The New York Times - USA (2020-11-09)

P10 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020

“I’m tired of Covid-19, so I hope the country

can move past. This has been the worst

time for us in our lives, and I want to see

that get better and the economy get better.”

James Couch,35, Wilmington, Del.

“I want equality, and I want women to be

just as powerful as how they portray men.

They downsize women a lot. I was a fire-

fighter for three years, and I got a lot of crap

because I was a female and I did it just as

good as they did. So what I want to see is

equality.”

Margarite Bergeron,22, Bethel, Maine

“I want the people to have harmony and

love for one another in the country. I’d like

to see the people get back to work, take care

of their families and everything.”

Clyde Nance Jr.,71, Candler, N.C.

“I’d like to see a lot less fighting, but on top

of that, I’d also like to see the middle class

go up a little bit. I’d like to see our debt go

down. I’d like for us to be able to work a

little more on this free speech, be able to

say what you want without having to get

your head bit off.”

Adam McKay,35, Levant, Maine

RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES HILARY SWIFT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES JUAN DIEGO REYES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES HILARY SWIFT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

As Election Ends, Voters Look to the Future CONTINUED FROM PAGE P7

Election

PITTSBURGH — Like many
Trump supporters, Dennis Tippie
watched the steady tallying of
votes that wiped away the presi-
dent’s early lead in Pennsylvania,
not with a faith that democracy
was playing out but with dark and
rising anger.
“If he does end up with that
number of electoral votes,” he said
of Joseph R. Biden Jr., who ap-
peared on his way to securing the
White House thanks to Pennsyl-
vania this past Friday, “he would
have gained them through fraud,
deception and simple criminality.”
No evidence exists of fraud, de-
ception or criminality in the tally-
ing of absentee ballots that piled
up during the worst health crisis
to hit the nation in a century. The
state’s Republican-controlled leg-
islature refused to allow those bal-

lots to be processed as they came
in, compounding the delays since
Tuesday.
But Mr. Tippie, a retired truck
driver who has imbibed the presi-
dent’s words partly through Fox
News, agreed with Mr. Trump and
his surrogates that the election
was being stolen before their eyes.
He lives in Nanty Glo, Pa., in the
interior of the state that the so-
called elites in Philadelphia some-
times call “Pennsyltucky.” To Mr.
Tippie, Mr. Biden is “a total fool,”
his running mate, Kamala Harris,
is “a very scary woman,” and a Bi-
den presidency would be both ille-
gitimate and disastrous.
But, he said, “I’m not resigned
to him being president.”
While Mr. Biden pulled off ma-
jor successes in flipping Michigan,
Wisconsin and now Pennsylvania
back to Democrats, and on Satur-
day achieved the rare ouster of an
incumbent, he did not achieve the
landslide demolishment of Mr.
Trump that some Democrats had
yearned for, despite leading in the
popular vote by more than four
million.
Instead, Mr. Biden will inherit a
country where many Americans
are already backed into mutually
hostile corners. Mr. Tippie pre-
dicted civil unrest. “I don’t know
for sure what action the people are
going to take, but I think the citi-
zens of this country have pretty
well had it,” he said.
That threatens Mr. Biden’s most
basic campaign pledge: to unite
Americans, to move past divisive-
ness as a governing strategy, and
to heal the nation’s “soul.”
“I think we’re a long way from
unifying the country, and I’m sure
that Trump will continue to work
on dividing us,” said Catherine
Lalonde, the chairwoman of the
Democratic Party in Butler

County, a blue-collar region in western Pennsylvania. “I don’t believe his supporters will accept Biden’s win and would- n’t even if it were a larger margin,” she added. “I have a feeling that all the Trump flags and signs will stay put until they disintegrate.” Interviews with voters late last week in Pennsylvania, primarily Trump supporters, showed how the state that tipped the election mirrored a nation still mired in tribal polarization. The country may be staggering forward as bit- terly divided as ever. Many of the president’s supporters were swayed by his blizzard of disinformation that illegal voting had been rampant and election officials were suppressing a Trump victory. They envi- sion a Democratic White House that would kowtow to leftists, give up the fight against China and em- bolden rioters and looters. While Mr. Biden did slightly better in Trump counties than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, the margins did not widen as much as Demo- crats expected or hoped for. With record turnout approaching seven million in Pennsylvania, Mr. Bi- den secured a narrow lead over Mr. Trump — a far cry from Barack Obama’s victories of more than 10 percentage points in 2008 and more than five in 2012. Certainly, there were Trump voters willing to accept the results as fair and to move forward. Chace Torres, 37, was making grilled-cheese sandwiches for his family in Northampton County on Thursday night as Mr. Trump’s lead in the state, once close to 700,000 because of votes cast in person on Election Day, ebbed away. “I think the Trump supporters are going to suck it up and move on,” said Mr. Torres, a union rail- road worker. “We’re not going to run out tomorrow and loot and riot. We’re going to put our heads down, go to work, feed our chil- dren, take care of the country like we always do." But others were not swayed by Mr. Biden’s appeals for unity after four divisive years. Jessica Bell, a Trump voter in suburban Philadelphia, said, “we are locked and loaded” because she sees the country headed for civil disorder. “I have my TV on the news 24/7,” Ms. Bell said. “I have my phone in my hand keeping up with social media. I’ve gotten about six hours of sleep since Monday. I’ve been watching very, very closely.” She cited evidence on social media and Fox News in support of her belief that the election was hi- jacked: black Sharpies given to Arizona voters to render ballots invalid; Republican poll watchers in Philadelphia not allowed close enough to see the counting; that Speaker Nancy Pelosi controls the company supplying election ma- chines in Nevada. Those charges, some raised by the Trump campaign and the president, are distorted: Arizona elec-

tion officials say Sharpies do not invalidate a ballot; a judge allowed observers in Philadelphia within six feet of ballot canvass- ing; and a former aide to Ms. Pelosi, the House Speaker, has been reported as a lobbyist for a voting machine company. But Ms. Bell, 32, who left a job this summer as an assistant in a doctor’s office, insisted that “Americans are being silenced”

and made the baseless charge, “It’s a coup.” Some Democrats were hopeful that with Mr. Trump out of office, the nation would return to a sem- blance of normalcy, that sowing division as government policy would end. In Erie County, which Mr. Trump won in 2016 after it had long voted Democratic, the president had raised expectations and

hopes with his promises of restor- ing industry. But Mr. Trump is on track to lose Erie County this year, in part because of his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and the chaos he sowed, said Carl An- derson III, a Democrat on the county council. “His flaws have been exposed,” Mr. Anderson said. “There are ele- ments of extremists and ideo- logues who will initially not accept

the outcome and perhaps protest, but as the dust settles and reality emerges, normalcy will take over.” The nature of Mr. Biden’s narrow lead in Pennsylvania under- scores the challenges he will face. His vote count was driven by a surge of suburban voters: He im- proved on Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 margins in the vote-rich counties surrounding Philadelphia by no- table margins, including by more than seven percentage points in Chester County and nearly five points in Montgomery County, the state’s third most populous. But in red Pennsylvania — a vast swath from the northeast through the center to the south- west — Mr. Trump gave up very little ground. He won most rural and small-city counties, with their faded industrial economies, by landslides. It suggests that the message behind Trumpism — a combination of a promised industrial restoration and white griev- ances — has lost none of its ap- peal. “The people here still feel for- gotten,” said Rob Gleason, a former chairman of the state Repub- lican Party who lives in Johns- town, once a steel-making center, now depopulated and struggling. “I can’t tell you how many people are saying Trump’s saying what I’ve been thinking all my life.” Four years ago, Cambria County, which includes Johns- town, went for Mr. Trump by 37 points. With almost all votes reported as of Friday, the county fa- vored him by an identical margin. “The Trump support here in the rural counties and out west, it will linger for two years if he’s not the president,” Mr. Gleason said. He predicted that with Mr. Bi- den in the White House, Republi- can senators will block him at ev- ery turn, with an eye on gaining seats in the 2022 midterms. “You know the Senate won’t give him an inch,” he said. Democrats’ opinions of Trump supporters over the past five years have been driven partly by reporters’ treks to places like Johnstown, once a Democratic stronghold. Many Democrats view the president’s base as being in thrall to an authoritarian, excit- ed by his racism and xenophobia, and unable to recognize his end- less lying. Many Trump supporters have no more charitable view of Biden voters. “Most of them are mo- rons,” said Lois Peters, a retired department store saleswoman in Westmoreland County. She was baffled that Biden voters could not see what she does, that the former vice president is mentally unfit to lead, and that a permissive, liberal Biden adminis- tration would give rise to violence and looting, as in the aftermath of some demonstrations against po- lice shootings and abuse of Black people this spring. “That V.P. of Biden’s, oh my God, that woman is vicious," Ms. Peters said of Ms. Harris. Then she caught herself. “Now I’m sounding vicious,” she said. She continued, “But I feel like that, I do.” Maryjo Depalma, 60, who with her husband owns a jewelry store in Westmoreland County, said Democrats “seem to hate the president so bad” that she feared even a Biden victory would not end their animosity toward the right. “It’s going to take a miracle to heal the nation,” she said. “I believe this started a long time ago, not just in the past three years.” “I hope two years from now, I’m dead wrong,” she added. “I want the country to be united. I want to continue to have faith in America.”

A BITTER DIVIDE

In Pennsylvania, Voters

For Trump Are a Ways

From Accepting Defeat

All the ‘flags and

signs will stay put till

they disintegrate.’

VICTOR J. BLUE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

From top, Pennsylvanian Trump supporters in Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and again in Harrisburg.

Many of the president’s backers were swayed over the weekend by his blizzard of disinformation

saying that illegal voting had been rampant and election officials were suppressing a Trump victory.