Impact2020: November 9, 2020

Well, we warned you the election results could take a while. This is McClatchyDC Politics Editor Adam Wollner filling in for Meta Viers. In today’s Impact2020 briefing, we take a look at the challenges immediately facing President-elect Joe Biden, the high-stakes U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia and the growing urban-rural divide that’s shaping the political landscape.

On the Ground

What comes next

Joe Biden delivered on a goal Democrats have been desperate to accomplish for four years: defeating President Donald Trump. But as McClatchy’s David Catanese and Alex Roarty report, nobody is expecting much of a honeymoon.

Following his drawn-out victory, he is immediately facing pressure “from the left and right about his proposed agenda and the roster of personnel he’ll surround himself with as he prepares to govern a bitterly divided country.” Plus the prospect of a GOP-controlled Senate and a diminished Democratic House majority “may alter his best-laid plans for a transformational presidency.”

And aside from historic crises, a potentially divided government and a sitting president who has not yet conceded the race, Biden and his party will “also have to overcome simple burnout from an activist class who have worked tirelessly the last four years and, with Trump defeated, might be ready for rest.”

“He’s going to be handed a failing economy, a global pandemic without a federal response. He’s going to be handed pretty much the worst situation that you could imagine on multiple fronts,” said Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, the outgoing chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “It’s going to be an awful lot that you have to fix before you even start to govern.”

Georgia on all our minds

The size and scope of Biden’s policy agenda for at least the next two years may rest in large part on the outcome of two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia set for Jan. 5. Democrats would need to win both seats to bring a 50-50 balance to the Senate, where Kamala Harris would cast tie-breaking votes as needed.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein and Patricia Murphy write that the showdowns between GOP Sen. David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff and GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock “will test anew the suddenly-swing status of Georgia, which is on the cusp of delivering its 16 electoral votes to … Biden.”

“Democrats served notice that they will continue the same line of attack that helped Biden triumph over … Trump nationally, with an insistent charge that Republicans botched the response to the pandemic, refuse to expand health care access and are concerned more about loyalty to Trump than common good,” Bluestein and Murphy report.

“And Republicans will lean into the same argument that’s helped them dominate every statewide election since 2006: An argument that Democrats are too extreme for Georgia and that outside groups want to pull the state into more liberal territory.”

Credit: Brynn Anderson/AP

The great divide

The widening gap between urban and rural America was one of the major factors shaping the political environment heading into the 2020 elections. In the Raleigh News & Observer, Andrew Carter examines how that division only grew in North Carolina.

Carter notes that the map in the battleground state looks fairly similar to how it shaped up in the 2016 presidential race, with the key differences being at the margins. Take some of North Carolina’s most populous counties: “In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Wake, Durham and Mecklenburg counties combined by more than 338,000 votes. Four years later, Biden won them by more than 473,000 combined votes,” Carter writes.

“That trend continued throughout North Carolina’s next-largest cities and counties, where the places that most embraced Clinton in ‘16 only became more Democratic this year,” Carter went on. “But another trend continued, too: the considerable advantage for Democrats in more urban areas disappeared completely in rural North Carolina, so much that Biden, like Clinton before him,” was on track to lose the state.

The AP has yet to call North Carolina, but Trump leads by roughly 1.4 percentage points with 99% of the expected vote in.

Listen Up

The Beyond the Bubble podcast team looks back at a wild election week on a brand new episode coming later today. Available on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts.

Trail Mix

• The Sacramento Bee’s Sophia Bollag, Hannah Wiley, Kate Irby and Kim Bojórquez round up the contenders California Gov. Gavin Newsom might consider to fill out the remainder of Harris’ term in the U.S. Senate.

• California Democrats are dismayed that Biden didn’t win the election in a landslide, Lara Korte reports for the Sacramento Bee.

• The Lexington Herald-Leader’s Daniel Desrochers explains why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the most disliked politicians in America, keeps winning.

• Susie Wiles, who ran Trump’s Florida campaigns in 2016 and 2020, said the president’s victories in the state shows that the GOP should be a “big tent” party, David Smiley writes for the Miami Herald.

• In the Miami Herald, Andres Viglucci, David Smiley, Lautaro Grinspan and Antonio Maria Delgado examine how the GOP’s drumbeat of socialism attacks against Democrats helped win over voters in Miami.

• The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Allison Steele, Jonathan Tamari and Julia Terruso look at how Biden won back two of the three Obama-Trump counties in Pennsylvania.

• The Kansas City Star’s Bryan Lowry and Jonathan Shorman note that Biden won the once-reliable GOP stronghold of Johnson County in Kansas by eight points.

• Trump is raising money for a recount in Wisconsin, but the money could be used to pay down his campaign debt instead, Molly Beck and Courtney Subramanian report for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Number of the Day

14

After voting for the winner of the last 14 presidential elections, Ohio’s bellwether streak — the longest of any state — has come to an end, Jackie Borchardt notes for the Cincinnati Enquirer.

“This is far from over”

As Biden supporters took to streets in Miami—banging pots, waving flags and dancing in celebration—in Little Havana, others demonstrated in support of Trump. “Fraud. It’s all been a big fraud,” said Maria Clemente, a Cuban-American, while waving a flag that read “Socialism Sucks”.

This story was originally published November 9, 2020 at 1:05 PM with the headline "Impact2020: November 9, 2020."