The Republican Party, the great bastion of conservatism in America which I ashamedly count myself a member of, walks away from the 2020 elections discovering new ways to lose in spectacular fashion unrivaled in the world of politics since the Jimmy Carter administration.
2020 involved Democrats exploiting the crises of the past year and mobilizing their voter base against the most polarizing figure in American politics. This past year was the Democratic perfect storm which Republicans could not weather, and as a result, we face two years of united government under the most left-wing agenda in American history.
The next few years entail a fundamental reshaping of the country, an instantaneous scale-back on the Donald Trump presidency and his four years of progress and the restructuring of institutions which make getting Republicans elected more challenging. Meanwhile, all we, the opposition, can do is sit on our hands and watch the events unfold as they happen.
So what happened? How did our great defenders of the republic falter to this extent? The answer is simple: the Democrats dominated the game of politics in the 2020 elections because the Republicans refused to play.
2020 represents the first instance of an incumbent president losing a reelection bid since George Bush Sr. in 1992, but when analyzing the election results and the state of our nation, President Joe Biden’s victory was inevitable. Biden did not defeat former President Donald Trump. The Democratic Party defeated Trump.
Nationwide mobilization efforts to get people to vote, the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and the move to mail-in balloting inspired the highest voter turnout in any election in American history. All of these factors in conjunction with the fact the political right offered no counter-movement assured Biden the presidency. The majority of Americans voted, not out of any particular affinity for the most milquetoast candidate of the last four decades but rather a unifying disdain for Trump and a basic understanding of history.
Republicans tend to underperform in elections with high voter turnout, and if the Democrats can mobilize enough new voters, they will be at a natural advantage. And that is exactly what they did this past election year.
According to BBC News, 62% of young voters ages 18-29, 87% of black voters, 66% of Hispanics and 56% of women all voted in favor of Biden. These are the coalitions which win and which Republicans seem to ignore. In addition to demographics, the Democrats using grassroots mobilization efforts flipped five key states from 2016, easily shooting Biden over the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory.
Only after the election does Team Trump attempt to mobilize their base with a circus of lawsuits which history will remember as “The Kraken.” Subjecting the country to electoral challenges and an uncertain future which undermines our democratic processes made Republicans look like fools in the eyes of the American people and the Democratic opposition.
The three months of convincing the country the election was stolen or Biden was illegitimate destroyed Republican credibility. Trump has every right to investigate and prove his case to a court, but it should go without saying evidence is a necessity.
All unsubstantiated claims do is give the Democrats ammunition to use against Republicans, such as this piece from the Washington Post in which Dan Zak describes Trump’s court evidence as in Georgia where “citizens gave chase to trucks and staked out loading docks looking for suspicious boxes that surely contained fraudulent absentee ballots.” And in Michigan, based on a pile of Ethernet cables found at his polling place, a radio host argued Trump was cheated out of another presidential term.
Absurdist claims such as these cast a major asterisk over the intentions of the Republican Party and also give reason as to why freshmen Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were able to roll over Republican resistance and take both Georgia’s two Senate seats and the U.S. Senate majority.
Republican voters were not energized to vote due to the way Georgia turned out in the presidential race. Georgia voters, according to Matt Haines of Voice of America News, have “very little confidence in Georgia’s capacity to conduct a fair and accurate election in January.”
Across the state, 70% of Georgia Republicans believed the elections conducted on Nov. 3 were not free or fair. Guided by paranoia their votes do not matter and the disorganized campaigns of incumbent senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Georgia Republicans gift-wrapped the Senate for the Democrats.
Following the results of the runoff, right-wing frustrations were fully realized in a terrifying display at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 when rioters broke into the building. Trump did not immediately denounce the rioters.
According to Nick Niedzwiadek of Politico, Trump said, “I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace,” and “We love you. You’re very special.” Such rhetoric makes even the most ardent of supporters question the intentions of his claims.
In addition, the actions committed on Jan. 6 shatter the idea of the Republicans as the party of civility and allow Democrats to accurately paint Trump supporters as insurrectionists and rioters — the same accusations Republicans accused militant Black Lives Matter rioters of doing last summer.
Armed with a new sense of moral authority, Democrats lobby another impeachment charge against Trump, thus putting another ugly scar on his otherwise effective presidency from a policy perspective. So now, Republicans will face the consequences of their inaction — a united Democratic government hellbent on vengeance. May God save our republic.
