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IIt was the grand, carefully choreographed victory speech that Donald Trump never delivered in 2016. Hail to the Chief played in the background as the president took the stage around 2 a.m., a phalanx of stars and stripes to his back and front . of him a masked mob of progeny and devotees shouting “We love you!”
In 2016, Trump was so shocked by his own unexpected triumph that he seemed quite taken aback. His victory speech was written in such haste that it contained deep praise for Hillary Clinton, the woman who had been subjected to chants of “lock her up.”
After stumbling four years ago, Trump did it Wednesday morning in his own way, amid the grandeur of the East Room of the White House. “Frankly, we won this election,” he said, and the room erupted in a frenzy of cheers.
It was a show that spoke volumes about man and the nation at this uniquely damaged and dangerous moment in its 244-year history. An incumbent president declares victory even though he has not won, then claims fraud is being committed against the American public in the middle of an election that has had the largest turnout of any presidential race in 120 years.
Democracy in Trumpland.
While the president developed his little victory fantasy, the Democrats were going through their own version of hell. If the story of the night for Trump was about him pretending to have won just the way he liked it, for Joe Biden and his Democratic cohorts it was about obediently following the rule book just as they hate him.
For them, too, the ghosts of 2016 took on great importance. It was around 10.30pm on the night of the 2020 election when the nervousness began to begin with the first results from Florida that sent an all-too-familiar chill across the country.
Here we go again. Buckle up, a rough ride awaits you.
In Miami-Dade County, the area of South Florida that is home to Cuban Americans, Biden’s numbers were notably low. They noted that the barrage of misinformation launched by the Trump campaign that Biden was leading America into the dark night of socialism had stalled.
At 11:30 p.m., that sinking feeling among Democrats that 2020 was indeed a downgrade from 2016 was intensifying. Biden’s multiple paths to the White House appeared to be narrowing with the loss of Florida and early results that gave Trump an advantage in states like Georgia and North Carolina.
And then the inevitable happened. Eyes turned, as they did four years ago, to that trilogy of hope, fear, and trepidation: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
The so-called “blue firewall” that Clinton had been relying on and that Trump brutally brought down.
CNN’s Jake Tapper found himself giggling as he said it, so surreal the echo seemed. “I think we’ve been saying for a long time that anything could happen, that this is a very competitive race and it could come down to these three states.”
You could feel the cogs of recognition starting to turn: it started with a yes.
“Yes, Joe Biden still had a path to the presidency.”
“Yes, it was the ‘red mirage’.”
Given the sheer number of ballots mailed during the pandemic, your election night would always start to look bleak, but then it would brighten over time as the votes were counted.
He could see the pattern take shape in several of the key battlefield states that could bring him victory. There was Wisconsin, where Biden’s victory was almost assured Wednesday morning.
Michigan, that other rust belt state that gave Trump his 2016 victory that also swayed from right to left as the night wore on. Georgia, where Biden initially appeared to be hectic, but was competitive again when morning came.
Then yes. In the light of a new day, Biden still seemed potentially poised to take Trump’s place in the Oval Office.
Arizona was then listed on the Biden Stock Exchange, opening new prospects for a changing and renewed America with its growing potential Latino population. With Georgia, a state that last backed a Democrat for president when Wayne’s World was in theaters, still staring at Biden’s reach, there was even reason to be joyful.
And then came the nos. No, it wasn’t meant to be. That sick feeling in the pit of the stomach, that wasn’t meant to be there. Not this time.
How could the contest have gotten so tough that Trump was still in the race, too, hours after election night? Here was a president who had overseen the slaughter of more than 230,000 Americans for a microbe that other nations had contained.
It was about a man whose administration had ordered that migrant children be separated from their parents without bothering to make sure they could be found; three years later, almost 600 are still separated. Who was happy to see tear gas fired at peaceful protesters in order to get their photoshoot. Who interpreted the founding principle of the nation, “We the people”, as “We the whites.” Who sees the climate crisis as a hoax?
No. This was not the plan.
At midnight, the tremor was palpable among the Democratic luminaries who took to television channels to proclaim their eternal confidence in Biden. James Carville, Bill Clinton’s chief strategist when he won the White House in 1992, put on a brave face on MSNBC.
“For all Democrats: put the razor blades and Ambien back in the closet, we’ll be fine,” he said. He then brandished a bottle of vintage champagne at the camera and commented, “I don’t mind putting it on ice until Friday. I’ve waited four years for this, I can wait another four days. “
If only he hadn’t appeared on the same channel a few days earlier, bragging that “this is not going to be close” and that he would be opening that bottle at 10:30 pm.
It’s a wonder what a few hours of rest at night can do for one’s perspective. At midnight, Claire McCaskill, a former Democratic senator from Missouri, also wore a stoic face.
The night was going as it had always been planned, he said. Referring to the three blue firewall states that were once again in play, he said, “Those three states will hand over the presidency to Joe Biden, as planned.”
By the morning when he came to MSNBC for the second time, his tone had become more reflective. She still believed that time was on Biden’s side and that patience would finally prevail.
But now he added a darker assessment. “This is a testing moment,” he said.
“We cannot again assume that Donald Trump is an outlier in terms of who he is and how he behaves. It is connecting with many Americans in ways that many of us have a hard time understanding, but we have to, because we have to unite this nation if we want to remain a superpower. “
Bob Woodward, the veteran Watergate journalist who got Trump’s admission that he had lied to the American people about the deadly nature of the coronavirus, also had some harsh words for Democrats. “In 2016 Trump came along and broke the old order in a very definitive way,” he said.
“If you want to know what happened in 2020, Biden represented the old order. The Democratic Party has to figure out how to change themselves. “
This election does not end until it is over. Joe Biden eventually took over Wisconsin and Michigan and it is quite possible that he will be the next president of the United States. A painful autopsy for what happened has just begun.
