The 2020 U.S. presidential election is about three weeks behind us at the time of writing, and I want to put down something before it recedes too far back in my memory. After all, this was an historic election, held during a pandemic where much higher numbers of voters voted early and by mail, where the results were too close to call for several days, and the cultural divide was so pronounced that protesters showed up to vote counting centers in some states.
I'm about as liberal as they come, and was among those hoping for a "repudiation" of the Trump administration at the polls. So, election night was a disappointment to me. I went to bed after Florida and Texas were called for Donald Trump, fully expecting the announcement of his second term in the morning. That didn't happen. The "red mirage" and "blue shift" predictions proved to be correct, and it was clear that Biden had won by Friday. On the other hand, the Democrats lost several Congressional seats and the control of the Senate is still up in the air.
I mostly stayed away from the news coverage, especially as the days after election night were a waiting game. Social media was more helpful, pointing me to sites where I could look at the raw data from incoming vote counts without any accompanying commentary. While I felt it was important to be informed of Trump's antics during this time - trying to claim victory, trying to stop the ongoing vote count, and riling up his most unstable supporters - I also thought that the increased media attention was just encouraging bad behavior. Even now, Donald Trump refuses to concede, and has left the country in a state of limbo with Biden's transition on indefinite pause. There's a definite endpoint - January 20th - but the waiting is not easy. There's still the worry of more violence and more turmoil as Trump digs in his heels and the conspiracy theorists become emboldened.
The scrutiny of the situation might be greater if it weren't for COVID ramping up again for the holidays, and the country in the middle of the worst surge of cases yet. Lockdowns are on, and holiday plans are being cancelled. We're currently eight months into the ongoing crisis, and this may be the most challenging phase yet. The good news is that vaccines are being approved, so there's an end in sight, but it's much farther away than most people think it is. Only frontline workers will be getting the first batch of doses expected to arrive in early 2021. Everyone else is going to have to wait until spring or later. So, we're all still waiting. Still trying to distract ourselves. Still trying to ignore the crazies and doomsayers. Still waiting for everything to go back to normal someday.
In the end, I don't think that anybody is going to walk away from this one happy. The Republicans will be ousted, and Trump himself is in deep legal and financial trouble. The Democrats will have won, but not by much, and the Senate will probably still be a major obstruction to actually getting anything done. Meanwhile, thanks to heaps of misinformation, there's a significant chunk of the American public that thinks the election has been stolen, or will be keen on blaming Biden for the actions of the Trump administration. This won't be the Darkest Timeline situation I was steeling myself for on election night, but it's a long way from good.
Looking at election-related media, I'm happy to report that by staying away from broadcast and cable television, I was able to avoid most political advertising. Some still got through via the radio and increasingly through my podcasts - those automatically inserted ads are awful. Social media was also pretty bad - I have my Facebook settings calibrated pretty well, but Youtube was pretty obnoxious and had a clear, sustained rightwing bias for the last few weeks. I had to suppress laughter when it tried suggesting me Dinesh D'Souza "documentaries." Regulation of election content is still woefully out of date when it comes to the internet.
As usual, it was the late night comedians I enjoyed the most, though some were clearly showing signs of fatigue from all the outrage, John Oliver and Stephen Colbert most prominently. I'll be happiest for them, to be able to talk about other terrible things for a while, and not to have to think about Trump so often.
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