Dear Friends, Republicans who Voted for Joe Biden in 2020,
I write as a Democrat, a citizen, and a fellow American to thank you. You saved our Republic. You rescued the American experiment in democracy from destruction. That has been a fair supposition since November 3, but the terrible events of January 6 made that absolutely clear.
Why is that so? The numbers tell the tale. Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives received 3.9 million fewer votes than Joseph Biden on November 3. Those were your votes, my friends. That represents more than half of Joseph R. Biden's margin of victory in the last presidential election.
What would have happened if Joe Biden hadn't had your 3.9 million votes? Perhaps he would have lost the Electoral College. More likely than that and even worse, he would have won the Electoral College by the slimmest of margins.
If that had been the case, the past two months would have been much worse than what we have experienced. Though Donald Trump would still have lost the election, all of his fraudulent challenges to the integrity of the vote would have gained much more traction. Perhaps a handful of his court challenges would have produced recounts or delays. Perhaps a few dozen more election officials, emboldened or shaken by the closeness of the tally and the passion of the mob, would have falsified reports, lied about outcomes, or sabotaged tallies.
If that had happened, all of the ugliness and violence we saw break loose at the Capitol last Wednesday would have happened much sooner, and would have been much worse. As large, angry crowds gathered to protest Donald Trump's moves to steal the election, the fascist criminals who perpetrated the attack on January 6 would have had their choice of dozens or hundreds of very soft targets. Instead of settling for storming a fortified federal building at the incitement of the President, they could have just brought their assault rifles and bump stocks to an open, public place and started murdering people in the name of "America."
By giving Joe Biden a clear and unimpeachable victory in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, you saved our nation from that awful eventuality. Future generations will praise your patriotism, wisdom, and foresight. We all owe you a debt of gratitude.
But the fight is not over yet. The fascists who attacked the Capitol still have shelter inside the machinery of the Republican Party. As long as Donald Trump controls the GOP, extremists will be able to piggyback on Republican politicians.
The problem is with the primary process. At this point (slightly) more than half of Republicans can see that Trump is a con man and a fraud. Unfortunately, the group that still believes Trump's lies is very passionate, very vocal, and very active. They can be counted upon to vote in Republican primaries in disproportionate numbers, thus all of the equivocation and civic cowardice on the part of GOP officials that gives aid to extremists is in deference to that cultist wing of the party.
The answer again lies with you, my friends. You must rise to the urgency of the moment. You must be as passionate and motivated in your wisdom and sobriety as the Trumpists are in their derangement. We need a Republican faction of the "radically sane" to take back the GOP and make it the Party of Lincoln once again. If you can manage that, it will not be an exaggeration to say that you have rescued America a second time.
I give you my thanks again, and extend you my very best wishes for the new year. Let us stride forward in the confidence that though we may disagree on matters of policy, we share a love of America and the democratic principles on which it is founded.
Sincerely,
Andrew Meyer
I think you have made a very good argument here. Vote splitting had to have played at least some - perhaps a decisive - role in Biden winning the election.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the primary process is flawed. While "power to the people" sounded great back in the 1970's, we now see that the primary system can empower demagogues who assemble mobs - surely one of the things that the Founders of our country opposed.
I also have to commend the Democrats in this election. Running a candidate who is center left - rather than going for the Bern - on a platform directed at calming the country down was a good political judgment and good for the country. One could be a Republican and accept the result - something necessary for the country, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican.
Thanks for the positive feedback. I agree that Biden was a much stronger candidate than Bernie would have been. On the primary process, though there may be systemic flaws, I think that the chief problem is low participation on the part of both parties. I am not sure what the institutional fix for that situation would be. The only solution I can envision is a push on the part of conscientious individuals in both parties to get our compatriots more involved, and to do what we can to raise the tone and level of the discourse during the primary campaign.
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