In just a few days – I hope – we will know who has won this election: Biden or Trump? Schumer & Senate Dems or McConnell & Senate Reps? Pelosi & House Dems or McCarthy & House Reps? In the best-case scenario, the winners and losers will be known before we all go to bed Tuesday night. But the races might be so close that the losing candidates will go to court to contest the outcome. Uncertainty about hanging chads in Florida will seem like a quaint little problem compared to a multi-state set of cases disputing how ballots are mailed out, by when they are turned in, which ones are rejected, until what date are they counted. Some of these cases may wind up in the newly-reconfigured Supreme Court. And then it could get really ugly.
If we do wake up Wednesday morning knowing who will be inaugurated as president on January 20, who will be the Majority Leader in the Senate, and who will be the Speaker of the House in the 117th Congress, a new round of political battles will break out almost immediately. If Trump wins re-election, there will be no “honeymoon” period of several months or even days. The man is loathed by the Democratic Party establishment, by the think tanks and advocacy groups aligned with the Democrats, by most of the nation’s media companies, and by millions – if not tens of millions – of Americans. If Biden wins, some people will surely ignore that biblical admonition: “Vengeance is mine…saith the Lord” and demand the prosecution of Trump & family. Again, it could get ugly. And then the internal battles among Democrats might spiral downhill.
In either case, win or lose, some will gloat while others gnash their teeth. What then? Here is my hope: that regardless of whom we vote for, that we will find a way to realize the vision best expressed by Abraham Lincoln in his two inaugural addresses:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”
“With malice toward none, with charity for all,…let us…bind up the nation's wounds…”