Former Bush speechwriter: Trump has suffered a 'staggering repudiation'
On Friday afternoon, as former Vice President Joe Biden’s lead in the Pennsylvania vote count continued to increase, he appeared to be on his way to a victory in the 2020 presidential election. Many liberal and progressive pundits have lamented that the election wasn’t the across-the-board blue tsunami they were hoping for. But conservative John Podhoretz, in an article for Commentary Magazine, lays out some reasons why he considers the election a vehement rejection of President Donald Trump.
“The 2020 election, it appears, was a staggering repudiation of Donald Trump,” Podhoretz argues. “Of him. Personally. You’re not hearing this right now because the right is in denial about the results…. And you’re not hearing it because liberals are too busy expressing continuing shock and outrage inside their bubble…. that anyone could even cast one vote for the man. And yet, it’s true.”
The 59-year-old Podhoretz, who was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush, goes on to cite this year’s heavy voter participation as evidence of how vehemently Trump was “repudiated.”
“Joe Biden is on track to receive more than 80 million votes — nearly 20% higher than Barack Obama’s previous record in 2008,” Podhoretz explains. “Hillary Clinton received 66 million votes in 2016. Biden may best her total by close to 30%. Clinton won 20 states in 2016. Obama won 24 states in 2012. Biden may end up winning 25 states.”
Podhoretz writes that “the public seems to have seen fit to deny Biden a Democratic Senate” and contends that “there’s little or no enthusiasm for the man.” Rather, Podhoretz says, tens of millions of voters were motivated by their tremendous disdain for Trump.
Biden, according to Podhoretz, “just wasn’t Donald Trump — and that proved to be enough to generate 80-plus million votes. That followed a 2018 election in which 62 million Democrats cast ballots and flipped the House blue — 9 million more than Republicans and a level of turnout for a midterm the likes of which we’ve hardly ever seen.”
Podhoretz wraps up his article by noting that Maine’s Susan Collins, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and other incumbent GOP senators who were “thought to be doomed or nearly doomed” were not voted out of office. But millions of voters, he says, were determined to rid the White House of Donald J. Trump.
“The fact that Washington Republicans weren’t ditched — combined with Biden’s colorlessness and lack of an agenda — means that the astonishing turnout among Democrats and independents was driven by one overwhelming objective: to drive Donald Trump from office,” Podhoretz writes. “And that, it seems, is the only clear message of the 2020 election.”