it basically took everything the Dems had: propaganda, calls of racism, tons of money to their campaigns,
coupled with the worst pandemic in our lifetime and draconic lockdowns which have greatly hurt our economy, to win this election.
Uh, I hate to break it to you, but... Republicans also threw everything they had into this race. That includes fear-mongering, cozying up to conspiracy theorists, and tons of money.
Of course, the Trump campaign also wasted a mind-boggling $1 billion, including funneling over $300 million into a Trump family-owned LLC to hide the grift -- I mean, spending.
That includes blowing $10 million on a Superbowl ad, when they had no primary competition (i.e. they did it just to please Trump's ego); excessive spending on private jets; nearly $40 million to Parscale's firms; $35 million on Trump-branded merchandise; $14 million on the Convention; $1.6 million in ads in the DC market, where Trump had no chance (again, just to feed his ego, so he'd see the ads while watching absurdly copious amounts of TV)....
give the dems a couple of years to implement policies most americans do not want with the senate doing its best to tie up the more radical ones, and conservatives will win it back.
Well, the problem with that theory is that most Democratic policies are, in fact, popular.
People
want the government to actually do something about COVID. They definitely want more stimulus spending. They want to shore up Social Security. They want better health care. They want something to be done about climate change. They are on board with raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Even allowing more immigration and protecting DACA has majority support.
That's why Democrats have won the popular vote in 7 out of the 8 most recent elections.
That's pretty much why Republicans, who are in thrall to plutocrats who want unpopular policies (like tax cuts and slashing Social Security), keep doubling down on appeals to white privilege and xenophobia, disenfranchising voters, leaning on anti-democratic mechanisms like the the Electoral College, and now attempting to delegitimize any election where they don't win.