After Action Report -- The 2020 Election
Hallelujah! The election has come to a close. The United States of America has a new president. For three days, the United States basked in a transient glow of relief—the defeat of President Donald Trump![1] For four days, four very long days, nearly 160 million Americans waited and the world watched as various states counted votes. Meanwhile, President Trump complained about the “election being stolen.”[2] Impatiently, the nation and the world waited with anticipation as the tension built within the various media markets for the 2020 election cycle conclusion.
The 2020 election cycle was a bad movie plot with a pleasantly joyous ending. Yet, to think that the bad movie started in the pandemic ridden 2020, one would be mistaken. For the majority of Americans the nightmare on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue began on the night of November 7th, 2016 and was inaugurated January 20th, 2017 (speech here).
The Facebook and Twitter
In the previous 2016 presidential election cycle social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, gain informational primacy through provocateurs, both foreign and domestic, to spread misinformation not only among the dominant caste[3], but especially among the disenfranchised minority communities in order to suppress their vote. For instance, the amount of ad traffic and memes targeted towards Black and Latino-x communities during the 2020 election cycle were just as pervasive--according to a National Public Radio (NPR) reporting. In their report, we hear reporter—Shannon Bond—tell us of activist Andre Banks’ concerns and how they discourage minorities in voting, she reports the following
"Activist Andre Banks said these unwelcome suggestions that Black Americans sit out the election are the latest chapter in a long history of voter suppression. ‘We are now talking about this misinformation as a part of the same trajectory as a poll tax, as a literacy test,’ he said. ‘A sustained campaign targeted at Black Americans — and often brown Americans as well — to limit our political power, to limit our ability to shape the decisions that are made in this country.’"In addition, reporter Bonds informed how the current and past influencers, such as China, Iran, and Russia impacted the 2016 election cycle and had also impacted the 2020 election cycle as well. From internet sites like the Russian trolling farm, Internet Research Agency, according to a Senate Intelligence report, was primarily targeting communities of color to suppress the vote.
This concern of voter suppression energized the democratic party. As a result, the beginning of 2020 started with the typical partisanship politics. The polarization that had been undergirding the administration of President Donald Trump initiated with his campaign in 2015 and seemed to be a driving force of American discontent[4]. As a popular personality, he had branded himself as a self-made man, but really wasn’t, and something completely different other than the usual political enmity that was Washington D.C. A good portion of Americans bought what then candidate Donald J. Trump was selling—grievance politics.
The Players' Campaign
Donald Trump fulfilled the base of the republican party’s desire. It was looking for grievances not satisfied to be acknowledged, and a leader with a flamboyant personality. He was an advocate for them, a champion for them, for their angst, and would finally bring actions for their malaise. In other words, the election of President Trump in 2016 was not unexpected—it was a certainty. The election of President Trump had been in creation for nearly thirty years. Self-interested politicians failed to serve the interests of their constituents. The perceived derision from the democratic left and the condescending moderate republican, which used the republican base as kindling in order to be re-elected, never felt their desires fulfilled.
On the left side of the aisle, the 2016 election former Secretary of State and then candidate democratic nominee for president Hillary Clinton, from some perspectives, ran an incomplete campaign. Some believe that her presumptive attitude hindered the campaign into taking more risks—and not taking Donald Trump seriously. The failure in her campaign was not to recognize how much grievance politics was taking hold within the electorate. Additionally, the assumption of the democratic party with states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, that have traditionally voted democratic, would continue to do so—they did not.
In the 2020 election cycle, this assumption had changed as the candidates visited Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania multiple times in order to court not only the grievance voters, but the swing, women, and minorities voters as well. The campaign of 2020 would be challenged on many fronts from the disinformation on social media platforms to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as an impacted economy left the electorate unsettled with uncertainty. Before any resolution to the 2020 election cycle were to come, the democratic party needed to find a candidate that could stand against the all-consuming presence of the current president.
In 2019, the campaigning of democratic candidates, along with debates set the stage for a very contentious political season yet not borne. The debates seem to be raucous at times, but in true fashion, they played to the base of the democratic party. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Julian Castro, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Cory Booker entered the race for the United States presidency.
Meanwhile, the daily onslaught of Twitter rants, investigations, and impeachment hearing obsessions with cable news appearances, both audio and visual interviews, displayed a preoccupation of a self-absorbed politician known as the president of the United States—Donald J. Trump. The unending platforms of coverage from the twenty-four-hour news cycle of his presidency led to more polarization, misinformation, false flag stories. The well heated electorate was susceptible to conspiracy theories and the shrinking dominant caste continued to feel berated and aggrieved.
The last full dose opium for the masses was February 2, 2020 Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs winning the Lombardi (football) Trophy. The short lived high of distraction turned into a buzz kill with coronavirus awaiting to take the lead. The loud noises of popular culture, normally a distraction for the masses, could no longer opiate a dose large enough for the greater population to escape reality of the base politics. Angst driven storylines bled into consciousness of writers, comedians, and team sports. popular culture outlet distractions waned. Religious houses were empty. Erstwhile, conservative and liberals careened daily trying to either embolden or tear down with Twitter happy president inculcation brand of reality and propaganda. In the 2020 election cycle, the distraction would be one of the set boundaries to be torn down.
Next Chapter: The Primary
[1] The election of 2020 was called late Saturday morning by all major news outlets even by the conservative cable outlet Fox News.
[2] President Donald J. Trump has often claimed that the only way he could lose was if the election was “rigged.” He made this claim in 2016 and often in the run-up to 2020 election. The current president oft told exaggerations relegated to misstatement, mistruths, or outright lies. His number of lies totaled more than 20,000 plus according to the Washington Post.
[3] The attached link is an interview with Isabel Wilkerson about her book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, she discusses the relevance of race, discrimination, and the roles they play within the American construct. She offers that the American construct viewing of race has a deeper structure than simply a color of one’s skin but attached to a hierarchy—that is a leveling device that situates a bipolar system (white versus other than white) in order to maintain control and power.
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