Why Democrats Still Have a Long Road Ahead

Fernando Fernández/Staff Writer

Ladies & gentlemen, habemus praesidens.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been elected the 46th President of the United States of America and Donald J. Trump has officially been made a one-term President. Seems like pretty good news for the Democrats, right? They have once again captured the presidency and their four-year nightmare of President Donald J. Trump appears to finally be coming to an end. What isn’t there to celebrate, if you’re a Democrat?

Well… a lot, actually.

Joe Biden’s victory masks what was truly an absolutely disastrous election night (or week, in this case) for the Democratic Party. One which has left them with a bunch of warning signs about what their future entails.

For starters, Joe Biden’s victory wasn’t that significant at all.

Despite a literal plague and an economic recession, President-elect Biden only managed to defeat incumbent President Trump by razor-thin margins in critical swing states. More specifically by 0.7% in Wisconsin, 0.8% in Pennsylvania, 2.7% in Michigan, 2.7% in Nevada, 0.3% in Arizona and 0.3% in Georgia. Truly pathetic, in my view.

Couple that with disappointing losses in states that he was expected to carry or be competitive in (Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, & Texas), and the reality starts to set in. Joe Biden underperformed his poll numbers badly.

The only state where he overperformed was Georgia, but everywhere else he did much worse than expected; and Donald Trump did much better. A historically  unpopular incumbent, with a pandemic and an economic recession in his hand —came within a hair’s breadth of being re-elected President of the United States, even  when most “experts” were predicting a landslide loss for him. That simply does not bode well for the Democrats going forward.

If not for the chaos which engugled the second half of this year, Donald Trump would have soundly defeated Joe Biden in a convincing fashion. The Democrats just got lucky that the perfect storm hit at just the right time. 

If not for the chaos which engugled the second half of this year, Donald Trump would have soundly defeated Joe Biden in a convincing fashion.

Now, what does this mean for their future, you may ask? Can their odd coalition of young progressives, moderate suburbanites, and run-of-the-mill center-right Democrats even last past this election cycle? After all, game-changing public health crises and widespread social and civil strife don’t come around all the time. 

The task of addressing Democrats’ very different priorities will be a tough one for the President-elect to handle—one which is very likely to fail given the incredibly polarized nature of our political climate nowadays. 

If there is one thing that we all ought to know about polarized political climates, it is that someone always ends up unhappy. Which doesn’t bode well for the Democratic Party moving forward, given that any small fracture to their already fragile coalition could easily result in an open door for the Republican Party to swiftly take power again. 

Not to mention the absolutely terrible performance put forth by Democrats in down ballot races last week. Words can’t fully express how bad this is for them, for starters, barring a miracle in Georgia, this upcoming January they lost the Senate, when many people thought they had an excellent chance of flipping it. 

But alas they didn’t and the upcoming Joe Biden administration will probably have to deal with a Republican Senate led by Mitch McConell who has already vowed to be the “Grim Reaper” of any bold and transformative Democratic proposal. This alone already puts Democrats in a tough spot, given that any progressive legislation is likely dead on arrival. This spells trouble for the Democratic Party, given that a lot of their electoral success this year is owed to the high voter turnout among the youth, which overwhelmingly skewed progressive on most issues. 

To make matters worse, Democrats also lost seats in the House and when you look at how and where they lost them, things start to get even more concerning. The Party’s performance with Hispanic voters was nothing short of disastrous. It is precisely why they not only lost a couple of swing states at the presidential level, but also why they lost a bunch of the aforementioned House seats, including FL-26 — home of our very own FIU.

Unless we figure out how to speak to this critical demographic, this development foreshadows nothing but carnage for the Democrats come 2022 and 2024 when the Republicans will more than likely expand their Senate majority and retake the House with relative ease. 

But that’s not all because Republicans also managed to solidify their hold on state legislatures which will lead to further gerrymandering and make the task of maintaining their already fragile House majority even more challenging for Democrats.

As such, the outlook is starting to look even more grim for the left leaning  party. So, aside from Donald Trump’s defeat, what is there exactly to celebrate for the Democratic Party? Not much in my view. And while they might have accomplished their short term goal of defeating the Incumbent, the fact of the matter is that the future looks very bleak for the Democratic Party if corrective action is not taken soon.

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash