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Amid record turnout, Biden seemed sure to win the popular vote, possibly with an outright majority—a resounding statement by any standard. But many Democrats expected more. They believed that voters had soured on Trump and his party, that his mishandling of the pandemic and divisive style had alienated a wide swath of voters, that a new political era was about to be born and Trumpism banished to history's dustbin. Instead, they awoke to a different reality. "Democrats always argued, 'If more people voted, we would win,'" says GOP strategist Brad Todd, co-author of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics. "Well, guess what? Everybody voted, and it didn't help the Democrats. There is a multiracial, working-class ethos that is animating the new Republican coalition."
在創紀錄的投票人數中，拜登似乎肯定會贏得普選，可能會以絕對多數獲勝——無論以何種標準衡量，這都是一個引人注目的聲明。但是許多民主黨人期望得更多。他們認為，選民們對特朗普和他的政黨產生了反感，他對新冠和分裂形式的處理不當疏遠了一大批選民，一個新的政治時代即將誕生，川普主義將被丟進歷史的垃圾桶。但是相反，他們看到了一個不一樣的現實。布拉德·托德是共和黨戰略家，同時也是《大反抗：重塑美國政治的民粹主義聯盟的內幕》一書的合著者，他說：“民主黨人總是說，‘如果有更多人投票，我們就會贏，’但是呢，你猜怎么著？大家都投票了，但并沒有對民主黨起到幫助，有一種多種族的、工人階級的精神正在為新的共和黨聯盟注入活力?！?/p>
As the votes were tallied into the following day, the candidates' positions fell along predictable lines. The challenger encouraged the core exercise of democracy to continue, while the President tried to stop it. Biden's camp urged patience; Trump voiced unfounded suspicions about fraud and cast unwarranted doubt on still incoming returns. Despite widespread fears of chaos, the vote was mostly peaceful and devoid of major irregularities. The President's baseless declaration of victory was a sign that the test he has posed to American institutions isn't over yet.
隨著第二天計票的進行，候選人的排名也在意料當中。挑戰者鼓勵民主的核心運作繼續下去，而總統卻試圖叫停。拜登陣營敦促人們保持耐心，而特朗普則對欺詐行為和仍在增長的票數提出了毫無根據的懷疑。雖然人們普遍擔心會出現混亂，但投票基本上是和平的，并沒有出現重大違規行為。但是總統毫無根據的勝利宣言表明，他對美國機構構成的考驗尚未結束。
Biden's campaign was predicated on a return to the pre-Trump political order, a "normal" that may always have been a figment of the collective imagination. If he emerges as the winner, his achievement—toppling an incumbent who manipulated the levers of government to try to gain an advantage, and made voter suppression a core campaign strategy— shouldn't be discounted. But even if he becomes the next President, it seems clear that he will be governing Trump's America: a nation unpersuaded by kumbaya calls for unity and compassion, determined instead to burrow ever deeper into its hermetic bubbles. Win or lose, Trump has engineered a lasting tectonic shift in the American political landscape, fomenting a level of anger, resentment and suspicion that will not be easy for his successor to surmount.
拜登的競選是建立在回歸特朗普上臺前的政治秩序的基礎之上的，這種“正常”可能永遠都是集體想象的虛構。如果他贏了，那么他的成就——推翻了操縱政府杠桿試圖獲得優勢并將鎮壓選民作為競選的核心策略的現任總統——不應被低估。但是，即使他成為了下一任總統，似乎很明顯他將治理的是特朗普領導下的美國：一個沒有被主張團結和同情的圣歌所說服、反而決心在自己封閉的泡泡中越挖越深的國家。無論輸贏，特朗普已經在美國政治格局中制造了持久的結構性轉變，激起了一定程度的憤怒、怨恨和懷疑，繼任者很難克服這些。
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