JL: Oh - no, it's the same thing - I just meant that if the official vote count has been altered to the point where the wrong person is said to have won a given state, then, obviously, the electoral votes will be incorrectly awarded - and, when this happens enough, it can change the election results.
JB: Got it. Let's get back to your piece, The Opportunity in this Crisis. As a long-time progressive, one might expect to find you in the doldrums following this election. But that doesn't seem to be true. I'm sure many of our readers will be interested to hear why you're not.
JL: I acknowledge that there is good reason to mourn. I have friends who are climate change activists. One has long advocated a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and is simply terrified that Trump will take us in the exact wrong direction and that, for example, the rate of methane hydrate released from permafrost will accelerate, exacerbating already declining albedo effect, etc., and that uncontrolled warming is now inevitable. That may be true. And I have other friends who are equally justifiably horrified and outraged by continued unnecessary police violence, disproportionately levied against the poor and non straight white populations that will no longer have the potential to be held in check by the US Justice Department. And I have other friends - and students at UDC Clarke School of Law - who are terrified by the prospect of mass deportations. All of these concerns - and many more - are valid and warranted by what Trump says he stands for and by the kind of team he has been assembling.
But, at the same time, there are other, more hopeful trends. We can't forget the Bernie Sanders campaign and what a triumph it was! Sanders - and all of us who helped build the progressive movement for decades - all but won the Democratic primaries. That a septuagenarian transplanted NY socialist Jew from Vermont captured the hearts and minds of so many millions of our youth - because of his progressive message - is about the most heartening thing I have witnessed in my political life, which will soon be entering its fifth decade. There is every indication that if people had any idea of how well he was going to do, hundreds of thousands more would have supported him - people who supported Hillary because they believed she was more electable. And he would have run away with the primaries and been president now (as amazing, frankly, as that sounds). So, first of all, we can't forget that, and the opportunity to build upon it.
Secondly, we can't forget that the long-term demographic trends are on our side. Young people, overall, supported Bernie and Hillary. And, while I am a white man, I rejoice in the fact that America is becoming more black and brown. The Republicans realize this and have committed to, essentially, cheating to maintain power. We need to view all their conniving, their myriad techniques of voter suppression, the election theft, as transparently desperate acts - and acts that authentic conservatives would not support.
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