NOW THE HARD PART
We sat for days waiting for the count…watching the future of the county, the future in the wake of a killer pandemic, hanging on Nevada at one point.
Nevada’s count was on every single media outlet…California, right next door, voted for Biden in record numbers and was never even mentioned by the media.
Again, our votes in California do not count as much as they do in sparsely populated Nevada thanks to the Electoral College!
This is a crisis in legitimacy. A serious nation ending crisis.
And now we see that Biden received over 74 million votes, the most in U.S. Presidential history and STILL could have lost the electoral college and the election!
It is time to get rid of this anachronism…It is past time.
We got a minority elected President in 2000 with a “hanging chad” mess in Florida that swing the election to Bush.
And the controversy that took place, the cries of unfair, allowed a man named Ben Laden to plan undetected and hatch his attack on America.
Bush admits he did not listen to the briefings about potential threats to the nation from security professionals…He was too busy building legitimacy for his administration in the wake of losing the popular vote.
Not using the popular vote alone to pick a President and Vice President is fraught with danger for our democracy. Electing someone who does not win the popular vote is simply crazy: It disenfranchises millions of Americans and nearly did not elect Biden to the Presidency; who got the most votes ever in our history.
The election came down to about five states…five..there are fifty plus states including Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.
In short, this would have meant four more years of a minority elected President who would have no mandate to govern. And with that divided leadership the United States would have to fight a killer pandemic that is not done yet! Again, government doesn’t work when it is perceived as illegitimate!
Trump tried to build his legitimacy on illegally destroying Biden and got impeached. The reason was impeachable for any President…but the motivation was to make up legitimacy by painting the opponent as corrupt.
This is certainly not new in American Politics, it is a contact sport. But if practiced too much, the fabric of the consent of the governed will tear, forever irreparable.
This was and is a dramatic time that totally divides the American People. And Racism and Prejudice IS VERY MUCH IN PLAY.
Putin and our other adversaries, are feeding this discord to enhance our divide.
America is crippled folks…by extreme partisanship that is encouraged by the Electoral College!
The Electoral College has indirectly cost real racial healing as well…FDR for example, could have launched a civil rights reform, using the need for troops for WWII.
This was done by Lincoln during the Civil War…His emancipation proclamation and subsequent recruitment of ex-slaves to help defeat the Confederacy created a “debt” that allowed Reconstruction reforms to be installed by the victorious south over a prostrate south.
The trade for ex-slaves giving their lives in combat in the Civil War was a Reconstruction Plan that included voting rights and access to the political process for people of color (at least African Americans, NOT Native Americans)..Witness the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment!
FDR could have done the same thing, but the Dixiecrats were needed to get him elected four times, to fight first a depression and WWII. So for the good the New Deal did for common people, it whiffed regarding people of color.
People of color, Native Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans, Jews, Women, and African Americans helped the USA war effort…and they expected a payback. There was some, Truman integrated the military, but other Civil Rights efforts failed because post WWII America did not fulfill the bargain with subjugated people that they deserved.
The solid south, Democrats to a fault, paralyzed the New Deal when people of color were concerned.
Not until the assassination of President Kennedy did the Democratic Party have enough political lee way to pass the Civil and Voting Rights Acts.
And that cost the Democratic Party the south and border states…leading to a resurgence of southern states rights, that ended the Civil Rights era, when Richard Nixon flipped the abolitionist northern Republicans to take the southern segregationists into the Republican Party.
This deal with the devil is with us today…leaving the mess of a popular vote and agreement of the majority of Americans to continue Racial Justice BUT with the Electoral College, the way is still open to continue straight up racism in the county as a path to the Presidency; it just about worked again in Biden v Trump. The only thing that stopped it was Biden winning the Electoral College…
The massive effort of people of color to vote for Biden averted (at least for now) another “minority of the popular vote” President being elected yet another deal with the devil.
Republicans are finding out that the new American coalition is indeed Obama’s new America, and women and “minorities are the only way back to power”.
The racist Electoral College is still there, offering a shortcut to power that always punishes people of color…ALWAYS!
In fact given the Republican’s declining membership compared to the potential monopoly of political power of growing “minority political power” they just don’t have the votes from poor and disgruntled white people. But this new reality, that offers a chance to end systematic racism, depends completely ending the electoral college!
In short angry old white bigoted men are dying out, leaving a population of women and people of color as a voting bloc that quite literally can leave the racist condoning Republican Party impotent but only if the Electoral College is ended.
And the same people (the Obama coalition) who have been victimized are still threatened, up to and including killing more minorities due to poor health care with the pandemic. It is no minor coincidence that more Black and Brown people die of the pandemic than white people.
A further proof of their out and out “legal lynching through virus” is the fact that Trump on purpose hamstrung efforts to control the pandemic.
The reason Trump was against mail in ballot was it was a way around the planned voter suppression that the pandemic caused…It is the reason why Trump was so upset when one state after another went to mail in ballots.
Trump used in person voting like a lynching party in 1900…..a thinly veiled attack on the poor and people of color. Voter suppression only works with person to person voting; since the voting stations are severely cut back in minority areas. So to vote people had to stand in line for hours, exposed to the virus for hours. Mail in voting ended that.
If we somehow abolish the Electoral College, the Republican Party would have to change from its right racist leaning stance to a more inclusive party, and the Democratic Party would have to cease its leftward slide and be more inclusive as well. The major reason for the divide in our country comes when people vote, see their vote minimized by an archaic Electoral College that was invented to pepetuate slavery!
The Democrats won with a middle of the road candidate…there is a lesson here. Gore was middle of the road as was Clinton…they were nominated without the support of the left leaning democrats…and that helped them both, but the racist checkmate for Gore was Florida and the Electoral College.
America’s political landscape used to be banal and boring, the two parties shared a lot of things, usually a unified foreign policy (the Red Scare of the 1950s ruptured this) and racist aspects..however, WWII was fought with a teamwork attitude, and a dominant President, that we yearn for today.
But those were different times..the middle ground of American government is gone; we are deeply alienated from one another. Racism and prejudice is not along party lines.
The electoral college is causing it. It delegitimizes the Presidency almost every time.
Our county needs to get rid of the Electoral College, because it is killing our democracy. No country can exist as far divided as we are now.
Biden has a reputation of being a healer and he is definitely not a “lefty”. He has his hands full because systemic racism is part of the mess he inherited.
The hope is the Democratic Party is so inclusive and diverse that it can’t back down from the battle for racial justice and RECONCILIATION.
This is not the Democratic Party of LBJ, it is the Democratic Party of Obama. And there is no segregationist block of Democrats to satisfy. In short, the Democratic Party is dominated by the victims of the prior two hundred years, so it literally cannot racially doublecross anyone…
That is a HUGE difference from the Dixiecrats , and seems to be holding…in fact it is getting more and more indicative of the Democratic Party!
I’m a lefty but realize that a more moderate approach will go a lot further in gaining policy change, than an extremist approach.
And the trick is not alienating the folks who got Biden’s election. Choosing an African/Indian American woman as his running mate, puts Biden in the role that Democrats need to continue; the party of racial justice. To take the opposite position, like all the Democratic Presidents until LBJ, Clinton, and Obama is a fact of political survival for Democratic Party Leadership.
Pure good ole boy racism, that Democrats used to use and now Republicans live with , also doesn’t work. In short demographics are calling for a different political atmosphere that politicians using the old dog whistles need to heed. Running as a “law and order” candidate flies in the face of and popular electorate that will not stand for it anymore.
Dick NIxon won in a landslide but then was destroyed by Watergate, Reagan resurrected law n order and was elected twice, George H. Bush tried it somewhat, but was defeated by “the first black President”: Bill Clinton, and finally Barack Obama was a two term moderate African American President who blew open the old political standards.
There was a backlash coming. And as in the past, witness Reagan and the “welfare queens” worked to get enough angry whites to get Reagan elected twice. Reagan was elected the second time with Alzheimers! It didn’t matter, the dog whisles got him elected.
Trump tried the Law n Order bit and now has lost the White House…George W tried that and ultimately the Republicans lost the White House; we just witnessed what happens to a minority elected President.
Unfortunately the President is not the only victim. Over 200,000 and counting have paid for this political chicanery!
Then there is Rutherford B. Hayes: who made a deal with ex-confederates to sell out newly freed slaves and pulled the troops who were protecting African Americans in the south from a vengeful southern leadership and the rest is Jim Crowe history.
It took a hundred years to finally get a Voters and Civil Rights Act passed thanks to a Republican “Hayes” who put winning the Presidency ahead of millions of free slaves.
100 years because of the damned Electoral College!
Trump sought to make it worse, by blatantly using the race card again and again “I am a Law and Order President” to appeal to his southern AND northern racist bases.
It almost worked….now comes the accountability…Black and brown people voted for Biden and expect payback.
In short: the political landscape of America is still ruled by racism and prejudice, a banality that threatens our nation more every day! Only moderation and judgement can change this dynamic! And, only allegiance to what got Biden where he is, minorities voting in record numbers, will fix this mess!