Saturday, November 7th, 2020
My Dear America:
I woke up today to find out that I was once again living in a Democracy.
After four year of living in a country that I didn't really recognize or want to recognize, I can once again see the light of Democratic Values at the end of the tunnel in my country and on this day it has been shining bright. Although all of the votes haven't been counted yet, enough votes have been counted to allow MSNBC and CNN to be comfortable in calling the Election for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket.
I have been watching the Democrats Celebrate in all parts of the country all day on television switching off from time to time between MSNBC and CNN. Both networks had some of their big guns on today narrating the Democratic Celebration. Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow, Brian Williams, Ali Velshi and Joy Reid all shared the spotlight on MSNBC. On CNN it was mainly Anderson Cooper and Erin Burnett.
One has to give some serious credit to all of the MSNBC and CNN and other television Network Staff Members who have all had meager amounts of sleep over the past few days since the Presidential Election took place on Tuesday. Certainly Steve Kornacki deserves a good nights rest, as do others who did standout work covering the election vote count.
There are very many people responsible for todays good news. Certainly Joe Biden and Kamala Harris need to be credited for all they did to make their Campaign successful. Joe needs to be credited for choosing Kamala Harris as his running mate. Early on he announced that he would choose a woman. He took his time making the choice, of course. Joe had a Great Many Fine Democratic Women to choose from. Stacy Abrams, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Susan Rice and Elizabeth Warren were just some of the top contenders for the Second in Command on the Democratic Ticket. Harris's choice for VP was greeted with great enthusiasm. Her election today is greeted with even greater enthusiasm. Just as Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden was a signal to the nation that the man had good judgement, Kamala Harris's choice for Joe Biden was a signal that Joe's judgement was also First Rate.
Although today's celebration by Democrats has taken center stage I don't think we have seen the last of Donald Trump's efforts to steal this election. Certainly his untrue and poisonous statements on November 5th claiming that he had won the election and that the Democrats were counting illegal ballots were so foul and incendiary that most Television crews shut down their coverage of the President's remarks. I watched those remarks on You Tube yesterday and they were disgusting and untrue.
Although I feel very happy today watching Democrats all over the country celebrating, I can't help but be very concerned about the outcome of this election.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had more votes than any President and Vice Presidential Team in history. That was an amazing accomplishment by the Dynamic Democratic Duo. What needs to be taken into account, however, is that Donald Trump and Mike Pence very nearly beat the Biden-Harris ticket in nearly every U.S. State. Indeed, Trump won Electoral College votes in a great many midwestern and southern states.
Certainly the large numbers of votes cast for both the Trump and Biden Candidacies show that Voter participation in this election was something extraordinary and we can feel hopeful that this kind of highly improved voter participation will continue into other future elections.
What frightens me is that it does not seem as though we can afford to trust political polling any longer. The polls showed in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was going to easily win the Presidency. The polls were wrong. Hillary Clinton didn't win the Presidency. Donald Trump did. In 2020 the Polls showed that Joe Biden was going to win the Presidency easily. They showed him far out performing over Donald Trump. While the end results were better for Joe Biden than they were for Hillary Clinton, the polls which showed Joe trouncing Donald Trump were wrong again. Yes Joe Biden beat Donald Trump but by very slight margins in those states where Biden was declared the winner.
In my mind it scares me to observe the massive numbers of Americans who voted for Trump after the reprehensible attitudes and behaviors Trump has shown throughout his Presidency. I find it hard to accept that Trump has been as successful as he has been. Don't any of his followers realize how much he lies, or what he has done to immigrant children and parents at the border. When I see people arrested in Philadelphia for plotting to shoot up the Constitution Center where votes were being counted to disrupt the vote counting or people with guns gathered outside where votes are being counted in Phoenix, Arizona I think it is definitely time to wake up to what Donald Trump has done to Democracy in America.
As we voted in this past election we were at a place where the wrong winner could have and probably would have made Democracy completely disappear in America. Thanks to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris we have hopefully saved Democracy Once Again.
In Philadelphia as Benjamin Franklin was leaving Independence Hall following the Constitutional Convention in 1787 someone shouted to him:
"Doctor, what have we got? A Republic or a Monarchy?"
To which Benjamin Franklin supposedly replied:
"A Republic, if you can keep it"
It appears as though we have kept our Democratic Republic once again thanks to American Voters on Tuesday, November 3rd.
Now that we still have our Democratic Republic in our grasp after nearly losing it, we need to continue to work hard and steady to Keep it.
Today is, indeed, a Great Day For Democracy.
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