一、对美国大选的过程和结果，媒体认为，大选本不该如此混乱，漫长且无序的计票过程和戏剧性的新闻报道，给民众了带来了精神和身体上的负面影响，也让特朗普团队有机会用阴谋理论来解释他的失败。

For the public watching the ups and downs of the piecemeal vote count and the drip drip drip of results, the process was torturous — and offered President Trump and his allies the opportunity to conjure conspiracy theories to explain away his defeat.

This haphazard process causes problems in at least three respects: First, it opens the door for charges that something is amiss, as it might have struck some with the returns from Pennsylvania, where the count first had one candidate up by thousands of votes, only to swing entirely in the other direction. Second, for state legislatures, this “mirage” phenomenon could encourage mischief. For instance, the prohibition on early processing of mail votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin has been laid to Republican lawmakers, who control the legislatures of those three states. Finally, the uniquely American approach to counting and releasing election returns — with each state running its election its way — can lead to days of unnecessary and often misleading televised drama, with negative consequences for our mental (and physical) health. 

(Nov 8, 2020, The New York Times, Elections Don’t Have to Be So Chaotic and Excruciating)

二、大选后美国国内政治发展情况预期

1.选举结果并未给美国社会的分裂现状带来实质改变。不满意选举结果的特朗普支持者在全国州府集会呼喊，暴力仍然在美国各地上演着，反映了美国人集体心理上的巨大裂痕。

Trump supporters held “Stop the Steal” rallies outside state capitols across the country, though their cries of electoral corruption sometimes came as news of Mr. Biden’s declared victory was lighting up smartphones everywhere. In Sacramento, Calif., videos captured confrontations that devolved into physical assaults; some in the scrum wore the black-and-yellow polo shirts often associated with the Proud Boys, a far-right, pro-Trump group not unfamiliar with violence. Another video, from Salem, Ore, showed a man in Proud Boys apparel discharging what appeared to be pepper spray, after which a crowd battered a vehicle with fists and a baseball bat. These small moments reflect the sizable fissure in the collective American psyche that Mr. Biden sought to begin closing in his speech on Saturday night.

(Nov 8, 2020, The New York Times, The Election Is Over. The Nation’s Rifts Remain.)

Despite their relatively small number, college graduates have disproportionate cultural sway in America. This tends to distort perceptions of what the country is really like, both from inside America and from outside. A very large share of college-educated Americans believed that Mr Trump was both a disastrous president and also a threat to America’s governing institutions. They also believed he was a racist, whose dog-whistles about immigrants and African-Americans would make him toxic to non-whites. This view is not as widely shared as they assumed it was.

Why might that be so? A survey from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, earlier this year found that “strong liberals” were the only ideological group in the country who felt free to express their political opinions without causing offence. Everyone else, from regular liberals to “strong conservatives”, felt somewhat muzzled by the political culture in which they sought to express those opinions. If this is accurate, there may be no amount of reweighting that can make polls accurate. A further, possibly related problem for prognosticators is that a lot of voters just do not trust pollsters enough to answer their questions: in 2016 fewer than 1 in 200 calls made by polling firms resulted in an interview with a voter. The same will probably have been true this time.

Mr. Biden, then, looks set to become the 46th president, but by a narrow margin. His just-about victory will reignite a long-running argument in the Democratic Party about whether left-wing populism might be a better antidote to right-wing populism, a dispute that Mr Biden’s victory in the primaries seemed to have put to rest. The result looks likely to keep the Republican Party in thrall to Mr Trump and Trumpism for the foreseeable future (see Lexington). And it means that Mr Biden, if he is indeed sworn in come January 20th, will be highly constrained when it comes to domestic policy (see article). Yet if the president it elects is the most visible measure of its values, America really has changed course. 

(Nov 6, 2020, The Economists, America changes course, while remaining very much the same)

2.选举揭示了两党选民在新冠疫情、种族平等、执法问题等方面存在的巨大分歧。拜登和特朗普的选民在这些问题上的分歧远远超过了2016年希拉里和特朗普的选民。

Trump and Biden supporters differ over importance of the economy, health care – and particularly the coronavirus.

No issue seems to exemplify this divide more than the coronavirus pandemic. With more than 235,000 deaths in the U.S. to date and the election itself disrupted because of the virus, 82% of registered voters who support Biden said in October that the outbreak would be “very important” to their vote. Only 24% of registered voters who support Trump said the same. The enormous gulf over the importance of COVID-19 as a voting issue is just one of many ways, large and small, in which the virus has divided the partisan camps throughout 2020. 

The Biden and Trump coalitions also fundamentally differ over racial inequality and law enforcement – key issues in a year that saw nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Around three-quarters of registered voters who support Biden (76%) said in the summer that racial and ethnic inequality would be very important to their vote; just 24% of Trump supporters agreed. Conversely, around three-quarters of Trump voters (74%) said the issue of violent crime was very important to them, compared with fewer than half of Biden voters (46%).  

Indeed, Biden and Trump voters were far more divided over these questions than Hillary Clinton and Trump voters were in 2016.

(Nov 6, 2020, Foreign Affairs, 2020 election reveals two broad voting coalitions fundamentally at odds) 

3.未来，特朗普会不断扩散选举欺诈的阴谋论，激化党派愤怒；拜登上台后，共和党领导的参议院几乎肯定会致力于给拜登制造阻碍；共和党会难以抉择2024年总统候选人。在这三个相互重叠的阶段，两党极化趋势或将进一步加剧。

Soberingly, more polarization appears probable, in three overlapping phases. First, as Trump keeps railing against the election, feeding the flames of conspiratorial thinking about imagined electoral fraud, he will further inflame partisan anger. His relentless attacks over the past four years on truth, institutions, and the legitimacy of his opponents have prepared the ground for this final, desperate campaign. 

Second, when Joe Biden’s administration comes to power and begins governing, what will likely be a Republican-led Senate (barring a major surprise in the Georgia Senate runoff elections on January 5) will almost certainly dedicate itself to blocking as many of its programs and initiatives as possible. This will start with slowrolling Senate confirmation of Biden nominees, then extend to stymying any major legislation the administration will attempt. 

Third, looking further into the future, when the Republican Party begins the process of choosing a presidential nominee for the 2024 election, the party will likely not conclude that the problem in 2020 was the extreme ideological line that the party took, which basically boiled down to opposing everything Democrats support. Rather, the thinking will probably be that the shortfall in 2020 was with the candidate they had. 

(Nov 9, 2020, Carnegie Endowment, America changes course, while remaining very much the same)

4.拜登就任后或因党派斗争受到诸多限制，执政困难重重，他几乎肯定会与共和党控制的参议院在各种议题上展开较量。拜登必须谨慎选择他的言辞和团队，来激励和团结各方，而不是进一步分裂。

In the throes of the Democratic primary debates last year, Joe Biden was attacked for his Senate history of working across the aisle with Republicans. When Mr. Biden is inaugurated on January 20, he will almost certainly have to grapple with a hostile Republican-controlled Senate. 

He could rejoin the Paris accord on climate change. But he cannot force a Republican Senate to fund alternative energy. He could rejoin the World Health Organization, but he would need Mr. McConnell to authorise US funding for the body. He could bring America back into the Iran nuclear deal but any changes would have to be approved by the US Senate.

(Nov 8, 2020, Financial Times, US election gridlock: ‘Biden will have one hand tied behind his back from the start’)

One essential focus for the president-elect is inequality. Over the past four years, income and wealth inequality have continued to grow and, without a clear plan, the future is not bright for low-skilled workers. Persistent racial inequality and the demand for racial justice is also a defining feature of American politics.

Leadership is more important than ever before in the face of such grave divisions and inequalities. And there are clear signs that leadership and united action are indeed possible.

If elections deliver a Republican majority to the Senate, the work required by President Biden to achieve compromises will be even harder, not least because the results of the elections show that many Americans are calling for moderation, and an important part of the president-elect's own party demands a far more progressive agenda. So the challenge is great, but if the effort succeeds, America will be stronger.

Material reforms alone are not sufficient for restoring unity to America’s shining democracy. Words matter and the next president must choose his words — and his team — carefully to inspire and unite, rather than to divide.

(Nov 8, 2020, Chatham House, Next US President Has to Choose His Words Carefully)