As America approached the long-awaited November 3rd, we braced ourselves for impact. Among many, I concluded the only way to preserve any sort of peace in our nation was for there to be a landslide victory in favor of either candidate-- something that I recognized would never occur. After growing so incredibly divided these past four years, Americans were voting on November 3rd, not for a person that was best qualified to lead this country, but rather voting for a group that they sided with.
It is no secret that presidential candidates pay particular attention to swing states during their campaign. That is, of course, where the election lies. In some ways, this is ironic: the least decisive personalities decide the fate of the nation-- and the least decisive regions hold the most persuadable of the American people. There was no reason for Donald Trump to spend time and resources convincing the state of New York (speaking generally of the state as a whole) to shift red. The same went for Joe Biden, who never wasted much time in a state such as Montana, who hasn’t gone blue since 1992.
It is apparent that you do not need to persuade every voter to succeed. In fact, you only need to convince about the middle 20% of voters. The other 80% have nearly set their views in stone, and there is no hope for any candidate in that margin.
The long period from November 3rd to November 7th was painful as we all sat with a Google Chrome window permanently open to the front of the New York Times in the backdrop of our laptops, our eyes glancing over to the tickers every few minutes. It was these states that would decide the election: Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Nebraska, Florida, and Ohio. And of course, all of these states went red in the 2016 election, helping Trump secure his candidacy for the next four years. Joe Biden needed to turn these states blue-- focus on these states in specific-- if he wanted to become the 46th president of the United States.
Slowly-- very, very slowly, we watched the numbers climb in Arizona, let out frustrated sighs as votes apparently froze in Nevada (though not a swing state, it was a key state in this election), and held our breaths as the polls in Georgia grew dangerously close.
When Pennsylvania broke the silence, and we saw 253 finally change to 273, it was Saturday, and the November air felt more like Spring. Cries of relief went up in Washington D.C., New York City, even Paris, and London. Heads turned towards celebration-- towards the 74,000,000 people that voted for Joe Biden.
But how can we forget that a whopping 70,000,000 people voted for the candidate that lost? That's 70 million people that stand strong, not just with the current president, but also with a message.
Where do those morals travel now? Do they dissociate back into the depths of which they rose and conquered these past four years? How can an election that to some seemed like a no-brainer result in an outcome almost evenly split? How does the “left” work to convince not the “right,” but rather the American people, that this choice is a step in the right direction?
We must give change a chance.
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