16
divided and polarized–if not more so–in 2020 than it was in 2016. In 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton to win the presidency by capturing the electoral college count 306 to 232–even though he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes (Clinton received 66 million votes (51%), Trump received 63 million votes (49%)).32 In 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump to win the presidency by capturing both the electoral college count 306 to 232 and the popular vote by eight million (Biden - 51%, Trump - 47%). Given there was no tick of upward mobility during the four years Trump was president, but in contrast a badly handled Covid-19 pandemic, the election of Joe Biden to the presidency of the United States seemed less about addressing the deep structural problems in America than a referendum on Trump himself. And given the fact that this most recent election turned out the most voters ever in a presidential election (160 million) and the highest percentage of voter turnout since 1900 (66.9%), it is ludicrous to claim this division is going away anytime soon.33
Biden has, of course, said he will reach out across the aisle to be a president for all of America; but odds are he will first have to satisfy his base, as those were the people who put him into office in the first place. This means political realities will force Biden to first tamper down the anger and resurrect calm within his own party, before ever reaching across the aisle. His first administrative appointments confirmed this approach: Ron Kain as Chief of Staff, Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State, Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence, Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, Linda Thomas-Greenfield as United Nations Ambassador, John Kerry as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary.
Later appointments merely built upon the first: Lloyd Austin as Defense Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas as Homeland Security Secretary, Xavier Becerra as Health and Human Services Secretary, Marcia Fudge as Housing and Human Services Secretary, Pete Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary, and Jennifer Granholm as Energy Secretary. Securing his base by signaling a return to the “normalcy” of the Obama-Biden playbook, Biden is hoping to calm the fears of both Americans and American allies that the US was headed towards becoming a rogue authoritarian state that played off deep structural problems related to race and xenophobia at home to disrupt peace abroad. Biden is thinking if he can just get that done, his presidency will be a success; if doing so consequentially results in a softening of the divide, all the more so. But quite easily, and most strategically, the part about reaching across the aisle can be left for a second term or the next president.
Of course, the other “47%” of Americans won’t see it that way. They have seen–and will continue to see–these appointments as arising out of the “deep state,” from the very people who caused their problems and then stood in the way of Trump’s attempt at remedy. Anger will harden and conspiracy theories will continue, all of which open the door for exploitation by Trump and the Republican Party loyalists whom he controls and who in turn control the party. And no doubt, Trump will play to his base through options that keep him or his acolytes in play for a return run four years from now. Trump knows, and Republican party leaders realize, he can turn out the vote: 74 million votes represent a huge number of supporters, and a number not that far away from Biden’s 80 million. A stumble or bumble here, or issue or catastrophe there, across the next four years could once again put the Republican party leadership–led or anointed by none other than Trump himself– back in the driver seat, even if he’s calling shots
from a jail cell (which alone would set the base aflame).
Already this is evident. According to The Financial Times, "Republicans loyal to Donald Trump raised record sums of money in the first
three months of this year, even as U.S.
corporations said they would pause or stop political giving after the January 6 siege on the