The Resistance Rises: "We're the One's We Have Been Waiting for!" The Electorate Strikes Back!

Truly a seminal historic election, comparable to 1800, 1864, and 1940. Historic in the nature that the voters are the story, not the candidates, as in 1828, 1864, 1932, and 1960. Democrats which I am a part, former county, and state party official, still a party precinct committeeperson, an experienced campaign volunteer leader to previous presidential elections, a volunteer of nine presidential campaigns including 2020 working in voter protection. From 2006 through 2012 Colorado went from a long-standing traditional red state, first to purple, and now a strong shade of blue. We’ll be deep blue when Cory Gardner is sent packing. I know battleground states living in both Wisconsin and here in Colorado.

The transition in Colorado from a century-long red state to a recent blue state has occurred over the last fifteen years as more than 1.6 million people moved to the Centennial State. Fundamentally changing the voter demographics as more college-educated, under 40 years old and Hispanics have changed the electoral profile. This demographic shift has been happening all over the country. The point---Democrats I have first-hand knowledge of elections and this election is so different than all others put together. My sentiment is similar to Nate Silver:

What I am excited about is that finally “We’re the Ones’ that we have been waiting for.”* Americans are showing up greater than droves, almost biblical in scale. To date, on this Sunday morning before the election, 93.333 million votes have been cast, compared to 47.7 million in 2016, a 95.6% increase. Secretary of State’s across America are now planning that America’s vote will exceed 160 million votes returning to another era’s turnout of voter age-eligible numbers of over 60% from this era’s 55%. To my white Evangelical and white Catholic friends General Blumentritt might have echoed your words;

* Barack Obama April 2016

Maybe to my deeply religious friends and family, God is on the side of Americans coming out of the woodwork giving voice to one person-one vote and not those in the minority imposing their immoral will onto others, just a righteous thought.

So my Democratic-leaning friends, relax, I have never seen such ground-level volunteer action. Not here, not Wisconsin, not Illinois or Indiana ever. I witnessed my three sister-in-laws's write hundreds of postcards to infrequent Democratic-leaning voters in Georgia, Florida, and Arizona. In my precinct, a neighborhood settled in the last turn of the century, residents of a mix of college-educated young professional families moving in, remaining white empty nester’s, more diverse than most of Colorado Springs, a solid Democratic-leaning precinct of 1470 voters. It is the home of the Olympic-Training Center, the central Memorial Hospital, where Unaffiliated voters comprise 42% of the registered voters, Democrats 35% while Republicans bring up the rear with 21%. It is almost a flip of El Paso County ratio of UFA, to Republicans to Democrats. 

Yet registered Democrats have an 84% turnout as of yesterday, 65% for Republicans and 60% for Unaffiliated’s. Historically the precinct votes around 60% Democratic, with a turnout running at the state average of 70% of all registered voters. With three days for voters to turn in their mail-in ballots or vote in person, our turnout is 64% of all registered voters. In 2016 Colorado received over 840,000 ballots in the final dash to election day or 30% of the total. If that ratio continues Colorado will record 3.4 million votes, roughly a 28% increase, Colorado now is experiencing a 35% increase in ballots cast to 2016. 3.4 million votes would equate to 83% on all registrations.  

Each era in America comes together there are moments and events that define generations, where people who are strangers come together and transform themselves from ordinary and usual to nobly join a crusade to forge a new change something greater than themselves. When this happens, when masses are awoken and unite, moments in history suddenly arrive, rising up to conquer, vanquish, defeat and humiliate the threats to America’s freedom and build a new society addressing the challenges of their age. Walking back through history, when my 93-year-old father was 17 and in high school, he read in the newspaper like the rest of America, General Eisenhower’s message to the pre-dawn D-Day forces:

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expedentiary Force! You are about to embark on a Great Crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. 

That was the last time this nation faced an existential threat to our America when brave men and a few women invaded the evil empire of Germany. It was not easy or foregone but in reality, the level of preparation, the amount of personal drive by individuals, the sacrifice of personal nature overcame the obstacles. These past weeks we have witnessed the same as Americans have come out to vote, some by mail others in long lines where the entrenched Republican powers that be an attempt to obstruct democracy overturning their government of corruption, tyranny, negligence, malfeasance, and even alleged treason. This is democracy reclaiming its own government. The ultimate power of political legitimacy. 

The Preamble of our Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these rights, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

So here on the eve of Election Day 2020. The Resistance which I was a part in 2016 attempting to disrupt the Electoral College as a Hamilton Elector is now at the polls Now we find our ourselves in history again at the same turning point as Eisenhower commanding the order to invade. Trump’s authoritarian government is the same grave threat America faced during the Civil War, the War of 1812, and its War for Independence. Each time Americans have risen to meet those threats like World War II.

Our resistance has created its own seminal shift. There are rallying cries for racial justice across all racial lines, the turnouts voting despite all-day lines in places like Georgia, Texas, Florida, Arizona, the overcoming of the US Postal Service manipulation. Stand tall America, “you are the one’s we’ve been waiting for!”, as we shall overcome all the tyrannous efforts by this Republican rogue government.  So over the next two days, 70 million of you go out and vote, the eyes of the world are upon you!