PD Editorial: Something else worth protesting: The no-shows

Protests over Tuesday’s election grew louder, larger and, in some cases, more violent on Friday and Saturday as thousands of stunned Americans continued to express their outrage over the election of Donald Trump as president.

Police arrested nearly 200 people overnight in downtown Los Angeles during a protest that lasted into the early hours Saturday. One person was shot in a similar protest in Portland, Oregon by an individual who police say confronted the protester and then fled. The shooting, which involved non-life-threatening injuries, occurred as hundreds marched through the city, spray-painting graffiti and, according to police, tossing “burning projectiles” at officers, prompting police to fire tear gas. Tens of thousands of people again took to the streets Saturday in cities across the nation including New York, Chicago and Cincinnati. Anti-Trump protests also have taken place in Santa Rosa and at Sonoma State University.

These demonstrations are an understandable expression of the disappointment and anger many feel over the election of someone ill-suited, both in experience and temperament, for the Oval Office. But ultimately the demonstrations are accomplishing little more than holding up traffic. Those that result in violence and damage are simply senseless.

If protesters want to make a difference, rather than starting fires they should shine light on the Americans who truly decided Tuesday’s election - those who didn’t bother to show up. With hundreds of thousands of ballots still to be counted, election records so far indicate this may have been the lowest turnout for a presidential election in 20 years.

Overall, roughly 61 million voters supported Hillary Clinton while another 60.5 million supported Trump in the national popular vote. But given that there are some 220 million Americans who were eligible to take part in Tuesday’s election, this means that some 95 million Americans opted out.

Many, no doubt, had good reasons for not participating. Some are working people who encountered obstacles such as long waits at the polls while some had child-care needs that also made waiting difficult. Nonetheless the fact remains that far more people sat out this election than voted for any single candidate. Given the high stakes involved, that’s truly outrageous.

As Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen wrote in his column this weekend, “There are zero electoral votes in the State of Denial.”

But it’s not just the ones in the streets who are causing damage that need to tone it down. Trump and his supporters need to do so as well.

For example, the flying of Confederate flags at the Veterans Day parade in Petaluma Friday, caught on digital camera by Rep. Jared Huffman no less, was dishonoring and incendiary. While one can accept that Trump’s victory reflected the disenfranchisement of millions of Rust Belt middle class workers, the public must uniformly reject any suggestion that it validates the kind of racism, sexism and anti-immigrant rhetoric that was evident during the campaign. The president-elect needs to step up and not only denounce this caustic language once and for all but repudiate some of those who are celebrating his victory. After the election, for example, former Louisiana lawmaker David Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, tweeted “make no mistake about it, our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump!”

Americans fear that is the case and are understandably concerned about what that means for the days to come. But it’s also true that those who chose not to participate in this election left it to others, such as David Duke, to make decisions for them and, in the process, played a bigger role still.