This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated October 30, 2020
Early voting began in New York on Saturday, October 24. In the first three days, City residents cast more than 314,000 ballots, with Brooklyn, alone, seeing more than 100,000 votes.
“This is the most important election of our lifetimes” is something we have heard most of our lives, but this time it really is the case. So many have been waiting the past four years for the opportunity to cast this vote.
Donald Trump as president has had disastrous consequences for our country and another four years of him in office would lead to him fundamentally changing our country. In his first three years, he alienated our allies, cozied up to authoritarians, instituted his Muslim ban, separated migrant children from their parents, and, quite frankly, there are too many items on the list to fit into this column.
The hallmarks of his administration have been a denial of facts while making terrible decisions that are carried out ineptly. Ignorance, indifference, and incompetence. In 2020, nowhere has this been more painfully evident than with his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.
As he campaigns during the last days of this election season, he continually tells his rally crowds, who gather in close proximity with few wearing masks, that “we are rounding the corner” on COVID-19. He says this as the United States is recording more daily cases than ever and many states are reaching capacity at their hospitals. It was not true when he said it in February and it is not true now.
But Trump does not care about truth. And he has never been interested in actually trying to combat this pandemic. He is on tape telling Bob Woodward in February that he knew how contagious and deadly COVID-19 was, but that he “wanted to always play it down.” His Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, admitted on live television last Sunday that they are “not going to control the pandemic.”
“The hallmarks of [Trump’s] administration have been a denial of facts while making terrible decisions that are carried out ineptly. Ignorance, indifference, and incompetence.”
They have no intention of doing anything to keep any of us from getting sick and even though we have lowered the rate of death for those who contract the virus, people still die and many who survive are left with chronic health problems. Surrendering to the virus by being ignorant, indifferent, and incompetent in how you confront it – or, more aptly, how you do not bother to confront it – will lead to many more Americans getting sick and dying, which will lead to more people out of work, more businesses closing, and more students being unable to attend school.
America is wise to all of this. With more than a week to go before Election Day, over 60 million votes had already been cast across the country. Polls indicate that Trump’s reelection prospects are in bad shape. Millions who did not vote last time, will cast their 2020 ballots to end the Trump presidency. Many who picked a third-party candidate in 2016 or who chose to “take a chance” on Trump, are deciding they will not make that mistake again.
But the coronavirus pandemic that Trump has exacerbated through his ignorance, indifference, and incompetence, has given him a window to winning this race, and he knows it. As he has done his entire life, a disastrous failure of his could just be turned into success without actually fixing the problems he has created, but by simply gaming the system.
Due to the pandemic, an unprecedented number of mail-in votes will be cast. Trump plans to contest them and say they should not be counted because he knows that a greater percentage of Democrats will vote in that manner.
He and Senate Republicans rammed through a Supreme Court appointment, swearing in their new Justice eight days before Election Day, when Americans had already been voting for eight weeks, and they expect she will rule on cases that throw out millions of Americans’ votes.
Vote Early. Vote Biden. Vote for decency and democracy. Trump’s ignorance, indifference, and incompetence has meant four years of not knowing, not caring, and not being up to the job. Use your 2020 vote to prove that America still knows, still cares, and is still up to the job of preserving our 244-year-old experiment in democracy.
