November 2, 2020
We have just one day left until the polls close and we find out just what kind of country we’re going to be. Will our fellow Americans vote to continue being led by a corrupt, sadistic circus clown with the intellectual acuity of a pre-verbal toddler and the emotional maturity of a middle school bully? Will a majority of Americans vote for a continuation of a campaign of genocide against immigrants, of forced sterilization and forced family separation of non-white asylum seekers? Will they signal with their votes that Black lives don’t matter, and that the Rule of Law doesn’t either?
We’re so scarred by the trauma of 2016, that all we see when we look at polls showing Biden with a lead in battleground states is all the ways that they could be wrong. We try to read the tea leaves of the surge in turnout in Texas and Georgia, afraid to dream of flipping these long Republican-held states.
There are worrying signs that even if we prevail at the polls, right wing forces will reject the will of the people to hold on to power by any means necessary. In Texas, Republicans rushed into federal court in an effort to invalidate 127,000 votes cast by drive-through voting in heavily Democratic Harris County. In Alamance County, North Carolina, police pepper-sprayed voters in the midst of a peaceful march to the polls. In Texas, a Trump train convoy tried to run a Biden/Harris campaign bus off the road, and not to be outdone, yesterday Trump train convoys snarled traffic in New York and New Jersey.
The truth is that the answer to the question of what kind of country we’re going to be can’t be found on 538, or on our Twitter feeds, or even in the back of a pickup truck in a Trump train. We won’t know the answer even after the polls close, because the answer lies with us. The answer is in how we respond once all the votes are counted. If we’ve learned nothing else these past four years, we’ve learned that democracy is not a spectator sport. We will have the America we’re willing to work to build. It’s up to us. It always has been.
#VOTE
And we have to remember that our vote during the election is just the start. We’ll have to stand up to protect the votes. And with a new administration being elected, we’re going to have to remain engaged, speaking out to ensure our rights are heard and met.
Lisa, thank you for your journal, it’s most inspirational.
Thank you Linda
Cheers Lisa — I also appreciate your diligence throughout!
Appreciate your sobering, incisive, and inspiring words … always but especially today.
Thank you Debra!
Lisa, you have been the voice of reason and sanity throughout the craziness. I so appreciate your efforts with your blog. I hope/pray that after tomorrow you get to retire this blog!