Biden win is both big and small
In the early days of 1999, Sen. Joseph Biden was walking through the basement of the Senate’s Richard Russell Office Building when he was approached by a reporter.
Earlier in the day, Republican Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania had ventured an opinion on the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, which was then going on. It’s sufficient to say that Santorum, arch conservative that he was, had come hard at Clinton.
Santorum was a political brawler. One of a handful of Republican senators eager to have Monica Lewinsky testify from the Senate floor, Santorum’s dagger was always out in those days, the dawn of Republican derangement.
The senator from Delaware, a Democrat, stopped, listened. The reporter related the Santorum position. Biden smiled wanly, then said, before walking away, “Senator Santorum, a great American.”
I was reminded of this two-decade-old encounter the other day. Biden, now the president-elect, turned aside a press conference question about Donald Trump and his loyalists putting up potential roadblocks to the peaceful transfer of presidential power on Jan. 20, 2021.
The press conference question involved Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who that day had said something truly delusional – that he was looking forward to the transition … to a second Trump administration.
Biden grinned. “Secretary of State. Secretary of State Pompeo.” There was a dismissive tone to his voice, and the smile, again.
“Senator Santorum, a great American.”
Of all the Democrats who seriously aspired to the White House in 2020, only Joe Biden could have beaten Donald Trump. Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect, was too much a product of her native California; Mayor Pete of South Bend, though extremely talented, was too young; as for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Trump would have mopped the floor with them: Neither would have carried Pennsylvania, not with their position on fracking.
As it was, Biden almost blew carrying the state. His misstep on the fracking issue in the second and last debate with Trump cost him dearly, I suspect. Give Trump credit: he barreled through the last two weeks of the campaign like a champ.
Given everything, including the pandemic, the collapse of the economy, his malfeasance in office, and his personal demeanor, Trump should have been buried under an avalanche of votes. Instead, the outcome, though decisive for Biden, was closer than it should have been.
Biden performed just well enough to win Pennsylvania, which, with its 20 Electoral College votes, really was the linchpin of the whole election.
What with all the outlandish talk by Trumpites of voter fraud in Philadelphia, it is startling to realize that Biden underperformed in the City of Brotherly Love.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton captured 84% of the Philadelphia vote. Biden captured 81%.
Western Pennsylvania went heavily for Trump, but not always with same degree of confidence as four years ago. Trump did better in Westmoreland and Fayette counties in 2020 – 66.7% to 65.9% in Fayette, for instance – but slightly worse everywhere else.
He was a tick off in Greene County, 71.1% this year, 71.4% in 2016. Ditto in Somerset County, where his percentage slipped from 78.8 in 2016 to 77.6 in 2020.
Washington County went for Trump 63-37 in 2016; this year he enjoyed a 60.7 to 38.1 advantage.
Over east, “Scranton Joe” gathered 53.7% of the vote in his native Lackawanna County, two points higher than Hillary Clinton’s winning percentage in 2016.
Biden’s Pennsylvania victory was thin, but not as thin as Trump’s margin four years ago.
More than a few experienced pols harbored serious concerns that Biden could pull it off. One was Sen. Robert Casey. Casey recently told the New York Times that after a discussion with the candidate about campaign strategy, he “worried” that Biden’s theme that the soul of the country was on trial “wasn’t hard-hitting enough.”
But, he said, Biden “was prescient in his ability, even in the primaries when almost nobody else was doing it, to say, ‘We have to bring the country back together.'”
Nationally, more votes were cast for Joe Biden than any candidate in history. And only five presidents-elect in the past 100 years got a higher percentage of eligible voters.
In the aftermath of the election, with the Republican Party in full revolt against American democracy, Biden had carried on coolly and calmly. He’s just what the country needs, a steady, competent hand after four years of Trumpian turbulence and treachery.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. His latest book “JFK Rising” is available on Amazon. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.