Republican Voters More Focused On What They Wanted, Voted Down Ballot, Democrats Did Not

According to elec­tions offi­cials, over 80 mil­lion Americans vot­ed for Democratic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Vice President Joe Biden, and Vice ‑Presidential can­di­date Senator Kamala Harris.
They also report­ed that 73 mil­lion turned out for the Trump/​Pence ticket.
Both Biden and Trump man­aged to turn out more votes, if not vot­ers, than any oth­er can­di­dates in pres­i­den­tial elec­tion his­to­ry. The secret sauce in this, could be the loathing some har­bor for Trump on the one hand, and on the oth­er, the love oth­ers have for him, and his hate-filled crusade.
Another pos­si­bil­i­ty, or in addi­tion to that, maybe peo­ple will vote if you make it easy for them to do so. Trump and his Republican cohorts have been fight­ing tooth and nail across the coun­try to make it dif­fi­cult for all qual­i­fied Americans to vote.

Republican Legislatures in Pennsylvania, down through the Carolinas to Texas and places far beyond, have enact­ed laws that not only make it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to vote, but have demon­stra­bly sought to lim­it the vot­ing rights of tens of mil­lions of Americans of color.
Those actions include but are not con­fined to clos­ing down polling places in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or i.e. in African-American com­mu­ni­ties and close to Native-American reservations.
In Texas, the Republican Governor Gregg Abbot unashamed­ly removed all drop box­es except one in Houston, a city heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed with Black peo­ple. Removing the drop box­es was designed to make it expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult for the state’s res­i­dents to drop off their ballots.
In what was a clear sign of how pol­i­tics has made the American court sys­tem hard­ly dis­tin­guish­able from raw racial, polit­i­cal mud­wrestling, the Texas Republican Appeals court upheld Abbot’s dis­gust­ing and nau­se­at­ing move to dis­en­fran­chise mil­lions of voters.

As we seek to under­stand the mes­sage of the last elec­tions, there is much to pon­der. If 80 mil­lion peo­ple vot­ed for Biden-Harris and the Democratic par­ty, why on God’s green Earth would they not vote to remove the dis­gust­ing old cur­mud­geon Mitch McConnel as Senate Majority leader.
Everyone saw how McConnel obstruct­ed President Obama’s agen­da and, in the final analy­sis, how he cre­at­ed his own rule to block Judge Merrick Garland from receiv­ing a hear­ing for place­ment on the high­est court almost eleven months before the 2016 elections.
He then changed his own rules to place a right-wing reac­tionary in Amey Coney Barrett on the court in the month of the elec­tions as Americans were already voting.
I don’t believe any facts about McConnel would have pre­vent­ed his back­woods sup­port­ers in Kentucky from re-elect­ing him as their senator.
It is their right to elect whomev­er they wish to rep­re­sent them. We expect­ed that more enlight­ened and edu­cat­ed peo­ple across the coun­try would vote to remove him from sen­ate leadership.
How could Democrats and Independents who saw the last four years of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnel’s treach­ery vote to remove Donald Trump but keep Mitch McConnel while reduc­ing the pow­er of Nancy Pelosi?
It makes absolute­ly no sense!

Sure, there is a tiny sliv­er of a chance that some­how, vot­ers in Georgia could hand the sen­ate lead­er­ship to Charles Schumer, but that is a long-shot, in a state that is still a Republican stronghold.
Even if all the forces of runoff elec­tions were to smile on the Democrats come January, it still does not negate the fact that the November vote made no sense.
Why would Democratic and Independent vot­ers not show the same loathing they felt for Trump and his faux Christian side­kick Mike Pence, to House and Senate Republican lead­ers who have enabled him over the last four years.
Why would they vote to empow­er state Republicans in State after state?
The sad real­i­ty is that the Democratic vot­er base may not be as edu­cat­ed as we would like to believe. The num­bers that vot­ed tells one story.
Many peo­ple vot­ed, but did they vote in an edu­cat­ed and informed way out­side of their dis­dain for Donald Trump?
Making it eas­i­er for peo­ple to vote is one thing; get­ting peo­ple to make real­ly informed deci­sions out­side of raw pas­sion is quite another.
The les­son I have gleaned from the elec­tions are stark; they are not what I was hop­ing for, but fail­ing new and sci­en­tif­ic exit polling results emerg­ing, I believe the Republicans focused on not just keep­ing Donald Trump in office; they want­ed to ensure that Trump’s racist and divi­sive poli­cies were solid­i­fied from coun­ty boards all the way through the state­hous­es and all branch­es of the Federal Government.
Seventy-three mil­lion of them want­ed the racism that has char­ac­ter­ized Donald Trump’s divi­sive­ness and racism, to become the new nor­mal in America. They turned out in unprece­dent­ed num­bers to solid­i­fy those beliefs.

There are more Democrats and oth­er vot­ers in America, than those who cast votes for the worst per­son to occu­py the pres­i­den­cy in my life­time. The 2020 elec­tion results bore that out. They vot­ed straight red down the ballot.
Democrats, on the oth­er hand, turned out, and vot­ed by mail, in unprece­dent­ed num­bers; what they lacked, how­ev­er, was the same fer­vor and focus of the racist Trump voters.
They ensured that they boot­ed Donald Trump, but they ignored the oth­er races. They paid no atten­tion to the Senate, nor House, not their own local races.
That fail­ure must be laid sole­ly at the feet of Tom Perez and the Democratic National Committee.
Republicans cleaned up, by being more focused on what was impor­tant to them. It has always been that way; Democrats ignore races in their own com­mu­ni­ties; Republicans do not.
Republicans are Zealots, there are no Democratic leg­is­la­tures or Governors in deep blue states.
That’s why Republicans con­trol state­hous­es, gov­er­nor­ships, and oth­er elect­ed posi­tions even in deep blue states.
Democrats, and to what­ev­er extent there are inde­pen­dent vot­ers, bet­ter wise up real fast; the peo­ple who vote Republican have zero paus­es about turn­ing this 250-year-old exper­i­ment into a total­i­tar­i­an dystopia for every­one except themselves.
Did you hear the elect­ed offi­cials in that par­ty open their mouths to denounce the Russian-style pro­pa­gan­da that was unleashed on the American Democratic process over the last four years?
No?
Then let that be a les­son to you; the pull of priv­i­lege and racial supe­ri­or­i­ty is greater to them than a free and fair soci­ety in which all have an equal shot.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
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