This 2020 election is a repudiation of BOTH Trump AND the Democratic Party.

Paul Krugman cannot understand the results of this election. That is because he is using a faulty lens. He is looking for an Either/Or interpretation of this election. There is none to be had.

This 2020 election is a repudiation of BOTH Trump AND the Democratic Party. The winner is the Republican Party, who increased their House seats and look set to hold on to the Senate. The reason is simple: if you are a conservative, you vote for the GOP senators and congress members candidates, not for GOP-lite ones.

The reason Biden received so many votes is that those additional votes are anti-Trump votes, not pro-Biden or pro-Democrats votes. Enough people understood that Trump is bad for this country and wanted him out. The only way to achieve that is to vote for Biden. This is the election that Hillary engineered and wanted, but backfired: A Democratic party with no vision and no solution but wins because the presidential opponent is an existential threat to the country. Sure, the people will vote against Trump. But they don’t have to vote Democratic Party down the line.

Elections are almost always about the economy: who gains and who loses, only during extraordinary circumstances, e.g., during wartime or a big national crisis that it is about something else.