The U.S. is not a pure democracy.  This isn’t Ancient Athens.  We the people don’t take a bus down to D.C. every time a piece of legislation needs an up-or-down vote.  Our representatives do that for us.  That’s what makes us a republic. 

In a republic, democracy has its limits.  Unlike a pure democracy, republics don’t make decisions purely by majority rule.  As James Madison argued in Federalist Paper #10, a system in which the majority always wins means that people of minority groups or opinions—no matter how wise or just their cause—will always be vulnerable to the prejudices of an “unjust and interested majority.”  For this reason, our government employs various measures for the protection of minority rights—like requiring supermajorities for constitutional amendments, or the fact that all legislative decisions are made by a small group of 535 legislators “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the country.” 

Also, unlike a pure democracy, our system of federalism ensures protections for the rights of states, particularly by preserving a level of representative equality between states regardless of their population.  This is best reflected in the structure of the Senate, which unlike the House, does not consider population when allocating representation, helping to head off some of the dominance experienced by smaller states at the hands of larger ones.  This also carries over to our Electoral College, and helps to explain how a small state like Wyoming with only 3 electoral votes (1 vote per ≈ 192,920 people) actually has greater proportional representation than a large state like California with 55 (1 vote per ≈ 718,404 people).  

I don’t want a pure democracy.  In a republic, democracy is a question of degree, and for the most part, I think our system has appropriate checks on many of the most harmful impulses of democratic government.  However, I also believe that our republic isn’t democratic enough.  It’s never been democratic enough.  We have never lived in a country where the true voice of the people—ALL the people—has been adequately reflected in our elected leaders.  Which is why I think that with their newfound power, the big-D Democrats in Congress and the White House should make it their most important priority to inject more small-d democracy into our democratic republic.  

For many, this project starts with the Electoral College.  Democratic candidates have won the popular vote in five of the six presidential elections that have taken place this century, but have only won the presidency in three of those elections.  That’s a problem, and if not for less than 50,000 combined votes in the states of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia, it would have happened again in 2020, despite the fact that even in that scenario, Joe Biden would have still won the popular vote by over 7 million.

I wouldn’t protest against the abolition of the Electoral College, but when it comes to potential democratic reforms, it’s not at the top of my list.  One reason for that is I’m not entirely opposed on principle to an electoral system that values some equality between the states.  After all, as a Minnesotan, I actually live in one of the states whose voice is slightly augmented as a result of that system.  Another reason is that due to its need for a constitutional amendment in which ratification requires approval from ¾ of the states, the abolition of the Electoral College seems pretty unlikely.

Instead, what seems more possible is not abolishing the Electoral College, but adjusting the way we use it.  For example, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an agreement that already exists between a significant number of states to reward their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, no matter who wins the vote within those individual states.  If enough states were to sign on to this compact—more than 270 electoral votes worth—it would effectively eliminate the ability of the Electoral College to award the presidency to the popular vote loser. 

Another solution that is probably less practical but to me more appealing is replacing the winner-take-all system of the Electoral College for one that allocates electoral votes proportionately.  This means that rather than all of the electoral votes being allocated to the popular vote winner within a given state, the electoral votes would instead be allocated based on the proportion of the vote that each candidate received.  Rather than being the swing states that decided the presidential election, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia would have split their electoral votes equally between the two candidates (6-5 in Arizona since it has an odd number).  Donald Trump would have won electoral votes in New York, Joe Biden would have won electoral votes in Mississippi, and in states with the largest number of electors like Texas and California, it’s possible that even Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgenson could have picked up an electoral vote or two.  This system would not eliminate the possibility of the popular vote winner being the Electoral College loser, but it does seem that it would make it less likely, particularly in situations like our two most recent presidential elections in which the Democratic margin of victory was in the millions. 

But regardless of what happens with the Electoral College, there are other more practical and principled measures that Democrats should be pursuing to enhance and protect democratic participation, and that starts with making sure that all people are represented. 

In 2016, D.C. voters overwhelmingly approved the measure to turn Washington D.C. into the state of New Columbia, and there is literally no good reason not to grant them that wish.  There are plenty of bullshit reasons that Republicans will certainly espouse should this debate be revisited in Congress, but at the end of the day, the only reason that Republicans don’t want D.C. to become a state is because it will result in three relatively safe Democratic seats in Congress (one in the House, and more importantly, two in the Senate).

But politics aside, granting statehood to D.C. is the democratic thing for a democratic republic to do.  This country was founded on the idea of “no taxation without representation”, a principle not reflected in D.C.’s current arrangement, as their license plates will happily remind you.  What is more, D.C. has a higher population than both Wyoming and Vermont, and in spite of its absurdly high median income, also has one of the highest poverty rates in the country, which uncoincidentally corresponds with the fact that its population is nearly 50% black.  I don’t know about you, but if there’s anyone to whom I do feel comfortable denying congressional representation, it’s not poor people from a historically marginalized group.

The situation with Puerto Rican statehood is a bit murkier. While Puerto Rico doesn’t suffer from the same constitutional hang-ups (also bullshit) that D.C. does, I personally would not feel comfortable pushing for Puerto Rican statehood without more democratic input from the people of Puerto Rico.  Puerto Ricans already voted to approve statehood in a 2020 referendum, but participation was extremely low (only 23%), and there’s reason to believe that was due in part to the fact that what Puerto Ricans really want is not statehood, but independence.  Either way, democratic self-determination is the solution, and if it were to become clear that Congress would act on the results of a free and fair election to determine Puerto Rico’s political future, perhaps Puerto Ricans would show up at their polling places to make that decision once and for all.  

Some say that focusing on statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico is a waste of legislative energy, as Senate Republicans would almost certainly use another tool of the minority—the filibuster—to block any action seeking to add another star to the flag.  However, there is an interesting argument that because statehood is not really a legislative matter, the filibuster should not apply.  Ironically, it would be the Republicans themselves who opened this can of worms when they changed the filibuster rules a few years back to push through Trump’s judicial appointments.  Either way Democrats should push the conversation in Congress, because even if Republicans are successful in their endeavors to deny representation to unrepresented Americans, they’re going to look terrible doing it. 

Lastly, in addition to working to extend representation to those who don’t currently have it, it is equally important for Democrats to secure the rights of those who do, particularly their right to choose who represents them.  Voter suppression in this country is as old as the vote itself.  The methods have changed, but the targets—predominately poor people of color—have remained the same.  Literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and poll taxes have been replaced with things like registration restrictions, voter purges, and felony disenfranchisement—all written in race-neutral language, but all with the same effect (and in many cases intent) of preventing some of the nation’s most marginalized people from being able to vote to change the system that marginalizes them. 

Legislation already exists to address these issues.  The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act proposes a replacement for the recently expired Voting Rights Act of 1965, and would force state and local jurisdictions with a history of voting rights violations to seek federal approval for any changes to their voting requirements, particularly if those requirements would effectively result in racial discrimination.  The For the People Act is another example of ready-made legislation geared towards combating some of the modern-day voter suppression tactics mentioned above, and facilitating elections that are fair, equitable, and accessible for all. 

It is undeniable that when it comes to winning elections and controlling our government, the reforms mentioned above would tip the scales dramatically in favor of the Democratic Party.  Altering or abolishing the Electoral College would eliminate a significant Republican advantage, statehood to D.C. or Puerto would add reliable Democratic seats in both houses of Congress, and protecting or encouraging the vote of the historically disenfranchised would inevitably mean more voters voting for Democratic candidates.  But the reason to do these reforms is not to help the Democratic Party.  The reason to do them is democracy. 

When we look back on significant reforms that extended democratic participation to more people, we don’t mourn the partisan casualties.  We don’t feel sorry for racist politicians after the Civil War who struggled to win support from newly enfranchised black voters, or candidates that lost elections after the ratification of the 19^th amendment because they failed to win the votes of enough women.  We celebrate these reforms for the people they empowered.  We celebrate these reforms because they made our republic more democratic.

It won’t be possible to separate these reform attempts from the partisan politics of the day.  Republicans will certainly frame this as a Democratic power-grab, and technically, they won’t be wrong.  But if the Republicans can only win the White House through an Electoral College system that denies victory to the popular vote winner, perhaps they don’t deserve the presidency.  If Republicans can only be competitive for Congressional control through denial of representation, partisan gerrymandering, and modern-day voter suppression tactics, then perhaps Republicans shouldn’t control Congress.  And if securing democratic participation for more people makes it more difficult for Republicans to win elections, perhaps they should consider why their policies struggle to attract the young, the poor, and people of color.  Rather than whining about another partisan power-grab from “radical” Democrats, perhaps Republicans should take a long look in the mirror, and instead figure out a way to win elections in a country that actually takes small-d democracy seriously.    

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If there was a silver lining that I hoped would result from last Wednesday’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, it was that FINALLY Congressional Republicans would begin the long overdue process of divorcing themselves from Donald Trump.  It wouldn’t even be a display of courage so much as one of self-preservation.  I mean, the guy already lost them the White House, cost them the Senate, and nearly got the Vice President lynched by a mob that he incited. 

Unfortunately, just like every other time I’ve mustered that hope over the last four years, Republicans have once again confounded me with their befuddling loyalty to a man whose only loyalty is to himself.  Only hours after an insurrection of which they were the targets, over 140 Congressional Republicans still objected to the certification of the Electoral College vote in various states, perpetuating the very lie that had them hiding under their desks in fear earlier that day.  And while Wednesday’s impeachment was the most bipartisan in history with ten Republicans “courageously” voting to impeach a president from their own party, it wasn’t nearly as bipartisan as it should have been. 

The Republican Party sticking with Donald Trump after the insurrection feels like sticking with the Titanic as the last lifeboat is lowered from the deck.  There is clearly no future for a Trump-led Republican Party, but Republican politicians also know that there might not be a future for them either if their Trump-crazy constituents catch them being too critical of their hero.  This also highlights the sad reality that no matter how many Republican leaders in Congress decide to suddenly grow a backbone or a set of principles, the challenge facing both the Republican Party and the nation at large will remain the same—no matter what happens to Donald Trump, a substantial minority of the country will remain committed to him and the warped worldview he helped to cultivate. 

Different people have different reasons for remaining loyal to Trump.  Some are just pure believers in Trump-spun conspiracy theories.  They truly believe that this election was “stolen”, and thanks to years of Trump’s “fake news” campaign against journalists and facts in general, they cannot be shown any evidence that will convince them otherwise.  In their minds, it was not the insurrection that threatened the foundations of American democracy, but the constitutional process of certifying a presidential election that their guy lost.  This is the kind of upside-down thinking that helps to explain how thousands of people can believe that they are committing an act of patriotism by committing an act of treason. 

Others feel that the insurrection was no different or worse than the “leftist” riots that took place over the summer, but that’s a dumb comparison for a lot of reasons.  Violence and destruction should always be condemned, but motives matter, and the very real racial injustice that motivated last summer’s unrest is different than the made-up story about a stolen election that motivated last week’s insurrection.  Also, there’s a distinction worth making between the looting of a Lake Street Target and the armed seizure of the U.S.-fucking-Capitol.  Both are bad, one is worse.   

Others are convinced that all Democrats are “radical socialists” hellbent on creating a police-less police state void of civil liberties and high school sports.  For them, the incoming Biden administration and extreme leftists that control him pose a far greater threat to the country than any right-wing militia.

And this is where they need to be proven wrong.

This train-wreck end to the Trump presidency has left Democrats with a pretty tremendous opportunity.  With control of the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats have the ability to do something that Donald Trump refused to do for four years—govern, preferably in a way that will help to win some of these people back.

Even though the calls for “healing” and “unity” from Republicans during the impeachment vote were laughably disingenuous, they are right that once Biden is inaugurated, he must make good on his promise to bring Americans together.  Impeachment was necessary, but if the first order of business of the Democrat-controlled Congress is launching an investigation into the illegal activities of the Trump family, I’ll be extremely disappointed.  That’s not to say that Trump and his people should not be held accountable for any crimes they may have committed.  I’m sure there are courts and committees to carry out those types of investigations.  But to make this the centerpiece of the Democratic agenda would only breathe new life into the spirit of a presidency that the American people desperately need to put behind them. 

Instead, Biden and Congressional Democrats need to show that they are the purveyors of policies that make people’s lives better.  They need to show what it looks like to have a government that actually takes the pandemic seriously, listens to medical experts, and can prioritize both saving lives and ensuring people’s and business’s economic well-being.  They need to show how the fight against racial injustice is a fight that benefits all Americans, and how things like progressive taxes, higher minimum wages, and expanded public healthcare options benefit many of the white working-class voters who left the party for Trump.  They might think they hate socialism now, but they’ll find it a lot less terrifying if it increases their paychecks and reduces their medical bills.

Republicans have an important role here, too, because while a Republican Party in disarray might be good for the fortunes of Democratic politicians, it is not good for the country.  We need brave conservative leaders to step up and forge a new Republican Party for the post-Trump era.  A party that is committed to intellectually defensible conservative values like free markets, state’s rights, and fiscal responsibility.  A party that doesn’t use racist or xenophobic dog-whistles in order to earn votes, and instead seeks to build an inclusive platform more attractive to an increasingly diverse electorate.  A party that actually challenges Democrats to be better as opposed to just less bad. 

Even as I write this, it all kind of sounds like a pipedream.  The reality is that the Democratic majority in Congress is slim, and significant reform on many of the issues I mentioned is not super likely.  What is more, a significant rebuild of the Republican Party will take more than a few years, and many of this current collection of Congressional Republicans have already demonstrated their unwillingness to stand up for the good of their party, the good of their country, or just good in general.  I also fear that no matter how much “unity” the country is able to foster over the weeks and months ahead, right wing extremism will continue to be a threat to the health and safety of this country and its citizens well-into the future. 

But to end on a positive note—no matter what challenges the future might hold, I believe there is reason to be hopeful. This has been an ugly end to an ugly four years, but last week I believe that we finally hit rock bottom, and when you hit rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up. The Trump presidency is coming to an end, and the vaccine distribution is underway. The days are getting longer in Minnesota, and the weather will soon be getting warmer. 2021 thus far feels a lot like 2020, but the year is young, and I’m optimistic that it won’t end that way.  That doesn’t mean it will be a great year, and that the year won’t have its low points and its setbacks. But if Democrats can be competent, and Republicans can be decent, and the American people can gain a reminder and an appreciation for what competence and decency look like, even that would be something worth celebrating.  Even if 2021 doesn’t end with McConnell and Pelosi mask-less and holding hands commemorating a record year for bipartisan legislation, it could at least be the year in which we rebounded from a historically bad pandemic and a historically bad presidency, and made some solid progress on our shared endeavor to…sigh…make America great again.

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What follows, as best as I can imagine, is a list of the beliefs that a person would need to hold in order to believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged by Democrats in order to produce a Biden victory:

• First, I suppose you’d need to believe that a majority of the American electorate truly supports Donald Trump.  I guess it wouldn’t need to be a majority.  It wasn’t in 2016.  But nevertheless, you’d need to believe that support for the president is significantly greater than what the reported election results currently suggest.
• This would mean that you’d need to believe that the polls were wrong.  Which they were.  Once again, the polls seem to have dramatically miscalculated Donald Trump’s popularity.  So, I suppose you’d need to believe that the Democrats successfully rigged the polls, too, but then failed to rig the election results in a way that would reflect the fake polls that they created.
• What is more, while successfully rigging the presidential election, you’d need to believe that Democrats were for some reason not as successful at rigging important races for the House and Senate, which would’ve actually allowed Biden to carry out his presidential agenda.  You’d also need to believe this in spite of the fact that those Congressional elections, in theory, should’ve been easier to rig.
• Or, perhaps you believe that Democrats purposefully allowed Republicans to pick up seats in Congress to throw people off the scent of their rigging of the presidency.  Quite the sophisticated plan.
• But also, the plan couldn’t have been that sophisticated, as Democrats also forgot to tell their ballot-filler-inners not to fill in their fake ballots on camera, and to tell their late-night-illegal-ballot-truck-drivers not to deliver all 130,000 illegal ballots at the same time!  Maybe somebody else was in charge of that part of the plan.
• But again, there must have been some level of sophistication to organize all that rigging in states that literally have thousands of polling places that employ tens-of-thousands of election judges.  As well as to coordinate the rigging effort between states since there is no one swing state that could flip the electoral college back in Trump’s favor.
• Perhaps you believe that coordination took place amongst the “Blue Wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, considering their proximity to one another.  These states would’ve given Trump the presidency, and he only lost them by about 200,000 combined votes, which really isn’t that many.
• But this might be difficult to reconcile with the fact that you didn’t have similar concerns when Trump won these states back in 2016 by only 77,000 votes—states which are historically difficult to win for Republican candidates, hence the name “Blue Wall”.
• Of course, your focus is on Pennsylvania, which would’ve been impossible for Joe Biden to win (even though that’s the state of his birth) if not for the cheating of the Democrat-controlled city of Philadelphia.
• This is because you believe that for some reason only Democrats are capable of cheating, even though the Republican Party has spent decades trying to make it more difficult for Americans to vote (it’s not cheating if you make the rules).
• But you also must believe that a significant number of Republicans are in on the rigging, too, especially in Republican-controlled states like Georgia and Arizona. 
• And don’t forget Fox News!  They were the first ones to call Arizona for Biden!
• Or maybe you’re just against mail-in voting, or question the legitimacy of states counting ballots received after election day, even if those ballots were postmarked by election day.
• But this would also complicate your belief that the majority of the country is actually for Trump, since it would basically mean that your guy’s election victory would depend on depriving countless Americans of what, according to the rules at the time, were supposed to be legally cast ballots.
• But what everyone seems to agree on is that Trump has a right to bring evidence of election irregularities to the courts—a fairly normal procedure in the aftermath of a close election.
• But if the judges were to rule against him, that would mean they must also be in on the rigging, despite the fact that one of the most important accomplishments of Trump’s presidency was his record-setting appointments of conservative judges to the federal judiciary.

This, to me, seems to be at minimum what a person would need to believe in order to believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged by Democrats to produce a Biden victory.  That and that most of our political and journalistic institutions at a local, state, and national level are so thoroughly corrupted that, no matter who’s president, our democracy is beyond saving. 

The only other alternative is to believe that Donald Trump—one of the most controversial and divisive presidents in history—narrowly lost a democratic election, fair and square, to a Democratic candidate who was slightly better than the Democratic candidate that Trump narrowly defeated four years ago, fair and square.  And that, obviously, sounds impossible.

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Let’s start with the most important thing—Trump lost.  They may not have officially called it yet at the time of this post, but they will.  And that’s huge.  For many voters, that was their #1 issue.  Certainly, that was the #1 issue for me.  I have friends who said the Senate was more important.  I disagree.  Trump’s presidency was too toxic and too dangerous, and I’m so relieved that it’s soon to be over.

But I’m also disappointed.  Not because I thought this was going to be the second coming of the Blue Wave.  I was skeptical about Florida, doubtful about Iowa and Ohio, and never really believed that Democrats were poised to flip Texas this time around.  But I did expect Florida to be closer, and I didn’t expect Michigan and Wisconsin to be close.  I may not have expected a Biden landslide, but I did expect a more definitive Biden win. 

I expected that because of the polls, which once again, proved to be garbage.  And I don’t want to hear about “margins of error” or how even an 89% probability of a Biden win—as projected by 538—leaves an 11% chance for a Trump victory that didn’t even happen anyway so technically the polls were right!  Wrong.  Just like in 2016, the polls grossly misled Americans on what we were to expect from the 2020 election, and in doing so, again helped to validate the misleading narrative propagated by Trump that otherwise credible journalistic institutions are purveyors of “fake news” and not to be trusted.  I should also add that I have no idea what’s wrong with the polls or how to fix them.  But it’s not my job to know that.  It’s the pollsters’ job, and their bad at it. 

Like many Americans watching on election night, I began to feel that this was 2016 all over again—hope flaring up and then slowly burning out in swing state after swing state as polls closed across the country.  Safe to say that when I passed out drunk and despondent on my couch a little before midnight, I was terrified that I would awake to four more years of Trump’s America.

In hindsight, I should have been more patient.  After all, I can’t even count the number of times in the weeks leading up to the election that I was told that we probably wouldn’t have a clear winner on election night, and that those early results might be skewed towards Trump due to the politics around mail-in voting.  But when you combine the terrible polling, my 2016 PTSD, and the fact that I’ve been anxiously anticipating this election for a few days short of four years, it was kind of hard to be chill.

So, while Biden’s next-day emergence did eliminate the realization of my worst nightmare, a significant part of me is still really disappointed with what are now mostly the final results.  Here’s why:

Donald Trump may have been defeated, but Trumpism was not.  My hopefulness that this election would result in a resounding rejection of the toxic ideology of which Trump is both a cause and a symptom, proved to be overly-optimistic.  Barring a sudden surge of integrity from the Republican Party, Trumpism is probably here to stay, if not as the dominant ideology of the modern American right, certainly as a powerful and influential strand.

The razor-thin margins in so many states also enabled Trump to carry out what is potentially the most destructive outcome of this election—the further subversion of public faith in our democratic institutions.  Trump’s Thursday night press conference was despicable, but it was hardly surprising.  He’s been transparently laying the groundwork of this ploy for months, calling into question the validity of mail-in voting, particularly in the “Democrat-run” cities that would predictably turn out against him.  He is now seeking to reap the benefits of his own propaganda, and unfortunately, his supporters are buying into it, and establishment Republicans are shamefully going along with it.  A sad irony from a man who kicked off his presidency under the slogan “American First”, and is now selfishly doing everything in his power to leave the country cripplingly divided in his wake.

It’s also worth noting that the antics we’re seeing from Trump and his supporters are different and much more damaging than anything we saw from Democrats after Trump’s 2016 victory.  Democrats certainly weren’t happy with the results of that election, and remain frustrated with a system that continues to give the electoral advantage to their political opponents, but they did not conspiratorially question the system that produced those results.  The electoral college may be bullshit, but it’s the system we got, and Trump won it fair and square.  Most Democrats could admit that.  And while the impeachment and attempted removal of Donald Trump was perhaps a bit more conspiratorial, evidence-based allegations against an individual president and his campaign team are not nearly as unprecedented or dangerous as Trump’s evidence-less indictment of our entire democratic process (For the record, I never supported the Trump impeachment.  I always preferred to remove Trump from office the same way he got in—democratically).

Speaking of democratic institutions, it brings up what I think is one of the biggest questions that we as a country need to answer following this election—do we want to be a real democracy yet, or what?  If we truly believe that the right to vote is so goddamn important, are we ready to start treating it that way?  I’m not even talking about the electoral college.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d be happy to get rid of it, and based on some of the demographic shifts we’re starting to see in states like Arizona, Texas, and Georgia, perhaps Republicans should be considering getting rid of it, too.  

But what I’m talking about is making voting easier and more accessible for all. Mail-in voting should not be controversial.  It has been and continues to be a convenient and reliable way to extend greater opportunity to vote to more of the American electorate.  That is not to say that we shouldn’t work hard to ensure its authenticity and security.  We should, and despite the president’s baseless claims of widescale fraud, we do.

And how is Election Day not a federal holiday?!?!?  What a joke.  That legislation should pass Congress tomorrow without so much as a combative blink.  I mean, how can we call ourselves the world’s greatest democracy when people still need to rush to the polls over their lunch break?  Unless, of course, those people can instead vote early.  Or by mail…

And this one is on Republicans.  That’s not a partisan take—it’s just a fact.  Republicans want to make this country less democratic (small “d”), which, to be fair, can be a defensible position.  I for one am not one of those, “no matter what, make sure you vote” people.  I want you to vote if you think like I do, but if you don’t, I’m perfectly happy to let you stay home.  I’m also not a fan of uninformed voting.  If you don’t feel qualified to vote in a particular election or on a particular race, then maybe you shouldn’t?  Like, if I don’t know anything about the two people running for judge in District Random Number-Random Letter, then I probably shouldn’t put my thumb on the scale.  Yet, how many local races were swung this year by uninformed voters randomly circling the names of candidates due to some misguided sense of civic responsibility?

But Republicans are antidemocratic for all the wrong reasons.  They know that the poor and underprivileged are less likely to vote for them, so they purposefully make it more difficult for those people to vote, mostly by exploiting the fact that they’re poor and underprivileged.  Again, how can we call ourselves the world’s greatest democracy when the people most screwed by the system are the same people who experience the most obstacles in casting a vote to change that system?

Unfortunately, opportunities for electoral reform—or any other Democratic initiatives—may be limited due to the underwhelming performance of Democrats in down-ballot races.  And while I’ll maintain that the presidency was the most important prize for Democrats in this election, their probable inability to flip the Senate dramatically limits what they can do with that prize (still holding out hope, Georgia!!!)

But I want to end on a positive note—something that’s got lost midst all the noise of rollercoaster results and Trump temper tantrums.  That something is Kamala Harris.  Kamala Harris is the daughter of immigrants.  Kamala Harris is a woman of color.  And Kamala Harris is the first female vice president in the history of the United States of America.  That deserves to be celebrated.

If nothing else, I hope we can all recognize that.  That just for a moment, we can take off our partisan hats, collectively rise to our feet, and give that American accomplishment the standing ovation it deserves.  No matter what you think of Kamala the politician, she represents progress for this country.   She represents the long overdue culmination of a decades-long effort by both parties to put a woman on a successful presidential ticket.  For millions of young girls across the country and the globe, and especially for young black and brown girls, she represents a transcendence of what is even possible.  You can oppose Kamala’s agenda tomorrow, but tonight, you should celebrate her.  If we’re able to do that, especially for people who did not vote for the Biden-Harris ticket, perhaps we can begin the work of healing this country after an incredibly divisive end to an incredibly divisive presidency.  It’s my sincere hope that a significant slice of the 69 million voters and counting that went for Trump can demonstrate that ability.  But if not, things might get uglier before they get better. 

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