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Trump, Biden, Harris talk about unity. Don’t hold your breath.

Harry November 8, 2024

WASHINGTON – Good news: Everyone wants a victorious one Donald Trump to someone who is defeated Kamala Harris We are talking about national unity.

Bad news: Don’t hold your breath.

It is true and reassuring that the turmoil and denial that followed the 2020 election are nowhere to be seen this time. Vice President Harris accepted the admission hours after the final polls closed. President Joe Biden He called Trump to offer help with the transition. There is no sign of any serious effort to delay or disrupt Electoral College count.

There will be no repeat of January 6, 2021. Attack on the Capitol This shocked the world.

“We’re going to help our country heal,” Trump told enthusiastic supporters at his campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida, late Tuesday night. On Wednesday afternoon, Harris told supporters, a more subdued crowd gathered at Howard University, that she had called Trump. congratulate him.

“I also told him that we would assist him and his team in the transition process and achieve a peaceful transfer of power,” he said. But he made clear that accepting the results does not mean embracing the other side’s policies on the economy, abortion rights or any other issue.

“In accepting this election, I am not accepting the struggle, the struggle, the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for justice and for the dignity of all people that fueled this campaign,” he continued, his voice rising. “This is a fight I will never give up.”

The election results were more decisive than almost anyone expected, but they did not alleviate the situation main differences On the role of the government and the behavior of national leaders that have fragmented the country’s political landscape in the last three elections.

And perhaps a fourth in 2028.

Least scarce commodity in DC: Trust

What could change this?

Even if Democrats are shaken, don’t count on capitulation lose the white house and seeing support from core parts of the coalition dwindle. “Setbacks are inevitable, but giving up is inexcusable,” Biden said Thursday, a phrase he repeated twice for emphasis.

Instead, both sides will likely need to make concessions. Democrats in Congress could move in Trump’s direction on an issue like doing more to secure the southern border; Many Americans say this alarms them.

Trump will also need to reach out to Democrats; for example, to satisfy their worst fears that he would continue his desire and promise to exercise dictatorial powers. wanting “revenge” against those who cross it.

The words he said after his win were all about unity and solidarity.

“It’s time to put the divisions of the last four years behind us,” he said. “It’s time to unite. And we will try. We will try. We have to try. And it will happen.”

But his opponents doubt the protests will follow. They say confrontation is part of Trump’s political DNA, pointing to the partisan toughness and turmoil of his first term in office.

Consider this: Trump still hasn’t admitted that he lost the 2020 election.

During his first two years in the White House, he relied on Republican majorities in the House and Senate to enact his agenda. In 2017, the massive tax cut package passed Congress without a single Democratic vote; congressional analysts say he may well agree to an extension of the tax cut next year.

Status of two federal cases after Trump’s victory

The Justice Department has a long-standing precedent against prosecuting sitting presidents.

When Democrats regained control of Congress in the 2018 midterm elections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer clashed with Pelosi during their first sittings at the White House, and the House ultimately impeached her twice.

Achieving even a modicum of unity or making serious efforts to jointly find solutions to the country’s biggest problems will require a certain level of trust between parties, which has become one of the capital’s scarcest commodities.

Instead, his partisans predict that Trump will be more combative as the 47th president than Trump was as the 45th president. First, difficulties within the GOP will make him less constrained, a party he reshaped.

HE emboldened by his victory − Unlike the results in 2016, this time he retained both the popular vote and the Electoral College − and is more familiar with the tools of power. Angered by White House staff and establishment figures in his cabinet, he went public with himself after the Jan. 6 insurrection, telling aides he was determined to surround himself with loyalists this time around.

Biden’s message as he heads for the exit

No one knows better than the 46th president how difficult it can be to achieve national unity.

Biden, who was elected on the promise of closing the capital’s poisonous abyss, saw a Sisyphus-like struggle taking place. He now faces a share of blame from many Democrats for the disastrous Election Day.

“I know for some people this is a time of triumph,” he told an audience of Cabinet members and White House staff gathered in the Rose Garden on a warm fall day. “For others, it is a time of loss; campaigns or contests of rival visions.”

During the campaign, he said he promised a “peaceful and orderly transition” to Trump, whom he described as dangerous to democracy itself.

“We accept the choice the country has made,” he said, calling on citizens to “see each other not as enemies but as fellow Americans.”

And with that he said, “lowering the temperature.”