Trump played golf while Biden was declared the winner 1:44
Editor's Note:
David Axelrod, CNN political commentator and host of "The Ax Files," was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and chief strategist for Obama's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. The opinions expressed in this comment are those of the author. .
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(CNN) ––
In the final and furious days of his re-election campaign, President Donald Trump frequently turned his public rallies into personal therapy sessions, in which the embittered and embittered president lamented what might have been.
"Four or five months ago, when we started all this before the plague hit, I had made it, I was not going to [the city] of Erie," Trump told a crowd in late October in Pennsylvania, a state. in dispute.
"I would have called them and said, 'Hey, Erie, if you get a chance, go out there and vote.'
We had this won! "
LEE: Biden will be the 46th president of the United States, projects CNN
Autopsies that analyze why Trump is the first president in 28 years to lose reelection may include Covid-19 as the closest cause.
But that's only part of the story.
Like a patient with a chronic illness, Trump's political demise was not caused by the coronavirus.
Trump lost because of the character and leadership deficiencies - underlying and known - that he had as the first reality TV president the United States has ever had.
Donald Trump defeated Donald Trump himself.
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Even before the pandemic, many Americans were already exhausted from Trump's act.
Including his seemingly endless tweets, tantrums, and conspiracy theories that dominated his days and ours.
Also the petty battles in which he seemed to delight, while chaos reigned around him.
Also, the penchant for lying so common that it fueled a fact-checker industry.
Likewise, the vanity of his self-absorption and the surprising lack of empathy for others or the apparent lack of seriousness or interest in the essence of the position.
Also, the blatant disregard for the basic rules, norms, laws and institutions of democracy.
And, perhaps worst of all, his nasty and divisive appeals to racism and white supremacism.
The contrast between Trump and Biden to face the covid-19 6:12
Trump is the first president in polling history to never achieve a positive approval rating while in office.
This indicator has historically been the most reliable to predict the vote for the reelection of a president.
(In exit polls Tuesday, Americans gave Trump an approval rating of 47%.)
From the moment he descended the golden escalators of Trump Tower in 2015 and plunged into national politics with an anti-immigrant tirade, Trump saw a path to power in the raw energy of racial and cultural divide.
This Tuesday, Trump reaped the rewards of his incendiary policy.
He won millions more votes than four years ago by generating a wave of support in small towns and rural areas.
Which led the Republicans to perform unexpectedly strong in several races.
But he also faced the political version of Newton's Third Law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
LOOK: The world reacts to the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the US elections.
Trump didn't just inflame his own base.
He also inspired a massive coalition of Americans determined to end his stormy and divisive rule.
Joe Biden was posed early on as the antidote to Trump's radical politics: a healer, not a divider.
And, this Tuesday, Biden won more votes than any other presidential candidate in history.
In addition to racking up huge margins in the cities and suburban areas where most Americans live.
Biden joined a broad coalition of women, minorities and youth.
The suburbs, once a bastion of Republican support, turned against Trump.
And Biden, a moderate Irish Catholic from the industrial heartland of Pennsylvania, won more male voters, both elderly and working class, and white voters than Hillary Clinton four years ago.
With all that, it's hard to remember that in early 2020, the relentless Trump was the betting favorite - if not the polls - to win re-election.
The economy was strong and growing, a huge benefit for a president seeking a second term.
Trump had escaped impeachment with a Senate acquittal, boasting of a prodigious war treasure, while rogue Democrats continued to search for their candidate.
Then the covid-19 arrived and led the country into a crisis.
Biden's win is extremely clear, says analyst 1:48
If Trump had handled the virus differently from the start, if he had followed the science and leveled with the country on the threat and sacrifices it required;
Had he been the 'wartime' leader you briefly alluded to in March or even if he had come out of his own battle with covid-19 a few weeks ago with greater humility and empathy for the suffering, perhaps he could have survived. to the crisis.
Instead, he couldn't resist the family urge to seize the crisis and use it as yet another opportunity to divide.
Framing the effort to dominate the virus as a battle between ordinary Americans that he claims to defend and the elite scientists and Democrats who, according to his account, wanted to unnecessarily "shut down" the country, Trump led the resistance against his own experts in public health.
His apparent calculation was that people would tire of the difficulties involved, and did not want to take the blame.
Trump did not want to strangle the economy he planned to seek re-election over, although the virus itself would.
He knew the necessary steps that would especially inflame his anti-government base.
So, after reluctantly agreeing to a brief regimen of partial closures and social distancing in the spring, he declared the mission accomplished.
So he urged prematurely to return to normality.
LEE: 7 conclusions of Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential race
Trump and his allies made the wearing of masks and social distancing a partisan issue.
He urged rebellion against Democratic governors who imposed security precautions on their states.
It turned six weeks of coronavirus briefings at the White House into controversial and sometimes bizarre theater.
The crisis made evident the cost of his chaotic and disjointed approach to governing.
Precisely, coronavirus cases skyrocketed and more than 230,000 Americans lost their lives.
In addition, millions lost their livelihoods.
By Election Day, the country would set new records for infections.
And in the midst of those overlapping crises came another.
When George Floyd, a black man, died after his neck was pressed by the knee of a Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day, the video stunned many across the country.
But instead of trying to heal America, Trump reacted to largely peaceful multiracial protests across the country by taking advantage of isolated acts of rioting and vandalism to stoke fear and declare himself president of "law and order." ».
Biden entered the race by challenging Trump for coddling white supremacists.
And he never strayed from a message of unity and reconciliation.
But with the virus, Biden's palpable empathy - born out of his own loss and pain - took on new power.
His nearly half a century of government experience, which Trump and his campaign saw as a vulnerability, proved to be a strength.
Right at a time when people are desperate for a competent response to the pandemic.
This is how New York celebrates Biden's triumph 3:24
After losing the presidential race twice, and in the final stages of his long career, this was Biden's moment.
And ultimately, the president who put all his chips into the politics of the division and practiced it with relentless ferocity discovered his limits.
The virus did not kill Trump's reelection.
He did so himself, reminding most Americans once again through his handling of the worst pandemic in a century, how expensive it can be to have a president from a grueling reality show.
Elections 2020 United States
