This Just In – It was never going to be easy. There is hard, serious work ahead.
In the aftermath of last week’s election, many of us are feeling the stress and concern of what’s to come. There’s something about our collective mood swing that is still striking me odd.
It’s simply this… on the day before the election those of us who were enthusiastically supporting Vice President Harris were embracing the notion that we would turn the page and basically close the book for good on the political career of the 45th president. We were delighted with the notion of a happy warrior president. It was inspiring to think that the joy was back and the simmering cauldron of “Us vs. Them” was coming to a close.
Millions of us were absolutely giddy with the idea of this transition. The wild enthusiasm shown in Harris’s rallies, in the fundraising, in the level of campaign volunteering —-all of it said to us — this is what Democrats want. We want the government to function. We want the parties to cooperate and compromise and make progress. We are sick of attacking each other.
I simply cannot accept that this stopped being true because Vice President Harris was not elected to the top job. The fact is, if she had been, we all know that great anxiety would be plaguing us right now as to whether fake electors would be successfully installed, whether there would be violence and various other threats jeopardizing the installation of the legitimately elected president.
In my mind, the results beg the questions … Don’t we still want to turn the page? Don’t we still want our civility to return and all that goes with it? What are WE prepared to do?
Are we ready to demand that the government function? Are we ready to demand that the parties work together constructively, arrive at compromise, and make progress on important issues that affect all of us? As we all acknowledged that there is a threat to democracy among us, are we ready to defend democracy ourselves? And how would we do that?
I start with this: there are millions of people who work in federal, state and local government. Those people are among us, too. Those are the people who are in law-enforcement, operating the schools, protecting the environment and making zoning decisions. Let’s be sure to start by supporting them.
Within the Harris campaign, there was a promise to do big bold things to improve the availability of affordable housing – to help first time home buyers with down payment assistance and build more affordable housing stock.
We know now that the president is not going to lead that effort. The vast majority of what would be accomplished to improve affordable housing availability is not just about throwing money at the problem. Obviously, money helps, but in a community that is determined to improve the availability of affordable housing it is local officials, developers, and citizens working together that makes the availability of affordable housing possible.
Making schools safer is a building-level task that requires close attention from parents cooperating with law enforcement, working hand in glove to communicate about problems inside and outside of school. There’s no magic wand from the federal government that’s going to make that happen. That said, public pressure to keep massively destructive weapons away from people who shouldn’t have them is something we should all be interested in doing. It is not a partisan issue and we should simply refuse to accept any argument otherwise.
Finally … the numbers. There’s been much discussion about how close the race was and how closely divided we find our country.
At last count, Trump won just under 76 million votes. Harris got just under 73 million. We are a country of more than 350 million. Approximately 258 million people in the United States are eligible to vote, but only 161 million are registered to vote.
What this means is that among the Americans who can make these decisions as to who is the president, just over 29% decided that it should be Donald Trump. That means that an overwhelming majority (more than 70%) rejected Trump either by voting for Harris or not voting at all.
THAT is where the hard work awaits us. We need to listen. We need to learn and most of all, we need to find the way to mute the static that will be coming from Washington for at least the next two years. That won’t be easy, but that’s ok. It was never going to be easy.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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