This past election was, without a doubt, the most contentious election that I have borne witness to. Over 159 million Americans voted in the 2020 election – the largest turnout in an election in the U.S. And while it is true that President Trump received more votes than anyone previously in a presidential election (roughly 74 million), Biden received 7 million more than that (roughly 81 million). While those results may be upsetting to some, the facts remain clear that Biden won.
Personally, I think of it as a good thing that so many people voted – maybe you didn’t. Maybe you thought this was evidence of fraud, or of the wrong type of people voting. Maybe you are in disbelief that your candidate lost, and turned to anyone trying to give you some thread you could cling to that would allow you to postpone acceptance of the facts. I can tell you that, myself, I very much struggled in 2016. On the morning of November 8th, 2016, I woke up confident that Hillary Clinton would clearly be the next President of the United States. I went to bed that evening in shock and sick to my stomach, terrified for the next four years.
Eventually, however, we must accept it and move on. It should never stop us from trying to become better people and better citizens. But it is difficult – in many ways, elections have become an all out assault on our daily lives. We are judged by our family and friends on which candidate we prefer. We can’t turn on the radio or television without a constant barrage of ads telling us that the world as we know it is at stake. Social media can alternate between a toxic sludge of people reposting content they’ve barely read themselves, or an echo chamber that shakes our own mild viewpoints into a religious fervor.
Think of how excited many of us get around sporting events (for example, the Super Bowl this weekend). If your favorite team made it this far, think of the excitement, the emotional investment in the outcome. When it doesn’t happen, for many, it’ll feel like a physical blow to the gut. Some may say they are done being a fan, and may even burn their team’s jersey in protest. But most fans will just say “wait till next year – next year will be the one.” In the grand scheme of things, the consequences are fairly low (unless you work for one these sports organizations, but that is a small subgroup).
The consequences of an election are not nearly as low – either for us, or for the world in general. After an inauguration, the direct results of the new administration may become apparently quickly – and we aren’t just waiting till next year for another shot – this will be for the next four years (sometimes, eight). There is no saying “next year will be the year.” (Sure, there is midterm elections, but that is a much longer discussion, and typically doesn’t garner the same type of excitement in Americans). It is understandable, then, given all the emotion surrounding it, why people may struggle with acceptance when an election does not turn out they way they hoped.
Which in no way is an excuse for how President Trump, Giuliani, and the rest of Trump’s team conducted themselves during this election. They took all that frustration and grieving that his voters were dealing with, and deliberately and with ill intent manipulated it. There is a reason we expect our coaches, when our team loses, to graciously accept defeat, and to accept some of the blame. It is to help their team and their fans move past it, and look to the future. It is no different for our politicians. When they lose, we expect them to be gracious in their defeat. McCain’s concession to Obama may be a master class in this regards.
But that is not really what I want to dwell on for this post. I was saddened and upset by the inevitable results of Trump’s rhetoric. I firmly believe that history will not be kind to Trump – but ultimately, that is future history. What we as Americans need to reconcile is that 74 million people voted for Trump, and 81 million for Biden. Even if you hold fast to the idea that millions of votes were cast for Biden fraudulently (which there remains no legitimate evidence to support) – even if you want to call it seven million – you still live in a country where roughly half of all people that voted came out in support of Biden.
To be fair, we don’t live in a country where popular vote decides the outcome. So, in many ways, Biden won by smaller margins in many key states due to they way the electoral college works. And I’m sure this will encourage renewed interest in figuring out how to discourage voters next time around, or how to make it harder for certain types of people to vote. I would argue to proceed with caution on this approach. Think whether it is better to try, hard as it may be, to try and convince people of your way of thinking – of why your solution may be better. If instead, we turn to forms of suppression or even ignoring certain votes, we are convincing nobody but our most ardent supporters, and in the long run these strategies are doomed to fail.
For a thought exercise, I would consider the two following imaginary people detailed below. I’ll do my best here to try and be fair, but I will most likely stereotype some and get some of this wrong. As the Mandalorians may say, “This is the way.”
In my first example, take Susan. Susan grew up in a rural town in Iowa. Her mom was a stay at home mom – her father had a good factory job. She was raised that family was one of the most important things, and there were many relatives that lived nearby. Every Sunday they would go to church, and then have big family dinners afterwards. Susan made good grades in school and was looking toward college someday, but then her father fell ill. On top of this, the factory shut down. Eventually, her father passed away, and her mother struggled to make ends meet and was in danger of losing their house.
So, instead of college, Susan got a job to help make ends meet. She worked the register at a local convenience store. She worked long hours, but still found time to try and volunteer in the community, one that was hit with hard times as jobs and people slowly left the area. But, for Susan, this was home, where her family was, and even as her mom got older and harder to care for, Susan continued to support her family and her community.
She would see on national news race riots, and reports of police brutality, but this was difficult for Susan to understand. They only only had a few cops left in her community, and they were nice to everyone. The only things they ever shot at were out-of-place wildlife, and generally did what they could to help the community out. There were relatively few minorities in Susan’s town, but they all came to church, and were always friendly and seemed dedicated to the community as well.
Susan did not personally know anyone to be openly gay, though she always had her suspicions about a few people. But, nobody ever spoke about it, and as far as she could tell, people were happier that way. On news and entertainment shows, she struggled to make sense of terms like “transgender” and “cisgender”, and why people got so upset about these things to the point where they wanted to ruin other people’s careers over it.
Meanwhile, money was running out in her community, and it was forcing people to leave, for families to be split apart, and nobody seemed to care. Everything seemed to be about big city problems, or the next social injustice people in California might be all fired up about, but none of that related to her day to day. Susan could do one thing, however – she could cast a vote for someone she thought might listen to the concerns of her community. The one thing Susan had, due to the electoral college, is a vote that counted more than one cast in California.
On the other hand, you have Jane. Jane grew up in a small city, but never felt like she fit in. Jane volunteered at a wildlife refuge, and was very upset by cruelty to animals, to the point where she finally decided to become a vegetarian. Going to college was like a revelation for Jane. She met new people, was exposed to new cultures, differing religions. Jane finally met some people who thought like her and didn’t ridicule her for her belief system, even when it wasn’t always consistent.
After getting her undergraduate, Jane decided to pursue a degree in graphic design that was expensive and put her in debt, but she was told that she’d easily make that money back. As she graduated, the economy entered a bit of a recession, and suddenly good paying jobs were hard to come by. Still, she was lucky to get an entry level position for a respected company in San Francisco, and there she went.
It was very expensive to live in San Francisco, and Jane ended up having to get a place with multiple roommates just to make ends meet. Both of those roommates happened to be gay. They shared their stories about growing up, in some cases being shunned by family and friends as a result. Jane became close friends with her roommates, and even though she herself was not gay, she became an advocate for LGTBQ rights.
Between the high cost of living and the very high student debt, Jane was struggling to get ahead. She wasn’t investing in her retirement at all, and got the highest deductibles she could on her insurance. Jane lived in fear of one day having a serious medical need that would put her even further into debt, or losing her job and not being able to keep up with her student loans, loans that could never be forgiven even through bankruptcy. She was angry. Nobody in Washington seemed to care about these things or was speaking to her. And, since she lived in a populous state that would mostly vote a certain way, she felt like her vote didn’t matter much at the ballot.
However, Jane was very savvy with social media, and could use that to champion her causes. She would organize online groups to try and ban companies she felt were cruel to animals with their testing. If somebody disparaged the LGTBQ community, she would join the online crusade to get them fired from their job or cancelled from engagements. If Jane’s vote wasn’t going to matter for much, she would instead try to affect change with her online presence.
Again, fairly simple examples here. Maybe you read this and related a bit to Susan, or instead think there is no hope for her, or that she is a bad person for not trying to change her viewpoint. Maybe you think Jane is a symbol for everything wrong in America – another social justice warrior who racked up a bunch of college debt, and chooses to live away from family in an expensive city and is more concerned whether her coffee is fair trade rather than the slow decline of rural communities.
For my part, I’d argue that they are both, fundamentally, trying to be good people. There are parts they are getting right, and parts they are getting wrong. They have widely different experiences and context, and they view and judge each other through that lens. At their core, I’d argue they aren’t that different. Maybe that is me being optimistic. But, optimism aside, this is something we have to reconcile – we all belong to the same large democracy, and like it or not, we have to make room for one another. And we can’t just completely ignore these viewpoints, or try and drown them out with the hope they will just go away.
Geographically, the United States is the third largest country in the world, and I believe third by population as well. Our democracy continues to be a big, grand experiment, and something worth fighting for every day. But, when you look at all the differences in the people and the places this country spans, it can be very stark. At the end of the day, I think most of us want this country to be a shining beacon for the rest of the world – for our citizens to be successful. Because of our own stories, however, we all have different antagonists we are fighting against, different versions of what constitutes a happy ending.
But, we at least owe it to own another to share our stories with each other, to try and find our common themes and archetypes. And to continue to refine and improve the common story we are all trying to tell, because it will always change and we will have to change with it, whether we like it or not. Ours is collectively a story worth telling, and I look forward to seeing it involve and improve, and for us to all have some voice in shaping its outcome.