By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
I am still trying to digest the results of the 2020 presidential election, so allow me this moment to ponder what they might mean.
I’ll go with what I have heard others suggest already, that Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden and the failure of Democrats to sweep the GOP away under an anticipated “blue wave” in both congressional chambers tells me the election was a referendum on Trump.
Donald Trump failed the test.
He suffered a fairly decisive defeat. He likely will end up on the short end of a 306-232 Electoral College tally, and will trail President-elect Biden by roughly 5 million ballots in the actual vote. Biden will have won by roughly 3 percent overall.
What that tells me is that Americans had heard enough of the lying, the insults, the innuendo, the divisive rhetoric, the endorsement of Nazis and Klansmen as “good people,” and the constant pitting of Americans against each other based on their political affiliation.
It also tells me they were sickened by the sight of Trump ignoring the recommendations given by medical experts as the nation continues to fight the pandemic that has killed 230,000-plus Americans. Mask wearing, keeping an appropriate “social distance” from others have been scoffed at by Trump.
I haven’t even mentioned, until now, the catering to dictators around the world, especially the one in Russia who has offered to pay bounties to Taliban terrorists who kill American service personnel in Afghanistan.
Congress remains a mixed bag. The best case for Democrats is they win the two George runoff elections and attain a tie in the upper chamber. The GOP whittled away at the Democratic House majority.
The good news from a policy standpoint is that President-elect Biden has a long record of working well with Republicans. He might need that skill as he seeks to govern after Jan. 20.
Donald Trump called his narrow victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 a “landslide.” It wasn’t. Neither is Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. However, Biden sold himself as the preferable alternative to Trump’s four years of division, anger and ignorance.
That is just fine with me.