with Trump in the national number of votes, which reached almost four million fewer votes.

In contrast, predictions of a landslide victory by the Democrats, as many polls had suggested, have not come true. To some extent, this diminishes Biden’s claim for a mandate to initiate a radical policy change, which is particularly demanded by the left wing of the Democrats. Explosive plans, for example, to expand the Supreme Court with additional justices or to create the state of a member state for the capital, Washington and Puerto Rico, should not be politically enforceable.

On December 14, 2020, the electors chosen in the November 3 election will meet in the Electoral College to elect the President and Vice President. This in itself is a question of form, because the electorate is obliged to follow the outcome of the elections of its member state. Votes will be counted on January 6, 2021; the official final result of the 2020 elections will only be formally known on this date.

The new president will be sworn in on January 20 for his four-year term through 2025. Until his inauguration, Biden will be primarily busy assembling his government team. Its composition will give an initial indication of the course that the new president will take in all relevant policy areas.

In addition to the presidential office, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate were recently awarded on the date of the election. The resulting composition of the legislature decides whether Congress will make government easier or more difficult for the future president. The polls had given Democrats hope that they could achieve a majority in the great chamber as well as a majority in the Senate. But this “blue wave” has not materialized. In the House of Representatives, Republicans even managed to wrest at least seven seats from Democrats. Rather, they have only won one Senate seat. The small camera race will definitely not be decided until January, when there is a runoff in Georgia.

However, it is already clear that President Biden will not face a compliant Congress and that his legislative plans can hardly be implemented without compromise. This will disappoint the party left, which has expected more in return for its support for Biden after the party’s internal elimination and sought a radical break from the Trump era.

Could it be that Donald Trump is declared the winner on election night before the vote count ends? That was the anxious question before the election. And that’s exactly what happened. Is it therefore that it does not recognize a subsequent electoral result? This question can also be answered with a yes. But is it possible that he is refusing to leave the White House on January 20? This strange idea is still just speculation for now. But if you retire from office according to the rules, what role will you claim for yourself? At least you don’t have to put up with inhibitions on Twitter, for example. Therefore, it is to be expected that, unlike previous presidents, he will attack his successor frontally from the beginning and will emerge as a kind of leader of the opposition. Supporters are already spreading the rumor that he could run again as a presidential candidate in 2024. The question then will be whether he will be followed by other circles of his supporters besides a hard core, and to what extent he and his influence on American politics still remain. it can wait.

The two big American parties have a different organizational structure than most parties in Europe. When they appoint the president, they often shape the appearance and image of the party. In Trump’s case, this is particularly the case because, as an outsider and career changer, he became a presidential candidate in 2016, partly against the will of leading Republicans. After his election, he further dominated them and pushed the existing party establishment aside if their representatives did not declare their allegiance to him. The sacred principles in foreign and economic policy that had previously been applied suddenly ceased to be valid.

The question in the post-Trump era will therefore be whether and to what extent Republicans will distance themselves from Trump. Slight withdrawal movements could already be observed during the electoral campaign, but these remained only moderate. But now it remains to be seen in what direction the party will develop in the future. Do you see yourself as a representative of the electorate that Trump addressed, but who used to be just one of the regular voters of the Republicans, or not? Or will there be some kind of party division?

with agency material