And as the 2020 Election Approaches….

As election day 2020 nears, reflections on how Trump did as a President abound in the news media and social media. It’s been a real growing time for our country. Not so much for Donald Trump.

In the beginning of his presidency, I kept hoping that he would learn the ins and outs of diplomacy, statesmanship, empathy, and respect for his fellow man even if they were not his equal. After all, those qualities should be inherent in a good leader, right?

But Mr. Trump has failed to learn the above qualities. Even leading through a global pandemic and catching COVID19 himself hasn’t given him any decency when dealing with others. The CEO in him (one who puts money as his bottom line), never met the President in him (one whose bottom line is people’s lives).

Today, on the eve of the election this week, the election battle rages on with several changes from years past. Because of the pandemic, mail-in-voting, aka absentee voting, and early voting have been utilized across the country in every state and province. Each state has developed its own way of trying to protect people from being exposed to the virus. The result is that people have been voting almost the whole month of October so their votes will be sure to be counted on November 3rd. The consequence is that more people have early voted in some places than came out for the election in total in 2016.

The two-party campaigns have been different as well. Trump has held rallies with hundreds of attendees not wearing masks, thus exposing them to each other and the virus, and being super spreader events. I suspect their goal is to head to “herd immunity” to get rid of the virus. The challenge with that approach is that many deaths can come with that strategy as well. The focus of the campaign has been all the “good” Trump has done with the economy, jobs, rolling back restrictions, and filling the courts with conservative judges. Note that at the present time, the economy and jobs are very unstable due to the pandemic. In addition, he has not handled the pandemic very well, so that our country is one of the worst hit with it.

The Biden campaign has focused on trying to unite the country by saving health care which has been threatened the last four years, trying to listen to the needs of all Americans in response to the protests (and unfortunately rioting as well) that have permeated the nation the last 4 years, and getting both parties to work together in Congress to be able to make progress (which hasn’t happened the last 4 years due to Republican control of the Senate). Most of the Biden campaign events have been either virtual or outside with masks, or car rallies where participants stay in their cars (kinda like church services have done during the pandemic).

So as election day approaches, news media and airwaves are flooded with video clips from both sides. Each side calls the other lies. All one can hope is that a few folks have been able to weed through the hype better than we did 4 years ago when Russian hackers managed to convince us that the other side was evil.

But again, the final result has been that American apathy has been awakened as evidenced by the rush to vote. Can’t wait to see what the American voters have chosen for the next four years! And to see if a smooth transition is still the hallmark of the American dream.