Biden Wins, All Eyes on Georgia
By Peter Olney and Rand Wilson, originally published on November 16, 2020 for the Italian labor journal Sinistra Sindacale.
After four days of tense counting, all the major news outlets in the United States called the election for Joe Biden. While Trump continues to pursue court challenges and make outrageous claims of voter fraud, it is clear that the ruling elite has already deserted him. Even his mouthpiece media outlet, Fox News, pushed back when he blasted them for projecting Biden the winner in Arizona, a key swing state, a day after the election. There is little doubt that Joe Biden will become the 46 President on January 20 and Kamal Harris will make history as the first woman and woman of color to be Vice President.
Not only did Biden prevail in the popular vote, beating Trump by more than four million votes,[1] he also recaptured three traditionally Democratic states that went for Trump in 2016: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Flipping these three states enabled Biden to exceed the 270 electoral votes needed to become President.[2]
Unfortunately, the Democrats failed to make significant gains in the number of U.S. Senate seats they control. In the House of Representatives, the other half of the U.S. bi-cameral legislative branch, Democrats remained in control but with a reduced majority. Without a majority in the Senate, a Biden legislative agenda will be severely stymied.
Despite four years of scandals, mishandling of the pandemic, support for vigilantes, and governing from the far right, Trump remained immensely popular with his largely suburban and rural base. He even gained slight upticks from 2016 in votes among Blacks, Latinos, and women. However, the biggest demographic story in this election was the gigantic increase in the aggregate number of Latino voters — 8 million. While the community is not monolithic, the great majority of those votes went to the Democrat. Latinos have now become the second largest voting block in the country surpassing African Americans.
Biden presented himself as the candidate who would return the United States to normalcy in the midst of a pandemic crisis. He offered no radical economic or social program to deal with the emerging economic crisis or the raging debate and national protest over the conduct of American police in communities of color. His supporters made sure that the Democratic Party’s platform did not endorse a publicly financed health care system (Medicare for All), a Green New Deal to deal with climate change, or major reforms in policing. As in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the Biden campaign failed to offer a program with well-defined alternatives that would appeal to the U.S. working class. Biden managed nationwide to improve the Democratic share of union household votes at 57 percent but in two key states, Ohio and Pennsylvania, union households voted for Trump 57 percent and 53 percent respectively. This is a trend that the labor movement must be very concerned about.[3]
But it is not only program and vision that wins elections. On-the-ground organization and voter contact are crucial. It was surprising that only a few national unions — most notably UNITE HERE[4] — put their leaders, staff and members out knocking on the doors of voters. This relatively small, but feisty national union, whose membership ranks have been decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic, worked in key battleground states like Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Most other unions, in an over-abundance of caution due to the pandemic, did not mobilize their members to visit voters at their residences. Tweets, texts, emails, and post cards are important, but nothing can substitute for direct face-to-face contact.
The labor movement and the left face a huge challenge with President Biden. Based on his record in Congress and as Vice President will likely govern as a classic neo-liberal. During the campaign, he promised Wall Street that they have “nothing to fear” from his administration. Our challenge is even more complicated if the Senate Republicans remains in control. Fortunately, because of quirks in the State of Georgia’s voting regulations, the movement has an opportunity to pick up two Senate seats for the Democrats in a special election on January 5. If Democrats win those two seats, then the Senate would be split 50–50. That would make newly elected Vice President Kamala Harris the deciding vote and a major power broker.
Labor has a chance for redemption, but only if all unions get their leaders and members off the bench and onto the field in Georgia. To paraphrase a great Ray Charles tune, “Georgia is on Our Mind.”[5] While it is expected that labor and our community and environmental allies will mobilize to play a major role in the outcome of those two races, the odds of winning both seats are still very long.
The short-term strategic objective of defeating Donald Trump has thankfully been achieved. However, his more than 71 million votes prove that he was only the symptom, not the problem. “Trumpism” will undoubtedly live on. The door-to-door, worker-to-worker, “ground game” in Arizona and other battleground states was the key to winning very slim margins of Democratic votes for Biden. Now labor must redeploy similar strategies of worker-to-worker organizing to talk extensively with Trump supporters. Failure to do so ignores the very troubling existential threat to the labor movement’s future of Trump’s growing working-class support.
[1] As of November 11, the popular vote count was 76,226,857 for Biden to 71,589,827 for Trump. https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president. Despite the record breaking election turnout, only 66% of the voting eligible population actually participated. http://www.electproject.org/2020g
[2] As of November 11, the electoral tally was 279 Biden, 214 Trump.
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html
[4] UNITE HERE is the merger of clothing and textile and the hotel and restaurant employee’s unions
[5] Ray Charles — Georgia On My Mind, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIp9TwSEgFg
