Updated: November 6, 2020 7:48:50 pm
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden during the first presidential debate at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo: AP)
Written by Timothy Egan
The closest I came to death was when a fierce undertow gripped my wife and me, carrying us into the raging waves of Puerto Escondido, Mexico. We gagged, flailed, and turned purple as we struggled to stay afloat. Saved by a sandbar, I never saw life the same way again.
So we find ourselves today, still holding our breath, looking back at the bloody mess of our tattered democracy. As exhilarating as cheating death is, what happened this week has slowed us down and moved us.
Those of us in the business of crafting narratives out of chaos are hard pressed to say something positive about the last days. I almost lost my faith in humanity, and I certainly lost my faith in the industrial polling complex. I am perplexed and humiliated.
“Stop the count.” Of all the violations of things that we consider precious in this country, this tweet from President Donald Trump on Thursday, demanding that millions of voters be disenfranchised in order to steal an election, is the one that will live in infamy.
But let’s find some light in the dark. Trump’s election ambulance chase, the budding chants of supporters to stop the count and count the vote simultaneously (depending on the state) will change nothing.
Joe Biden is winning the popular vote by about a 3-point margin. That is no small thing. John F. Kennedy won by less than 1 percentage point. Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1980 with just over 50% of the total vote. Bill Clinton became president with 43% of the vote in a race with three main candidates.
It would mean that the United States could once again join the community of nations committed to saving this overwhelmed, burning, and gasping planet. Public lands would remain in public hands.
It would mean that the flow of backward, partisan federal judges would shut down, for now. The same goes for the Supreme Court, if Biden chooses.
It would mean that science and truth would be guiding principles at the highest level of government, just as we entered a long dark season of COVID-19 deaths because science and truth were ignored.
It would mean that the executive office would no longer be actively fighting to take care of millions of Americans. Think of a spring that could bring a coronavirus vaccine, a revived economy, and a restoration of decency and courtesy.
Looking at the bigger picture, Democrats were attacked by extreme voices that Trump was able to link to his party. Defunding the police will never be popular outside of a few left-handed districts. The smell of socialism helped kill Democrats in Florida.
In California, voters rejected ballot measures that would have generated a return on affirmative action and a bill to expand rent control. The result was a wake-up call for those who were too awake.
In Portland, Oregon, where violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement have brought terror to the streets, a candidate who embraced Antifa lost to the more moderate mayor, Ted Wheeler.
The violent fringe on the left helped Trump. The violent fringe on the right, sadly, didn’t seem to hurt him. In the closing days of this campaign, the president appeared to lend his support to a truck squad that had tried to pull a Biden bus off the road in Texas. He suggested locking up his political opponents and reveled in the screaming crowds to fire the country’s top infectious disease expert.
But let’s look to better days ahead and begin to mend our broken democracy. A presidential candidate could win the popular vote by nearly 5 million votes, but depending on where those votes are cast, he could still lose in the archaic Electoral College, the stronghold of minority tyranny. Only once in the last 30 years have Republicans won the popular vote.
There is still a chance that this election will end in an Electoral College tie from 269 to 269. If that happens, the next president would be determined by the new House of Representatives, with each state casting a vote.
Thus, California, home to nearly 1 in 8 Americans, with 53 members in the House, would have the same power as Wyoming, a state with a single House representative and a declining population.
The obvious flaw here, that the person who gets the most votes does not necessarily win, could be neutralized by the National Popular Vote Pact, in which all electoral votes from a participating state are pledged to the winner of the national popular vote.
On Tuesday, Colorado voters approved joining the pact, which now has 15 states plus the District of Columbia, representing 196 electoral votes. More states are needed to push it past the 270-vote margin where it could go into effect. But for now, it is the best vehicle to bring the American system closer to one that reflects the will of the people.
Ah, the will of the people. Who knows what the hell that is. Yes, it is karmic justice that three of the pivotal states to elect Trump – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – now look like three that will fire him. And for that small majority, and for the rest of us, the mourning in America will soon turn into a dawn in America.
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