What the 2020 Results Really Mean: Q&A With Laura Flanders

Democrats won the White House but lost ground in the House and might fall short in the Senate. Is that a repudiation of progressive policies?  Evidence of the limits of Joe Biden’s appeal? Or none of the above? City Limits executive editor Jarrett Murphy speaks with journalist and commentator Laura Flanders about how she interprets the results, and what she’s looking for next in Washington and New York’s 2021 mayoral race.

Polls had barely closed on Nov. 3 when the post-mortem on Election 2020 began. What does it mean that Joe Biden’s victory was less sweeping than the polls had indicated, that a sizeable minority of Blacks and Latinos voted for Donald Trump, that Democrats lost ground in the House and will need a double win in George’s Senate runoffs to eke out a narrow majority in that body? Maybe the left had pushed the party too far out of the mainstream. Perhaps Biden was just not that much more magnetic than Hillary Clinton had been. Or was it that the GOP had a better ground game? (Let’s not forget the distinct possibility that Trump actually won the election in a landslide before it was stolen through a Communist plot engineered by the ghost of Hugo Chavez.)

All the analysis is, of course, terribly unidimensional and very premature. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t shaping media takes and, perhaps, the contours of the incoming Biden administration. It also could influence the conduct of the upcoming 2021 New York City mayoral race, where a city that nurtured the recent ascendance of the left will decide how those sentiments square with the aftermath of a public health crisis and fiscal emergency.

To get a sense of what we know and, more important, what we don’t, City Limits sat down on Monday with the veteran commentator and award-winning journalist Laura Flanders to talk about Nov. 3, Jan. 20, and what questions she’ll be asking about the days and decisions that follow.