Election over, but can states become united?
The election is over. On Jan. 20, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn in as president and vice president of the United States. We the American people, voting in record numbers, have rescued our constitutional democracy from an autocratic precipice.
The majority of Americans who voted to save democracy and restore the soul of our nation — more than 77 million of us, including nearly 62 percent of Greenwich voters — breathed a sigh of relief when the election was called for Biden. There were spontaneous celebrations in cities and towns throughout the country, indeed throughout the world.
Is our long collective nightmare really at an end? We must be careful to calibrate our celebratory mood and not succumb to a false sense of security.
Despite Biden’s considerable lead in the popular vote, we must remember that more than 72 million Americans voted for Donald Trump, who will remain in office for nearly 10 more weeks. There’s already cause for alarm with his firing and hiring activity since the election, and his refusal to facilitate a smooth transition to the Biden presidency.
Trump presides over a divided nation, almost as if it were two separate countries. He’s worked very hard at deepening this divide during his presidency, poisoning the crevice with hate, imbuing the separateness with an us-against-them belligerence, seeking to set Americans at war with one another.
Many Trump followers live in an alternate reality, an Orwellian world with alternative facts in which there is no truth, only fake news. Right now, for them, it’s fake news that Biden and Harris have won the election.
Trump’s base accepts his claim, repeated over and over again in the months and weeks leading up to the election, that the results will be fraudulent and the election rigged if he loses. These followers have been drawn into the conman’s narcissistic mind, believing that if their leader doesn’t win, the election must be rigged. In Trump’s thinking, he will never be a loser. Either he won, or the election was stolen, never mind that there’s no evidence to support this claim.
“ELECTION OFFICIALS NATIONWIDE FIND NO FRAUD.”
That was Wednesday’s headline across the top of The New York Times front page. Interviews with election officials from both parties throughout the country found no evidence of fraud or other irregularities. It was a free, fair, and transparent election.
Free, fair, transparent elections and the peaceful transfer of power are cornerstones of our democracy. The unsung heroes are election officials who handled an unprecedented number of ballots under difficult pandemic conditions in municipalities, counties, and states throughout the country. We owe them a debt of gratitude for upholding our democratic institutions with professional standards.
Here in Greenwich, we should thank Fred DeCaro and Mary Hegarty, the Republican and Democratic Registrars of Voters, their staff, poll workers and absentee ballot counters; Town Clerk Carmella Budkins and her staff; and our Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill and staff. At the same time, we should thank their thousands upon thousands of counterparts in all the places where Americans exercised their right to vote in the 2020 election.
Trump’s accusations of fraud, and a rigged election, amount to an attack upon these public servants whose professionalism serves to protect all of our votes. It’s also an attack upon democracy, undermining public trust in the integrity of elections. As his lies gather momentum on social media, he continues his authoritarian push, taking a wrecking ball to the foundation of our democratic institutions.
“How hungry people are to consume lies,” said Republican Al Schmidt, one of three commissioners responsible for overseeing Philadelphia’s elections, responding to the lies circulating on social media.
Lies. This autocratic Trump trademark also brands his Republican enablers. Republicans from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to Attorney General William Barr reinforce Trump’s lies.
“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo said.
Biden and Harris promise to heal the divide. But this requires the rediscovery of shared truth. As long as the Republican Party chooses to remain the Party of Trump, deriving power from alternative facts, there will be no healing in a divided nation that continues to flirt with autocratic rule. Alma Rutgers served in Greenwich town government for 30 years.