Election Special: Biden’s victory is a reminder of how badly Clinton blew it in 2016
Total failure.
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Democratic nominee Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States, according to multiple news agencies.
The former vice president on Saturday was declared the projected winner in key battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Nevada, securing the necessary electoral votes to win the White House.
Thus ends an exceptionally bitter election cycle. Oddly enough, though, with the lion’s share of both the electoral college and the popular vote reportedly going to Biden, the 2020 contest, for as heated as it was, ended up not being much of a contest at all.
If anything, Biden’s projected victory says nearly as much about him as it says about the 2016 Democratic nominee. Indeed, considering how handily Biden appears to have cleaned up in 2020, despite being neither a particularly gifted nor especially exciting candidate, one can't help but be reminded of Hillary Clinton’s failure from four years ago.
For starters, Biden is on track to win anywhere between 279 to 306 electoral votes. Clinton lost in 2016 with just 232. Biden is also expected to win as many as 77 million total votes, which is the most of any presidential candidate in U.S. history. It is also roughly 7 million more than President Trump is expected to win in this election cycle.
Not bad for a guy who eschewed traditional election-year arena events in favor of sparsely attended, socially distanced gatherings. Not bad for a guy who spent much of the campaign holed up somewhere, far away from the eyes and ears of voters and the press.
Compared to Trump, Biden barely campaigned. Yet the former vice president nevertheless inspired massive turnout. As in 2016, voters this year seem as interested in casting a ballot against Trump as for the Democratic nominee. But, again, this is why Biden’s declared triumph calls to mind Clinton’s defeat. She had every conceivable advantage when she ran against the GOP nominee in 2016, including comparable levels of anti-Trump enthusiasm, and she still could not best a former game show host for control of the executive branch.
Biden, on the other hand, actually had to contend with multiple election-year obstacles while running against the same candidate (this time an incumbent!), including a competitive Democratic primary, a global pandemic, and the fact that, unlike in 2016, Trump has a list of accomplishments in government that he can point to, including the eradication of the Islamic State, key peace deals in the Middle East, and a relatively strong economy. Even with those hurdles, the former vice president reportedly did this week what only 10 other presidential candidates have done: He defeated an incumbent for control of the White House.
Seeing Biden declared the winner of the 2020 election, one wonders whether the entire Trump presidency would have been avoided had Democrats nominated anyone but Clinton four years ago. Though we will never really know the answer to that, the apparent decisiveness of Biden’s projected victory this week suggests the answers is: Yes, Democrats would have easily won in 2016 had they put up someone even as unimpressive and uninspiring as the former vice president. They just managed somehow to nominate a candidate more incompetent and unpleasant than even Trump.
In a way, Biden’s likely triumph is reminiscent of when Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont flamed out in the 2020 Democratic primary. The senator’s failure revealed he was never that strong of a candidate. Clinton just made him look like one.
Likewise, Biden himself is no great shakes when it comes to presidential politics. After all, this is his third run at the White House. But even Biden can apparently muster enough competence and know-how to defeat Trump. Compared to Clinton, the former vice president looks like Machiavelli.
With the 2020 election now come and gone, Clinton’s failure has never looked so complete. It will now always be an indictment on her poor judgment and inabilities that she and her entrenched network of cronies and establishment swamp creatures failed badly where Biden appears to have succeeded even while half-asleep.