It's Election Day! Millions of voters will exercise their right to vote today in the wake of record-breaking early and mail-in voting. We begin today’s roundup with Dana Milbank at The Washington Post:
If you haven’t yet voted, vote today — no matter how long you have to wait in line or how much harassment by Trump fanatics you have to endure. If you voted by mail, track your ballot to make sure it arrived (www.usa.gov/election-office has links to states’ elections offices) and, if not, ask your elections board if you should cast a provisional ballot.
If we all vote, Trump cannot win. He has never enjoyed majority support. There are more of us than them — and by that I don’t mean more Democrats than Republicans nor more liberals than conservatives but more people who trust democracy than those who don’t.
In what may be the most important piece of analysis you’ll read today, former attorney generals Obama Eric Holder and Michael Mukasey warn about the danger to our democracy from those who preemptively question the legitimacy of our elections or refuse to commit to a peaceful transfer of power:
Even before Election Day, disagreements about how to count votes have generated legal disputes, and of course those disputes have gone to the courts. But there is a difference between taking legal disputes to court when necessary and conducting a campaign of litigation that obstructs more than it resolves. We strongly agree that votes must be counted fairly and voices heard in a way that preserves peace and promotes confidence in our system.
Finally, there is the insidious danger posed by charges that have nothing to support them other than an accuser’s invitation to us to hallucinate evil. The widespread distrust of our institutions and processes that such rhetoric encourages can paralyze us just as surely as violence or the uncertainty generated by a torrent of litigation. [...]
Regardless of the results, if you can’t imagine anything worse right now than the other side prevailing in this election, try this: Imagine a country where elections don’t matter because those who do not prevail will not accept the result.
At The Atlantic, Barton Gellman analyzes the Trump campaign’s contingency plan in case of a Biden win:
Our electoral system was not built to withstand a sustained assault on its legitimacy. We are capable of defending it, but that is a collective enterprise. A healthy start would be to recognize that the assault has yet to begin in earnest. Election Day and the period to follow will be moments of maximum temptation for Trump. Can he find a way to interfere with the tabulation of votes? Impound ballots in the mail? Dispatch armed personnel to quell alleged disturbances in Democratic neighborhoods?
The battle for American democracy will not be fully joined until the counting starts. That’s when Trump will tell us that his predictions have come true—that the whole procedure is rife with fraud, that the tally is rigged against him, and that no one can be trusted except Trump himself to tell us who won and who lost. The vital questions are whether and how he will try to use his power to subvert the results.
John Cassidy at The New Yorker calls this election the ultimate stress test of our democracy:
Can the country peacefully usher out of office an authoritarian-minded leader who has a large and increasingly fanatical base of support, but one which has always been a minority? With one day left in the 2020 campaign, there are reasons for optimism, including a huge surge in early voting, but also some grounds for concern. [...]
The ultimate stress test could be a prolonged one. The best way to bring it to an end would be for Trump to suffer such a massive defeat that even he couldn’t claim he had been cheated, although he no doubt would, anyway. In working democracies, decisive votes create new realities that can’t be overturned. So if you haven’t voted yet, make sure to do it on Tuesday.
A lot of analysis today is focusing on what would happen if Biden wins today, and the consensus is that the work of undoing and addressing all of the damage of a Trump presidency should be at the top of a Biden-Harris agenda. Here’s Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post:
Even if Trump gets the electoral drubbing he deserves, the cleavages he has so successfully and destructively exploited will still endanger us. Covid-19 will still plague the land. No election can erase the fact that we have more cases and deaths than any other nation. Whether or not Trump is defeated, his influence can linger: Too much of the country is refusing to regularly wear masks because the hated "other tribe" insists that everyone should, making a bare face the 2020 equivalent of a "Make America Great Again" hat.
Still, however, I remain a congenital optimist. One thing that gives me hope is the fact that so many of us — nearly 100 million, as of Monday — defied both the raging pandemic and widespread attempts at voter suppression to cast ballots before Election Day.
We can't begin to solve our problems unless we talk to one another, and elections are the venue for that conversation. We may be yelling and screaming across the divide, but it's a beginning — and you have a part to play. Vote.
Jelani Cobb says whatever happens, Americans must defeat Trumpism, not just Trump:
For the past four years, people on the left have assailed Republicans for cowering before Trump. In fact, they were cowering before the people behind him. A Republican Party still beholden to that group would reflect its prerogatives. This is not to say that voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will make no difference, but, as with the pandemic, we’ve learned to manage our expectations when people talk about magical cures for complex problems.
It is not an exaggeration to say that our survival depends in some large measure on Donald Trump being defeated in this election. But we should not conflate a Democratic victory with a return to normalcy. It won’t be. And we should recall that normalcy, as we called everything before Trump’s regime, is what got us here in the first place.
If you haven’t voted, do so! Then look for:
(1) Turnout patterns: Polls show that a disproportionate share of Trump supporters intend to vote in person on Election Day. If there are long lines in mostly white rural areas, small towns, and exurbs, perhaps the Election Day turnout will offset the heavy Democratic-tilting number of mail ballots and in-person early votes. Conversely, if turnout is heavy in Democratic cities and inner suburbs, maybe all those early votes didn’t simply “cannibalize” votes normally cast on Election Day.
(2) Voter intimidation by Trump supporters. The president has repeatedly urged his backers to “watch polls closely” to prevent alleged Democratic fraud, and his son Don Jr. has called for “an army for Trump’s election security.” This could take the form of flotillas of aggressive lawyers deployed as “observers,” particularly in urban centers in battleground states. But more aggressive tactics are entirely possible, as evidenced by a weekend incident in Texas wherein, according to one state legislator’s account, “[a]rmed Trump trolls harass[ed] Biden Bus on I-35, ramming volunteer vehicles & blocking traffic for 40 mins.” Trump said of the incident, which the FBI is investigating, “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong.”
Source: Daily Kos
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