WAS TRUMP’S ELECTION A PREVIEW OF WHAT”S TO COME?

 

                                      …Donald Trump, still won’t admit he lost

 

Trump’s dealing with his loss is a playbook for future elections

 

Here’s some facts to understand where we are as being the largest state in population.

The state of California voted and received two senators.  But if you add up all the people in many, much smaller states, they all voted to elect 30 GOP Senators.

What this means is that California, that has 40 million people, only elected 2 Senators, but all those states that elected 30 GOP Senators, only, represented, altogether, 38 million Americans.

In other words, it is estimated that by 2040, 70% of all American voters will be represented by 30 GOP Senators, while 30% of all America voters will be represented by the remaining 20 Senators. 

How many of those Senators will be Democrats is unknown, but it won’t be all 20 Senators.

The danger is in thinking of Donald Trump’s election as an aberration.  That is very wrong.

Last Summers racial reckoning when millions of people finally began to understand what Black people have known all along.  It proved that well intentioned liberals had no idea how serious the problem of deeply entrenched white supremacy is today. 

Trump could not have been so successful in his campaign of racism and hate if this country weren’t filled with many opportunities to exploit those feelings.

All you have to do is consider how Trump and his enablers responded to his defeat.  Rather than acknowledging the loss and engaging in a peaceful transition, they filed frivolous lawsuits alleging that votes in Philadelphia, Detroit and Atlanta  were “illegal.”  Not coincidentally, these were the epicenters of Black voters that helped to secure Biden’s election.  These outlandish Trump claims did not succeed in overturning the election results, but they normalized yet another authoritarian maneuver and provided Republicans with a playbook for future political races.

Biden’s presidency can prove that what’s good for Black people, such as health care, housing, ending the pandemic, fighting climate change, is good for us all.  But this will not happen unless the white Americans also commit to that process of self-examination.  Trump became president because a minority of white people voted for him in 2016.  Biden did not win in a landslide for the same reason. Instead of shallow narratives about how Brown and Black voters didn’t do what was expected of them, the scrutiny needs to be turned around. 

In other words, you need to ask yourself: “How many people in your community voted for Biden over Trump?”

Copyright G. Ater 2022