Prof. Gopi Upreti.
The fifteen minutes remark by President Donald Trump’s ludicrous remark last night in response to the ongoing election results reflected a dark and dangerous moment for American democracy. It is sadly disappointing to see a sitting president telling lies about non-existent voter fraud. When he realized that his re-election bid is in deep trouble and can never be realized, he unleashed a new torrent of falsehoods claiming that the other side cheated with illegal votes. He has demanded the Supreme Court intervene to decide the election in his favor. His supporters are staging protests in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania meant to interfere with legitimate vote counting. In Phoenix, some have showed up at the State Capitol with guns.
Donald Trump wants to take the nation and the democratic process down with him. His argument that the states in which he lost or loosing election is because the votes were stolen from him and the states in which he has won or leading the Counts is due to the legal votes. How does it sound when a sitting president says keep on counting the votes where he is leading and STOP counting the votes where he is losing? Critiques often point out that fact checkers cannot keep up with the lies of President Trump and some of them even labelled him as a lie manufacturing machine. Last night, President Trump disgracefully misused the office of the presidency and displayed the height of absurdity and hypocrisy. This is certainly a dark moment in American democracy especially in 21st century.
Why Donald Trump lost the election of 2020?
If anybody were to blame for his re-election debacle, it is him and him alone because right from the beginning he discouraged his supporters to vote by mail and advocated to vote only in-person. His opponent, Joe Biden, on the other hand encouraged people to vote by mail amid Covid-19 virus pandemics because in-person voting requires not only standing on the long line for hours but also exposes people to spread and catch the virus. It was, indeed, the most prudential campaign decision Joe Biden campaign team made in this historic election, because of which, overwhelmingly and disproportionately large number of people voted by mails that favored Joe Biden. The fear of catching the virus and the relative ease of voting by mails from the comfort of your own home is the principle underlying cause for the outcome of this election. The elderly people and even the younger ones voted by mails at their own convenience within the given timeframe. If there was no provision for voting by mails, substantially large number of people would not have gone to vote in-person amid this virus pandemics. Donald Trump was a foolhardy to ignore this psychology of fear factor for which he paid the price.
Even people who have traditionally voted for republican presidential candidate, did not like the way Donald Trump handled the virus pandemics. The way he organized the campaign, addressed the gathering of his supporters, and mocked the wearing of the masks and contradicted with the scientists frustrated reasonable minded people who traditionally voted for republicans.
In contrast, Joe Biden on the other hand, emphasized to wear mask, keep social distance, and appealed American people to come together in a difficult situation. People saw a polarizing megalomaniac in Donald Trump and a unifying persona in Joe Biden. This can be clearly seen in the re-election of the republican senators and the new republican members of the house of representatives picking more seats in the house. If we analyze election results, republicans gained substantially in this election except the presidency and that was also solely because of Donald Trump’s Narcissistic megalomaniac behavior.
As the saying goes, you must give a devil his due; Donald Trump is a ferocious fighter who displayed enormous energy and stamina, organized and mobilized his base and was able to bring massive number of people for in-person voting on November 3, 2020. Had he also encouraged his people to vote by mails along with the impressive campaign he launched for in-person voting, it would have been impossible for Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump because it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to defeat an incumbent President in the election. It happened just four times in the entire political history of United States and Donald Trump is the fourth incumbent President to lose his re-election.
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