We predicted in last week’s column that Biden would win in a landslide or by a narrow margin and that if the latter occurred, Trump would file numerous lawsuits. He has kept the courts busy, but they have largely shut him out. Trump has threatened to go to the U.S. Supreme Court but has outlined no legal basis for doing so.

The Election is over and the fat man and lady have sung. With the breakout turnout of Black and other Americans, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are headed for the White House. For as in the Democratic presidential primary, African American voters delivered the political death blow to our autocratic President Trump.

Blacks carried Biden across the finish line in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while most Democrats were having bouts of anxiety and depression. Latinx citizens proved critical to his lead in Arizona and Nevada and were crucial parts of his support in many other states. The orange man is done.

To his credit, Donald Trump ran a smart, ruthless campaign of personal smears, disinformation, and skullduggery that he began the day after his inauguration. He never took his foot off his political accelerator. The genius of his strategy is that Trump assiduously courted prominent Black and Latinx leaders and celebrities while he defamed their groups.

He put Latinx children in cages after separating them from their parents. Trump told racist jokes about African Americans and publicly attacked Black and Latinx women while he or his staff met with Van Jones (CNN anchor), and the hip-hop artists: Ice Cube, Lil’ Wayne, and Kanye West. He pretended to listen to Ice Cube and Lil’ Wayne’s plans for Black social uplift. In the meantime, Kanye received a multimillion-dollar payment from the Trump administration’s paycheck protection program (PPP).

The Democrats and the Democratic professional class, to their discredit, relied too heavily on so-called polling experts to chart and project their political tactics. Their naïveté and the pandemic have prevented them from doing the arduous on-the-ground work, door-to-door canvassing, small group organizing, and follow-up. Hopefully, they learned this time.

The aforementioned significantly aided Biden triumphs in Michigan and Wisconsin. In Michigan, Gov. Whitmer’s personal popularity was very helpful, and her Black Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II has a long and distinguished record of community organizing for MoveOn.org and several community-based organizations in the Detroit metropolitan area.

He was a major factor in the increased African American turnout in Detroit and the surrounding areas which put Biden over the top (where Hillary failed in 2016). In Wisconsin, a Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizer, Frank Sensabaugh (also known as Frank Nitty), was instrumental in dramatically increasing Black turnout, especially among those who were irregular voters and those who had never voted.

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a White police officer shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times, causing civil unrest, Rev. Jay Kirby and a group of young African American pastors engaged in aggressive voter registration, via block parties and other gatherings. Kenosha’s heavy Biden vote last Tuesday reflects the success of these street-level initiatives, which also occurred in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 Our frequent contacts with key political informants in several battleground states during the past week revealed the extent of the grassroots operation that functioned on Biden’s behalf. Trump had a similar setup for White working-class voters that had been on the ground far longer, but their numbers simply were not there.

When Trump veered too far into the embrace of White extremist groups (e.g., Proud Boys, Watchmen, Nazis, and Ku Klux Klan), the trade-off was the loss of White Independents and White females in some states.

Biden’s inclusive campaign approach served him well in the last stages of his campaign.

His assembling of a legal armada, headed by Bob Bauer, President Obama’s White House Counsel, has armored him for any nefarious legal activities that Trump may pursue. Biden has been in the race to win it from the beginning, and he has done so. Now the real challenge begins, healing a nation torn asunder by Trump’s despotic activities.

Democrats must exercise patience as this process winds to its conclusion. They would be wise to rethink their future political plans and how they assess the electorate. Traditional polling methodologies have failed in successive presidential elections and are seeping down-ballot. Therefore, Democrats need a comprehensive reevaluation of their political plans for the future.

But for now, Democrats need to stand steadfast behind Biden as he fends off Trump’s attempts to drag the race through the courts and steal the election irrespective of the vote count.