While the 2020 election results weren’t as big of a blue wave as the Democratic Party had hoped for, there were still large amounts of former Republicans who switched sides this year after either regretting casting their 2016 ballot, or not voting at all four years ago.
One phrase that seemed to sum up the feelings of life-long Republicans who were turned off by Trump’s presidency was “Getting Things Back To Normal.” However, “normal” is a word that cannot be used to describe the system that brought Trump to power, or what the country will be like once he leaves.
Suburban white women, for example, a normally conservative demographic, were turned off by the President’s blatant misogyny, racism, and xenophobia, and even though they supported other traditionally Republican views, such as small government and low taxes, they decided they couldn’t support a man like this.
Biden is relatively moderate, and could keep Republican defectors like this on his side by continuing that pattern. However, the progressive wing of his party was not as successful this year, and some are blaming their stances on climate change, defunding the police, and Medicare for All for being so radical that they scared off voters. Whether or not that is true, this begs the question: did people really want change, or did they just want Trump out of office so they could tune out politics again?
Because our country’s problems do not begin and end with Trump’s presidency.
Will there be the same Democratic fervor in 2024? Or in midterms in 2022? If Biden goes left of the ideological center, will the former Republicans who voted for him this year go back? This election cycle has seen groups of anti-Trump Republicans such as The Lincoln Project — named after America’s first Republican president — or 43 Alumni for Biden — a group of Republicans who served under George W. Bush — actively push for Trump’s removal from office.
These groups have their merit, sure, and they got what they wanted, but it has to be acknowledged that the party that they so desperately want to Get Back To Normal wasn’t problem free when it was… normal.
Looking back on Republican presidents since the party’s shift to the political right a half century ago, the Republican Party can tout the success of GOP darling Ronald Reagan for how successful and personable he was, but forget about the regulations he trashed, the AIDS crisis he largely ignored, the thinly veiled racism of the war on drugs, and the debated comparisons between him and Trump (just think about his campaign slogan!).
Looking forward, GOP members of Congress haven’t done anything productive since the election results came out. They don’t seem to be enthused about a post-Trump world, and given that they’ve stayed silent about his loss, they have no interest in returning to the Republican Party of the past.
It is important to acknowledge that there is still work to be done, to fix both this country and it’s broken political system, and Biden’s win won’t protect us from Trump’s legacy, the GOP politicians praising him, the three Justices he gave life-long appointments to, or the rabid followers who were so entranced by his messages they got out their MAGA hats and went down to their polling place to scream at workers counting ballots.
It is important that all of us voters realize we have a choice to make. With Trump out of office, we could forget the past four years and act like they were just a Trump problem, and become apathetic toward politics, letting Biden continue to be moderate and letting conservatives keep their majority. Or, we could stop being afraid of progress and continue fighting for change to extinguish any last ember of Trump’s legacy and the tumultuous country that led to it.