What Would John Say About the 2020 Election?

By Cole Manley

As election day dragged into election week, and staring at Steve Kornacki became a new and agonizing part of daily life in 2020, I wondered what my Dad would be telling me. My Dad would not have been nearly as anxious as I was. I am certain of that. He would have been interested, and he would have had MSNBC playing as background noise, but there wasn’t much in politics that could faze my dad after sixty years spent living and studying the US Congress and the Presidency.

I thought I was going to be so calm and collected. This wasn’t going to be 2016 again. I knew that it was going to be close. I had been telling family and friends for months, years really, that the Electoral College prevented blowouts. It was going to come down to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. When Florida went red early in the night, I wasn’t surprised, although I vented to my mom about the state’s infuriating role in American politics. But it was hard to suppress feelings of anxiety about the future of the country when Florida did go red, and when it became clear, just a couple of hours into Steve Kornacki’s data visualizations, that the election was going to be far closer than the pollsters had predicted (2016, anyone?).

My dad, meanwhile, would have been sipping his Black Russian in his leather recliner. He would have had some pithy story to share about LBJ and the Southern Democrats. He relished those stories, and every time he talked about Louisiana and the Democrats, I smiled inside, because we all enjoyed my dad’s tall tales, even if we had heard them 1000 times before. A part of me just wanted to hear his baritone voice wash over the television and drown out the increasingly agitated and flustered Kornacki.

As the week went on, I focused more on Georgia, and began texting friends about what was unfolding in the state. Thanks to Black voters in Atlanta and in Southwest Georgia, the state flipped, becoming the biggest upset victory for Biden and the Democratic Party. Run off elections will determine control of the Senate, but the fact that Georgia finally did flip is a testament to the power of grassroots organizing. Despite a long history of voter suppression in the state, a history which can be traced back to Reconstruction, Black people succeeded in turning the state blue and in honoring the legacy of the late John Lewis. Stacey Abrams deserves enormous credit for her role in the Fair Fight movement and for helping to register tens of thousands of new voters.

In some ways, given the year we are living in, it makes sense for democracy to rest on the state where Martin Luther King, Jr. was born. Georgia continues to shape the modern political struggle for democracy and justice. When Georgia did turn blue, finally, and Biden crept ahead by a few thousand, and now more than 10,000 votes, I was overcome with emotion. I’m not very religious, and self-identify as “spiritual” if asked, but, in that moment, I felt like John Lewis was alive and well. The lightning bolts hit that Georgia red clay, and the skies opened up, and the tears began to flow.

Among activist circles, voting is often downplayed. It is seen as a sideshow to the “real” organizing, the journey of resisting racism and challenging structural injustice. But John Lewis’ life continues to remind all of us about how important voting is as a basic right in this country. The trajectory of the United States with Biden as president is much different, and much improved. There are serious and significant barriers to the kind of radical change that the Black Lives Matter movement has called for, and it remains to be seen how the Democratic Party will step up to these challenges. The Bernie Sanders wing of the party must continue to advocate for meaningful reforms that align with the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement, and with its intersectional and transnational approach to economic and racial justice. How Biden attempts to incorporate Bernie’s ideas into the Party, or how he attempts to sideline progressive Democrats, will have great consequences on the country’s recovery amid a pandemic and a depression. These choices will also shape the rise of the Working Families Party, and of third party movements that may challenge the Democratic Party going forward.

Regardless of what happens with Biden as president, Georgia gave me hope. Stacey Abrams gave me hope. And hope, after all that has happened in 2020, is what drives social movements, even those that face tremendous resistance. It’s hard to say what will unfold over the next few weeks and months (can anyone forecast in 2020?). But the political groundwork in Georgia is a model for organizers elsewhere, and a reminder of the importance of grassroots social movements. The lesson of the 2020 election may not have anything to do with the Blue Wall, or with the pollsters, or with Joe Biden. The lesson may remain, to those working in political movements: keep fighting.

And I feel like, if my Dad were here with me right now, he would say the same.