One thing that almost all Americans, Jeff Bezos likely exempted, can agree on is that 2020 can’t end soon enough.

The year has proved exhausting and left a huge segment of the population with the experience of what low-grade depression feels like. Hopefully, we’ll return to some semblance of normalcy by this time next year with an enhanced appreciation of the life we had.

At least the presidential election cycle is over. President-elect Biden has yet to be certified, but that outcome appears highly probable. The election was close—some estimate it as the 13th closest in American history—but it won’t be decided by 537 votes in Florida.

Competition is a critical part of the democratic experiment, and whatever we think of our political process, its intensity can’t be denied. President Trump left people in both parties feeling drained while challenging democratic norms in ways few of his predecessors besides John Adams have.

But he shined a spotlight on the millions of Americans who felt abandoned in a post-industrial world. The problems facing working class and many other people around the world, already worsened by the pandemic, will escalate in the next decade thanks to exponential technologies.

Voters made pollsters look like fools. No poll of the state of Maine showed Senator Susan Collins ahead but she won by 9%. President-elect Biden won Maine by the same exact margin. That despite pollsters telling anyone who would listen that ticket splitting was dead in this era of polarization.

The other big losers in the election were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the left wing of the Democratic Party. Having won big in the 2018 midterm elections stressing moderate issues, Democrats, led by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, immediately pivoted toward the hard left. Voters in their own party rejected them resoundingly in the presidential primaries. Warren finished third in her home state of Massachusetts.

Another big loser was money. Sanders and Warren trounced Biden in fund-raising during the primaries to little avail. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent more than $300 million in a few months to carry American Samoa.

The consequences of Pelosi's miscalculation could be costly. She rejected a $1.8 trillion offer on a stimulus compromise, figuring her party would take the Senate and then pass a massive spending package. With 21 million people still on some form of unemployment assistance, her gamble could result in a wave of evictions and other hardships. Furthermore, a number of congressional Democrats who will be unemployed in January blame their job loss on her.

Many on the left view inequality as the issue of our times. President Trump took a different lens and capitalized on it in 2016 in ways few imagined. This election may be over, but the problem isn’t going away.

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