It’s Biden Time

Let’s just call it at this point. Joe Biden is the next President. It doesn’t matter that only 98.4% of precincts in Nevada have reported in. It doesn’t matter that someone claims a couple hundred votes got misplaced somewhere. There’s no feasible path to 270 electoral votes for Donald Trump.

Do some yelling if it helps. Deep breath. In. Out. Now, jazz hands. All better? Good.

Now let’s look at what it all means. First, this wasn’t a landslide for Biden by any definition. It looks like six million more people voted for Trump than did so in 2016.  He can’t dismiss that.

Second, Republicans are keeping control of the Senate. Despite the promises (and several hundred million dollars in spending), Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins all held their seats without breaking a sweat.

Third, Democrats still control the House, but Republicans gained more seats than expected. That number will increase in the 2022 midterms.

So, where does this leave us? Well, somewhere stable and boring. It looks like this election was a course correction of sorts. Yes, voters rejected Trump. But they also rejected the far-left wing of the Democratic Party. Biden isn’t taking office with his party in control of Congress. Essentially, he’s in the same position President Obama faced after the 2010 midterms as did Clinton after 1994.

That means he has to do what his predecessors did: govern from the middle. Things like student-loan “forgiveness,” the Green New Deal, gun control, and court-packing are off the table. They’ll never clear the Senate.

If Biden wants to be successful, he’ll have to play ball with everybody. Yes, the Left is going to scream they’re not getting what they want. Who cares? If anything, this election shows that the angry Twitterati don’t represent as much of this country as they claim to.

Maybe tempers will settle and we can get some bipartisan stuff done. If not, at least nobody can do too much damage. That’s the charm of a divided government, and it looks like that’s what people want at the moment. It won’t be as entertaining, but it might actually be functional for once.

And we need a President who will keep Corn Pop in line.