After surviving a grueling election campaign and a cliff-hanger election, Joe Biden will most likely enter the White House with a significant achievement under his belt, but little to look forward to. Congressional Republicans and a right-wing Supreme Court will ensure that any attempt at meaningful reform or governance is dead on arrival.

CHICAGO – Joe Biden has survived a grueling election campaign and a cliff-hanger election. Next, he must fend off legal challenges from US President Donald Trump’s campaign. While he will most likely enter the White House on January 20, 2021, he will wonder when he gets there whether the prize he sought for so long is a poisoned chalice.

A President Biden will enter office confronting widespread economic distress, the seasonal escalation of a deadly pandemic, and a brutal international environment. These challenges would test even the most skilled leader. But Biden will be further hampered by a divided government, a hostile judiciary, a weakened federal bureaucracy, and lingering Trumpian populism among the public.

In the past, a newly elected president could expect some cooperation from the opposing party in passing legislation. Biden should expect nothing of the kind. Republican members of Congress largely beat expectations in the election and will see no reason for compromise. If Republicans retain their majority in the Senate, they can and will try to undermine the Biden administration, to create the conditions for an anti-Democratic backlash in the 2022 midterm elections. Progressive bills will be dead on arrival, and sorely needed constitutional reforms of the Electoral College, voting laws, and the presidency will not occur. More likely, Americans will have to endure sporadic government shutdowns amid a cold civil war that maintains a status quo of paralysis – at best.

Many of Biden’s nominations will also face hostility in a Republican-controlled Senate. Republicans probably will not deny him a secretary of state or an attorney general, but they will ensure that the executive branch is understaffed. Having incurred no electoral punishment for their hardball tactics over judicial nominations, they will block and delay all confirmations of federal judges.

Even if Democrats win a majority in the Senate, Biden will face formidable obstacles. With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett a week before the election, Republicans will enjoy a 6-3 majority on a Supreme Court that was already leaning more rightward than any court since the 1930s. Today’s Court will continue chipping away at the legal foundations of US regulatory agencies and advancing socially conservative values, as it has for the last two decades. Even if Biden can push progressive legislation through a divided Congress, he will still face the prospect of the Court striking it down. Indeed, the Court might finally deal a deathblow to the Affordable Care Act, the signature achievement of Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama.

With a likely understaffed executive branch and a hostile judiciary, Biden will have trouble exercising executive power. Federal agencies have suffered a loss of morale – and qualified staff – during the Trump era, and will most likely take quite a while to regroup. Efforts to undo the damage that Trump did to environmental, health, and safety regulation will come slowly from the depleted agencies, and all changes will be met with judicial skepticism from Republican-appointed – and especially Trump-appointed – federal judges.

Similarly, ambitious uses of regulatory and executive power to reform immigration or address climate change (on the model pioneered by Obama) will receive a frigid reception at the Court. Biden will inherit substantial legal authority to take measures to contain the pandemic; but Trump-appointed judges will push back when that authority conflicts with religious liberty and property rights, as they have already done when governors issued similar orders.

Finally, there is the elusive issue of public opinion. Though Biden won the popular vote, the American electorate remains deeply divided. Trump’s lawsuits claiming electoral fraud are unlikely to succeed, but his attempts to persuade Republican voters that Democrats stole the election will likely have a lasting effect. If Trump succeeds in delegitimizing the outcome in the eyes of enough voters, Biden will have even more trouble securing support for his policies from alienated Republicans and their elected representatives. Moreover, Biden also will be contending with a fractious Democratic coalition that could explode at any moment into a battle among leftists, moderates, and anti-Trump independents.

For all of these reasons, Biden will not benefit from the traditional honeymoon period that other newly elected presidents have enjoyed. He ran as a unifier, but, like Obama before him, he will quickly learn that you cannot win over those who despise you.

That said, Trump’s defeat is a triumph for American democracy. Trump has been the most divisive and destructive president of modern times. His failure to win a second term, despite the numerous advantages of incumbency, will send a signal to ambitious politicians that populism and demagoguery are not the keys to victory. The moment should be savored for that reason – if for nothing else.

•Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, is the author, most recently, of The Demagogue’s Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump.

The situation in the US today resembles nothing so much as the United Nations Security Council. Many agree the current system is deeply flawed and unrepresentative, but it is impossible to reach consensus on reform, because any potential fix would benefit some and hurt others.

NEW YORK – As I write this, officials across the United States continue to count votes in the 2020 US presidential election. When tallies are finalized, recounts and legal challenges are sure to follow. This is to be expected in a hotly contested election that generated record turnout.

Only citizens may vote for the US president, but the choice affects people everywhere. If it is too soon to be certain of the results, it is not premature to explore what the election reveals about the world’s most powerful country.

On the positive side, the United States remains a robust democracy. Voter participation was high, despite the physical constraints linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. The process appears to be unfolding as designed. Violence has been minimal. Courts are investigating what seem to have been politically motivated decisions by the US Postal Service to impede the delivery of ballots from areas expected to vote mostly Democratic. President Donald Trump’s unwarranted declaration of victory Tuesday evening gained little traction, while his calls to stop the counting (at least in those states where he leads) appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

What is concerning, however, is that the US electorate remains so deeply divided. Voters were near-equally split between the two candidates. Not surprisingly, this division is likely to lead to divided government. If current trends continue, Democrats will win the White House and retain control of the House of Representatives, while Republicans will keep control of the Senate. Governorships and state legislatures are near evenly split between the two parties (Republicans hold a slight advantage).

The “blue wave” anticipated by Democrats did not materialize. Joe Biden will probably win the popular vote by a wide margin – some four or five million out of nearly 160 million votes cast. But Republicans held onto seats in the Senate that many predicted would flip to the Democrats, who actually lost seats in the House. There was no firm mandate, no political realignment.

Trump polled extremely well, receiving five million more votes than he did in 2016 – the second-most votes of any presidential candidate in US history, and more than any previous winner. What makes this particularly noteworthy is that it occurred against the backdrop of a record-high 100,000 new daily COVID-19 cases and more than 1,000 deaths. Just when the consequences of his administration’s mishandling of the pandemic had become most severe, nearly half the electorate turned out to support him.

Even if Trump loses, which seems likely, he will continue to have a powerful voice, especially if he remains in the public eye (which also seems likely). Even if he himself does not run, he will probably have considerable influence in choosing the Republican Party’s nominee in the next presidential election in 2024. The GOP will be a far cry from the party of Presidents George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. Trumpism – a modern-day American populism – will remain a powerful force.

Trump, no surprise, has done his best to salt the earth and delegitimise the election results, charging fraud despite his inability to produce any evidence. Many of his supporters will refuse to accept the legitimacy of a Biden presidency. It is quite possible that Trump will never concede the race, much less attend the swearing in of his successor. To paraphrase Will Rogers, Trump has never encountered a norm he didn’t break.

Americans increasingly dwell in separate worlds. They have sorted themselves into communities and regions with those of similar views. Each world tends to watch its own cable television channels, listen to its own radio stations and podcasts, and visit its own websites. And the absence of a national civics curriculum facilitates sorting across generations.

What is worth highlighting is that the country’s division is not for the most part along economic lines. People of all classes voted for both candidates, and demographic, gender, and racial voting patterns were not as one-sided as many predicted. Where they differed mainly concerned remedies.

Educational levels are clearly an indicator of political orientation, as is geography, with Republican voters more likely to live in outer suburbs and rural regions and Democrats in metropolitan areas. Culture, though, may account for more in American politics than anything else. For the record, foreign policy did not seem to have mattered much in the campaign, except to mobilize specific constituencies, such as South Florida’s large Cuban and Venezuelan communities.

Against this backdrop, it will be difficult to build support for significant change to how presidents are elected or how the government operates. The situation resembles nothing so much as the United Nations Security Council. Many agree the current system is deeply flawed and unrepresentative, but it is impossible to reach consensus on reform, because any potential fix would benefit some and hurt others. Not surprisingly, those who stand to lose from change resist it.

This will make governing difficult. Much will depend on the calculations of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and his ability and willingness to work with a President Biden. Working together would also require Biden to compromise, something sure to be resisted by the more ideological members of his own party.

Democrats were hoping for a stinging repudiation of Trump and everything he embodies. They didn’t get it. Republicans sought an election that validated Trump. That, too, didn’t happen. Instead, what the election revealed is one country and two nations. They will have to coexist; whether they can work together remains to be seen. (Project Syndicate)

•Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He is the author of The World: A Brief Introduction (Penguin Press, 2020).

Regardless of the final outcome, the 2020 US presidential election has confirmed that nearly half the electorate still prefers a politics of division and hatred to one of decency and unity. That is not Russia’s fault – and never was.

MOSCOW – The 2020 US presidential election challenges – indeed, it should lay to rest – the popular notion that US President Donald Trump is a lackey of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even if Trump loses, his performance – receiving millions more votes than he did in 2016 – suggests that it is he who is the master of propaganda, and that Putin is the one who should be taking notes. In fact, Trump’s campaign of lies could well become the new template for how failing democracies (and autocracies posing as democracies) choose their leaders in the twenty-first century.

There is no denying Trump’s mastery of social media, where he issues a predictable stream of semi-coherent yet emotion-packed rhetoric to cast doubt on established truths while smearing his opponents and puffing himself up. This digital black magic – which leading social-media platforms, as well as Fox News, duly amplify in the interest of profit – has become the core element of Trump’s style of “leadership.” As Putin’s own popularity continues to decline, he may well try to mimic it.

Beyond Trump’s signature methods of self-aggrandisement and democratic subterfuge is his unmatched use of propaganda to avoid any and all forms of accountability. To be sure, the world’s other autocrats are hardly novices when it comes to manipulating public opinion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan uses holograms to appear, Allah-like, at multiple rallies simultaneously. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has worn bespoke jackets in which the pinstripes spell out his full name. And everyone is now familiar with Putin’s bare-chested horseback photo-ops.

Trump, however, has put all these efforts to shame with his approach to propaganda in its contemporary, all-encompassing “post-truth” form. He has both benefited from and aided a burgeoning political culture in which any debate, conversation, or event is framed by emotional appeals and completely disconnected from objective information. There is no wizard hiding behind the curtain here. Trump is a magician standing center stage, and just under half of American voters like what they see, or prefer the illusion to reality.

Consider Trump’s successful efforts to drive down Hispanic support for Joe Biden. In Florida, Trump managed to delude a portion of the Latino population (as he had done previously with poor whites) that he is their only economic hope. Identifying gaps between the progressive and center left of the Democratic coalition, the Trump campaign targeted Dade County’s large population of Cuban and Venezuelan émigrés with grim depictions of Biden as a Trojan horse for “socialism,” tapping into deep-seated hatred of the regimes in Havana and Caracas.

Though Biden still carried the bulk of Hispanic voters in the state, Trump succeeded in convincing a consequential segment that he and he alone would advocate for Cuban and Venezuelan freedom. Citing the Obama administration’s policy of rapprochement with Cuba, Trump’s campaign suggested that Biden would betray Cuban-Americans by rewarding the pariah island.

More broadly, Trump has masterfully stoked anger and resentment within the white population – particularly those without a college degree – often tweeting statements that look a lot like incitements to violence against African-Americans, Democratic politicians, and election officials. By constantly “saying the quiet part out loud,” he has given millions of white Americans a license to act on their most racist and extreme impulses.

Trump has also freed his supporters from the burden of considering scientific facts, or even rational thought. Thanks to the example Trump set, only in the United States is there any doubt about the need for face masks and social distancing during a pandemic. Only in America is taking necessary precautions to protect oneself and one’s neighbors seen as a sign of weakness or “socialism.” The virus is both a “hoax” and a genuine threat for which China alone bears responsibility. Never mind that the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic has been worse than that of any other government on the planet, leading to almost 240,000 deaths, and counting.

Of course, all politicians are tempted to blame others for their failures. The Soviet Union used to attribute its obvious decline on its citizens’ corrupt desire for American jeans and jazz. Instead of addressing their own shortcomings after the 2016 election, the Democrats chose to place all the blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss on Putin and Russian election interference. But the US did not destroy the Soviet Union; the Soviet system destroyed itself. And the Kremlin did not elect Trump; American voters did.

The 2020 vote tally makes this basic fact clearer than ever. Despite all the predictions of a “blue wave” that would crush Trump’s reign of corruption, mendacity, and incompetence, the margins in battleground states have been razor thin, and his Republican enablers in Congress survived – and even made gains in the House of Representatives. It turns out that almost half of the American public favors Trump’s divisive, anti-democratic style to Biden’s own appeals to competence, experience, and decency.

Writing about America in 1986, the French linguistic philosopher Jean Baudrillard described a kind of “hyperreality” in which myth, performance, and simulation becomes indistinguishable from the real world. Trump’s fanciful, nostalgic vision of making America “great again” relies on precisely this sort of epistemic collapse. Trump is the king of “post-truth” hyperreality, conjuring a world in which his supporters are the victims of various conspiracies and evil designs on their way of life, from which only Trump can save them.

Everyone has dark desires, of course, but most of us would never actually act on them. Such restraint is arguably the defining feature of a civilized person. But Trump has now convinced tens of millions of Americans to embrace their inner demons – truth, decency, and democracy be damned. Nihilism has descended on the republic, and Americans have no one to blame but themselves.

As we await the results of the US presidential election, we are again reminded of the uncertainty and fear that pervade the current era. Under such circumstances, Project Syndicate’s mission – delivering the highest-quality commentary on the world’s most pressing issues to as wide an audience as possible – is more important than ever. We remain committed to fulfilling it.

•Nina L. Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs at The New School, is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and the co-author (with Jeffrey Tayler), most recently, of In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones.