What Joe Biden won — and what he didn’t

Former Vice President Joe Biden will be the 46th US president. He’s the first to defeat an incumbent president in 28 years, and he did it in part by unifying the Democratic Party against Donald Trump, bringing members of the party’s left wing into his campaign after beating Bernie Sanders in the primary, and crafting an aggressive policy platform.

But Biden’s agenda will most likely be met by a Republican-controlled Senate, whose leader, Mitch McConnell, presided over the stonewalling of the previous Democratic president’s agenda and likely intends to do so again. This despite the fact that many of Biden’s policies enjoy the support of most Americans, and McConnell’s Senate caucus represents a minority of them.

In other words, Biden’s decisive victory margin of several million votes was basically good enough for a stalemate. In this video, Vox editor-at-large Ezra Klein explains what makes that possible — a Republican Party dedicated to making sure a minority controls the country — and how Joe Biden’s first priority should be moving the country from minoritarian rule to democracy.

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