Now that the election results are mostly in, we can begin the reflection process and start to draw some preliminary conclusions.

The democrats again ran a conservative, pro-corporate, establishment candidate for president and again, the performance at the ballot box was disappointing compared to the polls. Biden did win, but it was a narrow victory, not the landslide we needed to reverse Trumpism. In fact, it's close enough that the courts may be able to interfere. At the very least, it allows Trump voters to believe that there is still hope because the country did not soundly reject their candidate and their ideology.

The democrats were projected to retake the senate but this did not happen. McConnell crushed his establishment dem competitor and will remain majority leader. This means there will be gridlock and the little bit of progress that Biden may have been willing to make will be shut down by the old turtle.

The democrats very much under-performed in the house. They were projected to expand their majority but the opposite occured. It looks like the majority is safe but seats were lost. At this moment, the democratic party is blaming this mediocre performance on progressives and the idea that the party went too far left. This is absurd.

Every single democrat who supported Med4All won in the house. The only loses were among the moderates who refuse to support popular policies. The Biden campaign ran a strategy of chasing the disaffected republicans and moderates. They embraced political adversaries such as John Kasich. Kasich was supposed to deliver Ohio, but Trump won the state comfortably. Meanwhile Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar both over performed the polls and helped to deliver the critical states of Michigan and Minnesota. Florida, paradoxically, voted for Trump but also voted for $15 minimum wage. Biden had this in his platform but did not run on it. Perhaps a candidate who would have truly embraced this policy could have secured Florida. In several red states, cannabis was legalized or steps in that direction were made. Neither candidate supported this policy but it is a clear winner.

After the blatant corruption and mismanagement of the Trump administration, this election should have been a slam dunk. Instead, it was a narrow victory for Biden, a failure to secure the senate, and bitter loses in the house. Despicable. Even after a pandemic, an impeachment, and all the disrespect Trump has shown the troops, the dems still find a way to fail. If not for the pandemic, I truly believe Trump would have won handily.

I have a theory as to why this happened. Hear me out. When the democrats run a conservative against the republican conservative incumbent, it takes the wind out of the sails of the campaign. People who dislike conservatives are much less enthusiastic and some, such as myself, refuse to support him. People who do like conservatives are mostly going to choose the republican conservative because they feel more comfortable with that party. So the strategy of moving right and chasing after conservative voters suppresses votes from the left and has very minimal effectiveness of getting votes from across the aisle.

I hope the democrats will look at these results and intelligently learn from their mistakes but I have very little confidence that they will. Instead, they will blame those who actually fight for the people rather than submit to the corporate interests.