Most reasonable people agree that the election was won a couple of days ago (even GWB today congratulated Biden)...but can you tell Trump and his hard-core cult-like supporters that yet? Trump tweeted yesterday that not only did he win...but he won by A LOT. He continues to spread more nonsense today:Octavious wrote: ↑Sat Nov 07, 2020 5:12 pmThis one was over a couple of days ago when it became obvious both that the direction of the count was favoring Biden and that there was no appetite from the powers that be to support Trump's legal campaign. The only thing that can save Trump now is if one of the automatic recounts finds a few thousand Trump votes that had mysteriously been missed, and that seems highly unlikely.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 5045071873
An official statement from Trump after the result was announced:
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/stat ... d-j.-trump
Donald Trump Jr calling for "total war":
https://nypost.com/2020/11/05/terrified ... -election/
Giuliani is keeping on claiming all sorts of nonsense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8nZcKlE1I
Just to remember from 2016 Hillary gave a gracious concession speech even though the results were just as close there too and Hillary was up in the popular vote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khK9fIgoNjQ
Obama said something similar to calm nerves the same day Hillary conceded:
"We have to remember that we're actually all on one team…We’re not Democrats first, we're not Republicans first, we are Americans first. We're patriots first. We all want what’s best for this country."
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/bl ... s-election
We have had four years of a complete and utter nutcase as president that spent much of his time watching fox news and tweeting nonsense and conspiracy theories. For example the whole hydroxycloroquine saga occurred because Trump watched Tucker Carlson the night before interview a quack claiming that hydroxycloroquine was "the 100% cure" so he repeated it. Trump undermines his own government's response to coronavirus forcing people like Fauci to require 24 hour security which is nuts. The bar is very low for improvement on this.What we have now are four years of a man several decades past his prime leading the US through an unprecedented health crisis and the inevitable financial crisis that follows, with the addition of a now openly hostile superpower rival in China overseas and a hostile Republican party at home with millions of very angry people believing the Trump line that he's illegitimate. God help him if the Republicans keep the senate.
This would be an extremely tough challenge for the greatest US presidents at their peak. Biden seems a decent man, but he's neither great nor at his peak. He will spend a lot of his political capital doing necessary but unpopular (in certain circles at least) things like rejoining WHO and rejoining the fight against climate change. I don't think he's up to it, and there will be an inevitable backlash when it starts to go wrong. That's when things have the potential to become dangerous.
You are right that it is going to be a tough four years. The coronavirus response has been a disaster...and Biden has to bring it back on track. We have had four years on conspiracy BS tearing the country apart...Biden has to find a way to turn down the temperature on the partisanship and push the conspiracy nonsense (on either side of politics) back to the fringes which is what he already appears to be trying to do in his speeches so far. If he can do just these two things, that is a win in my book.
It may even be a blessing in disguise if Democrats don't win the Senate. The last two times the democrats had both the House and the Senate after winning the presidency (Clinton in 1992 and Obama in 2008) they couldn't get their act together and lost the House two years later. To get anything done, Biden is likely going to need to triangulate like Clinton did in the 90s. Note that Clinton became even more popular after Democrats lost the House. It could be possible that Biden is able to achieve a similar outcome.