People Power

Take-Aways And Questions From The 2020 Presidential Election

First, anyone saying that voting doesn’t matter at the family gatherings this year, doesn’t get to sit at the grown-up table. In fact, it may be questionable for them to even sit at the children’s table lest they poorly influence future generations of voters.

The most profound lesson that we have all learned from the 2020 presidential election is that voting matters. Every vote matters. Every single one.

Over 100 million Americans participated in early voting. Some 160 million voted overall--- more than any other election in United States history. As much as that illustrious distinction will be catnip for historians, the race between President Donald Trump and now President-elect Joe Biden and the numbers these two camps generated are far more significant in real-time. While the President-Elect pulled in some 75 million votes and counting, it cannot be ignored that the incumbent generated 70 million votes. Both sides of the political divide pressed strongly for their candidate and had either one not generated the kinds of historic numbers at the polls that we are witnessing, the dominant voice might attempt to ignore the other side. As it is, President-elect Biden cannot ignore those 70 million Americans even though he won the White House. For the winners, voting matters because it put them over the top. For the losers, voting matters because they cannot be ignored. They have a seat at the table.

This election fired up new and young voters more than in previous elections. Early estimates suggest that between 49 and 52% of young people participated in this election. Millions of young voters across the country believed that they had a direct stake in the turnout. Young voters, leaders, and activists---many of whom took to the streets in the wake of the George Floyd case---took to the polls and battleground states across the country. The question now is will that motivation and energy translate to ongoing, consistent activism within the political community? While many young voters find fault in the fact that both candidates were 70-plus-year-old white men, it is upon them to become more involved in the stream of politics from the local level to the national. There need to be more Andrew Yangs, Pete Buttigieges and Stacy Abramses on both sides of the aisle. Let’s hope that happens.

Our two-party system has been shaken up. President Trump has rebuilt the Republican Party in his own image. And Democrats suffer for the lack of one. While Republican voters sometimes suffer from absolute loyalty to the leadership at the top, Democratic voters suffer from a lack of decisive, aggressive, definitive leadership in those same positions. The Democrats lost more ground than they expected to and they have no one to blame for this but themselves. They let the other side define them---again. Republicans, now almost wholly defined, by the decision-making, extreme tone, attitude and viewpoint of one man, may be leaving behind millions of their own party with nowhere to go. Either both parties will have to reboot themselves or, perhaps a generation from now, a third-party will seem more likely.

Indirectly, Covid-19 may have been a deterrent in the effort by negative foreign and domestic forces who sought to disrupt voting machines and election registration processes. So much more was done via paper ballot, early voting, follow-up and close scrutiny this year because of the virus, digital interference may have been minimalized to social media propaganda. Our intelligence agencies report that the threat was minimal in spite of suspicious Russian and Chinese-tied voting machines and contracts. We may never know exactly how much damage may have been done. But we do know nothing beats a protected paper ballot. Many-- arguably most--of Biden’s 75 million votes came through mail-in ballot.

Last, it was indeed a fight for the direction of the country. As a nation, we looked ourselves in the mirror and decided to lean toward our better angels and to continue the democratic experiment. Nice words. But we can’t ignore that a great part of the American cultural reality may not agree with that notion. We can’t ignore that not everyone sees America the same way.

As surely as divided houses cannot stand, what matters from here on is what we do about it. As two halves of the same whole, how do we come together? We had better figure it out.