Was anyone else concerned about what might happen if this election had been really close? I sure was.
I very much dislike the sensational, almost click-baity articles that are written in otherwise quality mediums but are just based on prognostication. As though the authors think they’re preparing us for the worst, but only end up terrifying people and giving them no action steps to take to combat that worry. But, I did find myself thinking about how angry and mad we would be if we only lost this election by a hair, and was concerned about violence if the Republicans lost.
All that said, it’s been a great relief to have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win by a lot. A landslide, perhaps. And they did that even with historic levels of voter suppression (attacks on voting by mail, hobbling the Post Office, state legislatures crippling election officials’ time to process ballots, closing polling locations, etc.), a president and his staff who violated the Hatch Act constantly and used the White House illegally for campaign activities, and an avalanche of disinformation.
The more I look at what we were up against, the more I find it remarkable.
But as I look forward, I am daunted by the challenges we are facing going forward. Trump lost the Electoral College decisively, and has only won 1 out of the 21 lawsuits he’s filed to challenge election results. (The case he won was in PA and dealt with a batch of votes that hadn’t even been counted yet. Biden is winning that state by over 60,000 votes currently.) But the sheer inevitability that Joe Biden will be president on January 20th hasn’t stopped Republicans from continuing to undermine our democracy. To date, only 4 Senators have acknowledged Biden as President-Elect (Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Ben Sasse).
We knew Trump would not take a loss well, and that the alt-right internet machine would whip up MAGA into a frenzy if he lost, but sitting Congressmen not acknowledging the incoming president is a real blow to our democracy. The longer Trump whines and cries on Twitter (which he is doing all day, every day) with no pushback from his administration or other Republicans, is dangerous. Every day that passes, more and more people lose faith that our elections are to be trusted.
Now, there is something you can do. It’s time to call your representatives in Congress. If they are Republican, call or email them and demand that they publicly acknowledge Joe Biden as President-Elect immediately. If they are Democrats, urge them to push on their Republican colleagues AND pressure Emily Murphy, Administrator of the GSA (General Services Administration), to sign the letter that officially starts the transition for Joe Biden’s team. Find the contact info for your Congressfolk HERE.
To sign off today, let me leave you with this quote from President Obama that I saw in The Atlantic, in a piece about his new book:
“And so the world watches America—the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice—to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed.”
UPDATE: Thanks to a hot reader tip which I’ve vetted with an organizer on the ground in Georgia, I’ve added a new postcarding opportunity to my Georgia Senate runoff list, which you can find here: How To Help Win the 2 Georgia Senate Runoff Elections
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