Original title: What exactly did Trump lose to when the U.S. Electoral College voted Biden?
December 15 Democratic presidential candidate Biden won the number of votes needed to be elected President of the United States in the United States Electoral College.
This means that the current president Trump’s re-election campaign has failed, and he will become the fourth president to lose his re-election since World War II.
The next key node for this election is on January 6, 2021. At that time, the Senate and the House of Representatives will hold a joint meeting to officially announce the winner of the general election, so that the process of electing the new president will be completed.
The election results are difficult to reverse
On the 14th local time, Biden obtained the 270 votes needed to be elected President of the United States in the electoral college.
More than five weeks ago, several mainstream media in the United States had estimated Biden’s victory; American media had previously predicted that Biden would win 306 electoral votes, while Trump expected to win 232.
However, the controversy surrounding the election results has not subsided. Trump frequently questioned the fraud of the election, and his team and supporters have also launched lawsuits in several states.
“The voter vote on December 14th is officially confirmed. There was a farce or appeal before, which was not meaningful. Sun Chenghao, an assistant researcher at the United States Institute of Modern International Relations, China, told the reporter of Chinanews.com. The U.S. presidential election adopts an indirect electoral system of the electoral college system. Votes generally respect the general election results of the state and cast a vote reflecting public opinion.
“Biden’s advantage is obvious,” Sun Chenghao said that even if some voters “blessly” converted to Trump, it is impossible to reverse the election results.
hiding a larger layout behind it?
“This election is fraud,” and Trump has publicly accused him more than once before the Electoral College vote and has filed lawsuits with his supporters in the states and the Supreme Court. However, several lawsuits have been dismissed.
On December 9, Texas filed a lawsuit to the Supreme Court to overturn the election results of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, which was supported by Trump and 17 states. However, the Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit on the 11th.
CNN noted that this is the strongest proof yet that Trump “has no chance to overturn the election results in court”.
Against this background, why does Trump still insist on accusing election fraud? Liu Weidong, a researcher at the American Institute of Social Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, analyzed that Trump insisted on this position, firstly, to continue to raise funds and lay the foundation for him to continue to influence American politics after leaving office. Secondly, he needed to continue to express his corresponding position to voters, that is, never compromise, which was his landmark performance.
From Trump’s personal point of view, Sun Chenghao pointed out that he is a president with a strong “fighting spirit”. He once said that “life is a battle that is a battle that is lost or won”, and his values are like this.
The biggest reason why supporters defect
“The 2020 election has changed, but Trump has not changed.” In October, the New York Times speculated the reason why Trump might lose. Trump’s hope to run as an “outsider” this time seems to be far from what people expect.
Trump “laughs to the end” with 306 electoral votes in the 2016 election. Sun Chenghao said, “At that time, anti-establishment and anti-traditional sentiments in the United States were very strong, and Trump, as an ‘outsider’, may have released some distinctive signals.”
However, the BBC pointed out that in 2020, the previous supporters of Trump have begun to waver. The article said that Trump also failed to attract more support outside his core camp, and “He hardly tried to win support for the 20 states of the Democratic Party – that part of the ‘blue America'”.
In this election, the “rust belt” (traditional industrial areas in the northeast, central and western and Great Lakes regions of the United States) also fell to Biden’s Democratic Party. Sun Chenghao stressed, “This proves that Trump’s so-called policies such as exclusionism, populism, and manufacturing return in the past four years have not given these swing states real benefits. These swing state sluggles also dealt a fatal blow to Trump.”
However, several experts pointed out that the main reason is still the coronavirus epidemic. In 2020, the coronavirus epidemic swept the world, and the United States, which was the first in comprehensive strength, handed in the worst answer – the world’s largest number of infections, deaths, and its economy is facing a “dark winter”.
Sun Chenghao said that Trump proposed that there are two pillars of “America First”, one is home security, the other is economic security. Before the epidemic, he did a lot of work in both aspects, such as implementing a tough immigration policy and building a border wall for local security. On the economic side, he also implemented some policies to stimulate the economy, such as tax reform, “but the epidemic basically destroyed both pillars”.
“From a voter perspective, the pandemic has spurred the enthusiasm of Democratic voters to vote and has also turned more independent voters to the Democratic Party, because Trump’s anti-epidemic measures and his economic measures are not satisfactory.” Liu Weidong said that in 2020, Trump did not do anything significantly on the economy, and he continued to provoke a “trade war”, which reduced Wall Street’s support for him a lot.
Trump’s last month in office, may it become “garbage time”?
At present, it has been nearly three weeks since Biden started the transition process. Trump’s “White House Time” has entered the countdown before he was sworn in as president.
Sun Chenghao believes that Trump’s administration has entered “garbage time”, and it is difficult to predict what he will do next. In Liu Weidong’s view, what Trump can do is to continue to introduce some unexpected policies, “let the Biden administration ride the tiger after it comes to power”.
Analysis points out that even if Trump leaves the White House on January 20, 2021, he will not leave the American political arena. He stated at a campaign rally on December 5, 2020 that 2024 “will win back to the White House again” as a signal that he may run again.
In fact, there are no legal obstacles for Trump to seek to run for president again. Grover Cleveland is the 22nd and 24th president in American history, and he is the only president to be elected twice and has not been elected for consecutive terms.
Looking back on Trump’s years in office, Liu Weidong said, “Pneadly, he has indeed fulfilled some of the promises made when he ran for the election. He is more effective and has a great impact on the traditional mechanism.
Negatively, Trump’s tenure brought a lot of chaos and broke many traditions, while also stimulating greater confrontation between American society and both parties. All of these put a lot of pressure on his successor.
