Finally, Election Day
Terry H. Schwadron
Nov. 7, 2022
Election Day finally looms tomorrow with a ton of questions about various policy directions as a country, about our belief in democracy and about our values.
As we’ve been told, it may take days or longer to work out the results from too many tight races. The prospect of election challenges and even violence resulting from those results seem more expected than not. Tucker Carlson on Fox News was preaching that pro-democracy appeals from Joe Biden are “commanding you not to complain about the election results.”
Much has been made of issues from high prices to crime with tissue-thin suggestions at best for change. Much has been made about the flawed personalities who have offered themselves as candidates. And, clearly, much has been made of a seemingly totally nationalized election in which we are voting — if not intimidated from casting ballots — on which party controls the House and Senate.
The estimated $17 billion spent on these elections likely have changed few minds. In the end, it seems all about who turns out to vote rather than on persuasion. Tall about high prices with low values.
Our deep political division has defined all elections, local and federal, over a decision to move towards the MAGA vision of a Republican dictatorship presumably headed by a returning Donald Trump or a definite, though vague, Democratic promise to protect our rights to vote, to hold elections, to have say over bodies and a shelf of cultural choices.
Campaign words and competing truths aside, this election seems a guarantee that there are few shared American values. Even the outcomes will be disputed, either in court challenges or on the street, and the number of close elections suggests more hampered governmental direction even on the issues that these candidates have been yapping about for months.
Indelible Deep Divisions
Indeed, the election is merely the start of a presidential race two years hence, with the strong prospects that Trump will face federal indictments and that Joe Biden will face calls for impeachment by an expected Republican House majority — with grounds yet to be decided. Moreover, both men increasingly are being seen as too old, too ineffective, too divisive.
What we have wrought in this election cycle is growing hate talk, an acceptance that there will be more hate, more scapegoating, more physical violence and an insistence that we cannot agree on even a basic thing as holding candidates to accountability for what they say or do.
For MAGA fans, this is about anger, with a heavy lean on finding scapegoats for the demographics that will make white citizens less than a majority. They want a White House, Congress and court system that will support a white, Christian nation, with all its uneven policies to put rights of religion and tax cuts over all other rights.
For opponents, this is about hopes for a return to some level of public civility, even if that means endless efforts towards trying to reach accommodation with opponents while social, economic and public health show the wear and tear of sufficient attention.
For me, the question is whether enough voters who care about we traditionally have held as American values like growing our civil rights show up.
It seems obvious, but for too many, the immediacy of gas pump prices and supermarket costs are more a reason to throw the bums out than an insistence on casting and counting votes. It almost seems beside the point that those Republican candidates stoking that inflation anger and crime fear have put forth no ideas to address either.
Accepting the Results?
It seems critical to consider how, as a nation, we accept a democratic election to dump democracy, should most of the 300 Republican candidates who subscribe to election denial fantasies prevail. As the Left promises to support election outcomes as a matter of faith, this outcome could well spell the end of anything resembling future elections that include all votes.
That seems a pretty big problem.
Of course, there will be little time to think about that fundamental question as a Republican House majority get busy with their promises of attacking a Biden Justice Department and the FBI for perceived bias, launch committee investigations around Hunter Biden, and launch a slew of attacks on cultural fronts. Rather than attend to high prices, Republicans already are promising House attacks on Social Security, Medicare and entitlement programs while moving to make tax cuts for the wealthy permanent — none of which will affect high prices. And, in pursuit of a partisan lead for a white, Christian America that exists only in their minds, Republicans are going after national laws on abortion, gay marriage, anything acknowledging transgender people and a harsher view of race and immigration.
There are a substantial number of Republicans who want to rethink our commitments to support for Ukraine and our international allies altogether.
If it weren’t all so serious, it would simply seem absurd.
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