From the Facebook Page: Spirituality Lab, November 4, 2020

Day 5—The Morning After

Well, here we are on Wednesday morning and, unfortunately, we wound up where many of us feared we would—no clear result for the Presidential election, and the GOP clinging to a slim majority in the Senate. There are still millions of mail-in/drop-off ballots to be counted in a few critical swing states—Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona being the ones most likely to be impacted.

Assuming more Democrats voted by mail/drop box than Republicans (a reasonable assumption), it is likely that Biden will be called the winner by the end of this week. The GOP is already gearing up for challenges in the courts and the outcome may not be known for weeks to a month or even more.

Starting last night as the Florida returns started to show that Trump would do well there my FB newsfeed started lighting up with liberal-left friends wringing their hands—first with a sense of disquiet, then open disbelief. Meanwhile, my conservative-right friends are saying “I told you so”, their own pre-election jitters having calmed down a lot.

Since this is my week of thinking about a spiritual practice of politics, I wonder how to approach an uncertain morning like this? I started with yoga stretching and tried a bit of meditation, but my mind would not settle down. Perhaps had I turned off the news it might have helped, but I could not and cannot—I keep watching, hoping that something major would break for Biden and the Dems, even as the reality is staring me in the face in clear blue and red graphics.

One way for me to find serenity is to try to process what I am seeing with as clear a mind as I can. Here are some early reactions.

1. Incumbency has tremendous power in presidential elections. In almost any other second term election we would expect the challenger to have an uphill struggle to oust the incumbent. So from this perspective, Biden would normally be seen as being successful to keep it this close. Yet, even as Joe sent out text after text to me saying that it was closer than the polls appeared, a large part of my mind felt that Biden was going to win, and win pretty convincingly. And take the Senate along on his coat-tails.

Clearly this was on the minds of many liberal voters. We saw the immense increase in early voting in urban areas, we read the polls and reports about how white suburban women voters were turning against Trump with a vengeance, and we dared to talk about things like ending the filibuster and expanding court appointments.

The disappointment among liberals is palpable. Even if Biden eventually wins and Trump eventually leaves, McConnell and the GOP Senate will be able to frustrate most Democratic initiatives, no matter how moderate. But this is the reality we are facing, and it does no one any good to stay with the bitterness and disappointment—in fact, it will likely impede whatever positives liberals can achieve in coming years.

2. The last three election cycles bear out something I have been saying for a while now—even the best polls systematically undercount GOP voter support. I am not sure the reason for this: could be GOP voters lie when reached by pollsters; might be that GOP voters are less likely to be reached by pollsters. But whatever the reason, no one can rely on polls alone to gauge where elections will go, at least at the statewide and nationwide level. There is no replacement for the hard work of getting out the vote of the base, especially in swing states. Where Democrats did a superb job of this—such as Arizona—they can turn a red state purple. But the GOP also did a great job of mobilizing its base.

3. The GOP is very strong with Trump at the top of the ticket, and all of the GOP realized this. How things will fare for the GOP with Trump as a lame duck or out of office will be interesting to watch.

4. As I have been saying all week in this series, and before this on my own pages, there is actually broad support across the nation for Trumpism and Democrats cannot ignore this. Democrats cannot ignore the very real fact that for two major cycles in a row close to 50% of the electorate chose Donald Trump and all he stands for and has done. Even with his horrible personality and his terrible handling of the pandemic and the tanking economy a large portion of Americans voted not only for Trump but for the entire GOP ticket.

Liberals and Democrats (not always the same things) must accept this reality and deal with it. We cannot be talking about democratic socialism or a green new deal or Medicare for all and expect to win the big elections, at least not in the near term. The message to me is clear—a large portion of Americans, for whatever reason you want to name, simply are not in tune with a more liberal message. I am not saying that Democrats and liberals need to drop these policy goals, but they clearly need to recast them in the context that we live in.

We need to listen closely to the concerns and worries of voters who went for Trump and the GOP and address those as much as we do the concerns and worries of Blacks and Hispanics. The message for me is that if you want to govern America as a nation, you have to recognize that the nation as a whole is no where near as liberal as you want it to be, and if you keep holding only to liberal perspectives then you will struggle to win the state and national elections.

Does this mean capitulating to the right wing? No. But it does mean finding ways to speak to middle America in language that it can accept. There is no guarantee they will listen, but we need to try. Yes, it will mean deferring some liberal programs and ideas, but reality says that the nation as a whole is not ready for them. (I stand ready to be shot by the liberal firing squad now).

5. Following from the point above, what we are seeing is a political cultural divide in America that has been growing for decades. To counter it, Democrats and liberals need to do what the GOP did in the wake of the Goldwater loss—start building up local Democratic support and create a general state-level culture. More on this later, need to get to work now.