Biden will take the lead, but not yet called four days after the election: this week in the 2020 race

Welcome to our weekly analysis of the status of the 2020 campaign.

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As election day turned into election week, the thrilling country lost productive days, with only map Americans like CNN’s John King and MSNBC’s Steve Kornaki interested in what Americans had to say about the impact of each new vote on the race result. . And, Joseph R. by Fox News on Election Night. The bold race call that awarded Arizona to Biden Jr., and later the Associated Press, came as a shock to the Trump campaign.

By the end of Friday, Mr Biden was a long way from becoming the next president of the United States, with tough wins in the Midwest states where President Trump went for 2016 in 2016: Michigan and Wisconsin. Mr Biden led in Pennsylvania to another state that went for Mr Trump in the final cycle. The former vice president is in western Arizona, and in southern Georgia – Democrats hope to win in those states in the future, even if the ballot is reduced.

This is a mixture of mixed results, which is not yet final, as some states may require a recount, while others will continue to count ballots. Here are four takeaways from the results we know so far:

Despite the many upheavals, Democrats will reap some benefits

Democrats panicked on election night as it became clear that Republican polling had exceeded polling expectations and that Mr. Trump had a persistent coalition. As of Thursday, with Mr. Biden close to 270 election votes, Democratic fears had subsided, but did not appear. The party lost key congressional races, failed to overthrow several state legislatures and showed weakness in the voting population in Florida, Texas and Iowa.

A subset of the political world is proven by the nail-biter presidential race: Democrats who worked for Hillary Clinton. The closeness of the Biden-Trump race suggests that the 2016 election result may be less about Mr Trump’s political strengths than Mrs. Clinton’s political weaknesses.

In some states where Mr. Biden is as reversible as Wisconsin, his victory is by a margin of about 20,000 votes. Four years ago, Mrs. Clinton lost about 22,000 to the state. The potential victory with more than 300 electoral votes seems to have damaged Mr. Biden, but it also masks the fact that in some critical states, the race still won only by a hair’s breadth.

Mr Biden did not get the wide margins that most liberals across the country had hoped for. Silver layer for some former members of Clinton World: As one might say: The Democratic nominee in 2016 may not go down in history, the political version of Bill Buckner, who blew the ground ball off the World Series for the Red Sox in 1986. By his legs.

Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Union of Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, and a member of the Executive Committee of the DNC, said of Mr Trump that “his electoral strength in 2016 was not related to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy or any flaws in her campaign, other than his own appeal to a wider section of the population.” . “As Democrats we need to understand that and move forward more effectively.”

Philip Reins, a former top adviser to Ms Clinton in the Senate and the State Department, is even more outspoken. “I have to say some apologies for how Hillary evaluated her campaign,” Mr. Reines said. Jennifer Palmiri, who served as communications director for the 2016 Clinton campaign, said the current election will give a new dimension to the race four years ago.

“There’s a lot you can do to improve the big powers,” Ms. Palmiri said. “When I saw young Latino and African-American men with Trump in a way I did not in 2016, I did not miss the Biden campaign’s African-American radio program. This is a sign of a big change. ”

Personal conflicts that do not help Trump

The tight map means that the Trump campaign will be forced to count on how many small things they can do differently, or if the candidate does not continue to fight helplessly with political enemies (beyond the grave). Went the other way.

Campaign officials and outside advisers have acknowledged that Republicans have been hurt in Arizona, with Mr. Trump’s years – long feud with Senator John McCain, a loved one in his home state, even personal disgust after his death in 2018. Fox News and AP called Arizona on Tuesday night for Mr. Biden.

In Georgia, Mr Biden thanked former Representative John Lewis, who died in Clayton County on Friday, as a symbol of civil rights who died in July. Mr Trump has lamented Mr Trump’s calling his presidency “illegal”, saying he should devote more time to resolving his “terrible” and “criminalized” district. Clearly, those words were not easily forgotten by the voters who lived there.

Some of his supporters are already playing the “what if” game more widely. “Where would Trump be if he never told me about Charlottesville, if he never told me about Khizr Khan, if he never told me about Mika Brajjinski,” said President George W. Bush. Bush is a former White House press secretary, said Ari Fleischer. In other words, where would he be if he were not Donald Trump?