Countdown: COVID & The Election At 60 Days Out

Is there a particular way you imagined that you would feel leading up to the days where everything will change? It’s hard to imagine things changing more than they already have - we are entering the sixth month of quarantine brought on by an unprecedented global pandemic that has ravaged the United States, I can’t remember the last time I hugged someone, I truly miss lounging at a bar and hate-listening to conversations around me, and I look forward to doctor’s appointments and blood draws for human contact. Shit is weird. Shit has changed so laughably drastically that none of us would have been able to comprehend it this time last year.

But come November 3rd, things will change more dramatically than what we’ve already experienced this year - so, a lot. However you imagined yourself feeling before the clock changes in a nightmare, or as a protagonist in a dystopian novel experiencing their fictional world - it's how you're feeling right now, because this is the real deal. Welcome to the 59th Presidential election, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

These are the last precious few months before whatever is coming arrives. Counting down to the end of what we consider to be normal democracy? Or counting down to a sigh of relief followed by a reckoning of the massive work we have to do to undo the damage? Not really sure, to be honest.

As a politico, an activist, and a writer, I didn’t want this era to come and go without documenting it. It could make for a good laugh with friends in a year, or some interesting reading in a nuclear bunker. So every five days on the countdown to the 2020 US election, I’ll be here. Recap + current thoughts below.

60 Days Out:

September 3rd, 2020 - Quick View:

COVID Deaths In The US: 186,000

COVID Cases In The US: 6.13 million

Latest Team Trump Attack On The Election: In addition to continuing to stroke utterly baseless claims that mail-in voting will lead to massive voter fraud and using that fear to attack the integrity of the election, Trump is now going a step further. After making comments yesterday suggesting that people vote twice, he doubled down on it today, telling people to vote twice - once in person after mailing in their ballot which is extremely illegal. The North Carolina State Board of Elections has reminded people that it's a felony to do so intentionally, as is "inducing someone to vote twice." Ah, another felony committed by the President of the United States. It is a day that ends in Y, though.

You Should Look At:

- This roundup about authoritarian tactics currently being deployed + why you should be taking notes about things changing around you.

- This Washington Post war-games simulation - with high ranking former Democratic campaign aides and former GOP leaders participating - of what could happen on November 3rd and the weeks after it. "The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis."

- This speech by Letetra Widman, Jacob Blake's sister, at the March on Washington. Trump did not meet with the Blake family in Kenosha, but Democratic Nominee Vice President Joe Biden is planning on it today.

60 Day Countdown Closing Thoughts:

When I was working at the California Democratic Party in 2018 as their Digital Director, there was this sense of the tide turning. I felt like the mood in leftist politics reflected that the blood, sweat, and tears we contributed (alongside so many other horrified Americans) were beginning to pay off. Resistance was starting to win. There was still faith - albeit leaning skeptical faith - in the integrity of the process. We’d win the House that year, stave off more Trumpian disaster and chaos, and take the Presidency and maybe even the Senate back in 2020. We would win, even acknowledging we'd subsequently have to endure the process of undoing years of damage that Trump's first term has doled out to our democratic norms, to our economy, and to our social progress. But there wasn't a widespread, palpable fear that the possibility of losing the 2020 election would mean possibly losing everything.

Ah, the good days of a rapist being confirmed to the Supreme Court. It was before the impeachment, before Trump's acquittal in the Senate, before COVID and Trump's paranoid, narcissistic bullshit leading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, before the USPS was under attack to prevent mail-in voting. And now we're here, and that widespread fear that the world might change irreversibly in two months is lurking.

Happy Hunger Games. See you in five days.