Trump is President because we didn’t show up. Almost half – 45 percent – of Americans old enough to vote never cast a ballot in the 2016 election. Less than 60 percent of eligible black voters turned out. More than 2 million people who voted in the election failed to vote for any candidate for president, though people who thought there was no real difference between Clinton and Trump might be feeling a few regrets these days.
It’s been pointed out that plenty of people who DID show up got shafted when either they were turned away for bogus reasons or their votes never got counted. According to intrepid reporter Greg Palast, 75,000 probably mostly Democratic votes were “lost” in Michigan alone in 2016 (www.gregpalast.com/...) There was voter intimidation, and polling places closed in black communities, and every other kind of deliberate disenfranchisement in the last election.
Still, if more people had voted, we wouldn’t be worrying about Trump voters so much these days. The mix of justified anger, racism, and misogyny that motivated them has been around for a long time. If there’s an upside to this horrible presidency, it might be that now we have to think about how many Americans are so furious with our federal government that they elected somebody to destroy it.
Unless Trump manages to start World War III, which is only too easy to imagine, the next election will be about who people think might actually help solve their problems. For the past 40 years, inequality has been getting worse, and working people have been losing ground.
People can’t afford to send their kids to college, or buy a house, or retire. An accident or illness can bankrupt a family. People with jobs live on the street or on friends’ couches because rents are all out of proportion to income. Good jobs have gone abroad or been automated; regulations favor corporations instead of workers’ rights. Public schools are so underfunded that many teachers buy paper and pencils out of their own inadequate paychecks.
We can turn this dismal situation around. We can raise taxes on the very rich and big corporations, and close the loopholes that allow them to pay too little. Single payer health care would get rid of the huge cost of insurance company management and ensure that everyone gets the care they need. We could raise the minimum wage to something people could actually live on. We could penalize companies for moving jobs abroad. We could put public funds into education instead of weapons systems.
People do care, sometimes desperately, about clean air and water. We can protect them. People care about the safety of our roads and bridges. We can initiate WPA-style projects to hire Americans to rebuild them.
But none of these good things can happen unless people show up to vote. People who don’t vote because they claim to be apolitical, or think their votes don’t matter, are abdicating their responsibilities. This car is in motion. Who is going to drive it? The present occupant of the White House seems to be steering it right off the road. Our job in a democracy is not to elect somebody perfect. It’s to elect the best candidate for the job.
For that, we have to show up.