Voters have lost their nerve

Elections teach us nothing. Instead, each tribe dredges succour from the minutiae, proving that they had been right all along. The moderate left — here and in the US — insists that tacking to the centre is the way to beat a populist right-winger, despite the fact that Joe Biden won by the skin of his teeth, through the votes of people who couldn’t be arsed to go to the polls on polling day and against a candidate of whom the most charitable description would be ‘fundamentally deranged’. The woke far left, meanwhile, argues the reverse, implying that the tightness of the vote was down to a lack of progressive zeal, much as was the Democrat failure to capture the Senate. Everything that happens in the world today is simply grist to the mill of whoever’s side you are on.

I have read several very good articles by the likes of Andrew Sullivan — and here, by Mark Gettleson and Freddy Gray — designed, I think, to apply balm to the bruised souls of the right. American progressivism is over, right-wing populism is here to stay and the Republicans will walk it in 2024, etc. Some very pertinent points were made in these pieces but, dangerously, I found myself clinging gratefully to each reassurance, much as a spider will cling to the side of a bath as the water rises inexorably beneath it.

The broader, coarser fact remains that while 56 per cent of US voters pronounced themselves better off after four years under Donald Trump — the highest figure I can remember — they were still disinclined to vote for him. The cities burned and looted by Antifa and BLM protestors did not tilt them towards the Republicans in sufficient number. Nor did the senility of the Democratic party candidate, who was unable to remember the name of the man he was challenging, nor indeed his own granddaughter.