The Result We Needed

The headline of this article probably sounds counter-intuitive at first. Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, the still-contested election of 2020 doesn’t seem like an entirely satisfying result. Republicans lost the Presidency, despite ongoing legal challenges and a refusal by the President to concede. Democrats lost many Congressional and Senate races and largely failed to achieve the “blue wave” repudiation of Trump they’d hoped for. No one is fully satisfied with the results. So why was it the result we needed?

First and foremost, we needed to get rid of this President. Trump is an impulsive narcissist whose juvenile and pathological behavior was tearing our country apart. While a shocking number of Americans obviously still love him, many more see him as the pernicious, anti-democratic autocrat he is. Apart from his disastrous policies both domestically and internationally, his polarizing behavior was driving a wedge into our national soul. His reign had to end for the sake of our country.

It’s apparent from the election results that many Republicans agree. Apart from Trump’s loss, Tuesday was more of a red wave than blue. Republicans won many hotly contested seats at both the federal and state levels, held on to their majority in the Senate and expanded seats in the House of Representatives. An under-analyzed point (is that possible?!) is why this happened. Most pundits credit Trump for the strong Republican showing. But mathematically, the most likely explanation for these results is a small but critical block of voters who were red all the way down the ballot but abstained or voted for Biden at the top of the ticket. Though it was a quiet, even secret, repudiation, it appears to have been enough to push Trump out of office.

[Side note: An interesting question remains about precisely how to get Trump out of office should he indefinitely refuse to concede and what to do to him once he is. Under normal conditions, I would advocate a disarmament to heal our country, as happened with Nixon. We are America. We don’t send our exiled political leaders to jail. With the political fight over, a contrite, defeated Executive in Chief concedes, is forgiven, perhaps even pardoned, and rides off into the sunset of the history books. But given the likelihood Trump will not cooperate with a smooth transition of power, continue to agitate his base, and quite likely run again in 2024, Trump needs to not just be defeated but dismantled. Perhaps not at the federal level, but state instead. Perhaps not for crimes he’s committed while in office (Emoluments Clause, top of the list) but for those he’s apparently committed as a private citizen. The former, though justified, would feel too much like political revenge, but failing to prosecute the latter if there is a probable crime seems unpardonable. Literally.]

But beyond the removal of the most toxic and inept leader our country has ever seen, we needed this result for many other reasons. If there was a message in the mixed results of this election, it’s that voters want Republicans and Democrats to work together. They don’t want an extreme agenda, for either side. Americans are sick of partisanship. We are exhausted from four years of constant distractions in a continuously malfunctioning government. We want to return to the luxury of going about our lives without the federal government teetering on the brink of collapse. We want to stop being compelled to pay attention to a President who insatiably craves it — good or bad, endlessly. We want to be able to focus on our families, friendships, faith, and careers, without fearing for the future of our country.

The damage done under Trump needs to be undone. We need reconciliation and compromise. We need compassion, not conflict. Joe Biden is the President for this time. We don’t need a disruptor, we need a unifier. We need someone with the experience to restore faith in our institutions. The credibility to regain our leadership on the world stage. The personality to tone down the caustic rhetoric. Balanced by a Senate likely to be controlled by Republicans, Biden will need to find common ground. As a “career politician” in the best sense of that usually-negative term, he will govern from the center and advance policies that both sides can agree to.

This basket of characteristics isn’t typically what we seek in our leaders. We are drawn to more charismatic and confrontational personalities who conjure up stronger emotions. In normal circumstances, Joe Biden might be too boring, too conventional, too polished, too old, too safe. But he is what we need right now — normal and safe. In short, the anti-Trump.