Hillary Clinton’s national popular vote margin continues to increase, currently at about 800,000 more votes than Donald Trump. And the calls for elimination of the electoral college continue to find their mark, as we watch the President-Elect and the GOP Congress prepare to obliterate every social safety net, every check-and-balance, and every right to health, safety, and due process that we have taken for granted. But, the electoral college notwithstanding, it didn’t have to be this way.
There’s another number that stands out for me from the vote tally: 107,330.
Votes in key blue swing states that went red in 2016
State |
Donald Trump |
Hillary Clinton |
Difference |
WI |
1,409,467 |
1,382,210 |
27,257 |
MI |
2,279,210 |
2,267,373 |
11,837 |
PA |
2,912,941 |
2,844,705 |
68,236 |
TOTAL |
6,601,618 |
6,494,288 |
107,330 |
Let that sink in for a moment. 107,330 votes difference in three states that, had they voted for Hillary Clinton, we’d be sitting here gearing up for the fight to hold our ground against a GOP-controlled Senate and House, but knowing full well that we had a champion for our side in the White House. 107,330 votes difference that, from my vantage point in Los Angeles, is a pittance of a number, where more people than that live in just a few neighborhoods in this city. Heck, more people than that probably were out marching in LA’s streets this past weekend.
Sure, we can all get angry now, feeling that we’ve been robbed. But let’s also look at it this way: If about 107,500 more of our people had voted for Clinton (who either stayed home or passed over her name on the ballot), we would have won. By a razor-thin margin, but we would have won.
If that’s not motivation to organize, to speak out, and to rally ourselves for victory in 2018, 2020, and beyond, I don’t know what is. It really is that: motivation. We — you, me, the broader Dkos community — have the power to change our future. Yes, we have a major fight on our hands to keep the GOP from destroying all that is good and decent these next few years, but let’s not ever forget what is possible and how close we truly did come to victory this year.
And let’s use that for motivation to take back as many state houses and governorships and congressional and senate seats as we can in 2018. And let’s use that for motivation to sweep this godawful President-Elect and his horrible basket of deplorables out of office in 2020. And let’s use that to put America back on track as the example for the world of what democracy, small “d,” can and should be about — which is representing ALL of us, not just the minority of voters who pulled the lever for the other guy.
We can do this and we must do this.