Like millions of other Americans, I was tuned into my favorite news network, PBS, watching election results as they began rolling in, waiting for that ultimate 270 that would determine a winner. Also, like many others, I went to sleep without an answer. An answer which finally came on Saturday.
Never during my lifetime have I been so stressed over a presidential election. I know I was not alone, because everyone I have spoken to recently has said the same. Some people left their hometowns or cities for the woods or higher ground. Some decided now would be a good time to leave the country.
Not since the Civil War has our country been so divided - a feeling exacerbated by campaigns that stressed differences rather than common causes. In my small town, I do not recall ever seeing so many political signs standing sentry on front lawns and along sidewalks. Maybe it was my imagination, but the lawn wars felt more competitive than usual, more like middle fingers to political foes than friendly reminders to vote.
There has been reason enough for the change in temperature. Donald Trump’s 2016 election was a scalpel to the nation’s heart. Half the country went blind with rage, while the other half accepted ugliness as the coin of the realm. It did not help that Trump continuously baited our worst instincts.
Making the 2020 campaign all the more taxing, physically and psychologically, was its inextricable connectedness to Covid-19. Both were plagues upon the nation, if one decidedly more deadly. To hear Trump forswear the virus as nothing much to worry about while infections and deaths continued to climb was a textbook illustration of cognitive dissonance - the perfect metaphor for an administration rooted in its own separate reality.
Except in wartime, life and death do not usually play such prominent roles in our politics.
President Theodore Roosevelt said, "A vote is like a rifle. Its usefulness depends on the character of the user.”
While every election reveals something about America’s character at a given moment in its history, none in memory has illuminated such a striking set of contrasts, underscoring what is wrong with our deeply divided nation, but also what is right with it.
At every turn, there were fresh reasons to despair that our political system may have become broken beyond repair. Before a single vote was cast, no less than the president of the United States repeatedly and shamelessly questioned the legitimacy of any outcome that did not yield a victory for himself.
And yet, in its closing days, the 2020 campaign showed that Americans are not the cynics that their political leaders sometimes seem to believe they are. The election will be remembered as a testament to their resilience and their determination to make themselves heard.
For once, no one seemed to wonder whether their vote really mattered. No one claimed there was not a dime’s worth of difference in the choice they were being offered.
In many respects, it appeared that the right to vote was more fragile than it had been in modern memory - under siege by a deadly epidemic, by harassment and intimidation, by confusing changes to election rules and legal roadblocks. Republicans, in particular, seemed to be banking their hopes for victory on discouraging voter participation, with nearly every poll indicating they would fare better under a low-turnout scenario.
But even before Election Day, more than 100 million had already cast their ballots, sometimes standing in line for hours to do so. There were instances where people drove all day to get to the polls, and even flew across the country to vote.
One outcome that surprised, but is a long time in coming, could ultimately ring the death knell for Electoral College. National Popular Vote Initiative means whoever wins the popular vote will win the presidency rather than relying on the electors. That could, ultimately, help states with smaller populations, like Vermont and Wyoming.
Democratic hopes for an early knockout blow in, say, Florida were dashed, as the contest was fought across the map.
Early in the day, President Trump sounded bullish, as he predicted on Fox News that his victory would be bigger than his surprising win over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But, later, speaking at his campaign headquarters in suburban Virginia, the president acknowledged that perhaps the polls that consistently showed him lagging behind might be right.
“Losing is never easy,” Trump said.. “Not for me, it’s not.”
Meanwhile, while Biden appeared to have more pathways to victory, he appeared to be keeping his eye on one battleground in particular. He spent Election Day campaigning in Pennsylvania, and told campaign volunteers in Philadelphia: “Philly’s the key!"
When any president is running for a second term, the election inevitably becomes a referendum on him. That was probably more the case than usual with Trump. His approval rating has been historically low, but he enjoyed an unusually intense loyalty among his most ardent supporters.
This was refracted in the differing forces that brought voters out with such intensity in 2020.
Asked what issues mattered to them most, about a third of voters overall cited the economy, while roughly 1 in 5 named the Coronavirus or racial inequality. Smaller shares named crime, which Trump had labored to elevate as an issue, and health-care policy, an issue Democrats had emphasized - and which carried them to victory in the 2018 midterm elections that returned them to a majority.
But, not surprisingly, the initial exit polls suggested that the priorities of people who voted for Trump were very different from those who cast their ballots for Biden.
About 6 in 10 of the president’s supporters cited the economy as their top concern; nothing else came close. Roughly a third of Biden’s voters said racial equality was their leading priority, with slightly fewer naming the Coronavirus epidemic.
The most immediate choice that will confront the president-elect will be whether to put more emphasis on containing the virus, which is surging, or rebuilding the economy. And there, voters offered no clear guidance by which to steer: They were roughly divided.
Nor, at a time when even the act of wearing a mask is politically fraught, was there anything close to a national consensus on whether what the government has done thus far has been effective, with voters nearly evenly divided on whether the effort has gone “well” or “badly.”
What just about everyone would surely agree upon, however they voted, is that 2020 is a year that the country would love to put behind it. And, by showing up at the polls, despite the obstacles, they have turned the face of America toward its future.
After the fiercely fought 1800 presidential election - the world's first election resulting in a peaceful transfer of power - Thomas Jefferson said, “Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.” On April 14, 1865, hours before going to Ford’s Theatre, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter saying he hoped to create “a Union of hearts and minds as well as of States.” Such aspirations recur in this intermittently raucous country. So does harmony, more or less.
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