20 Americans Who Explain the 2020 Election - POLITICO

20 Americans Who Explain the 2020 Election - POLITICO

By Tim Alberta

Dear Washington

This will be my last letter.

Since I began writing you in January, our country has been turned upside down. The president, after being impeached by the House of Representatives, was acquitted by the Senate. A lethal pandemic has claimed the lives of nearly 300,000 Americans, and hundreds of thousands more have been hospitalized. The economy collapsed, forcing tens of millions of people into the unemployment line. Demonstrators took to the streets, some in the name of racial justice, others to protest the government closing their businesses and schools.

Throughout it all, I endeavored to keep you connected to the rest of the country—to attach names and faces to those ordinary Americans, your fellow citizens far removed from stations of influence and power, who actually hold in their hands the fate of this democratic experiment. I wanted you to know what was on their minds and in their hearts. From the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania to the desert wilderness of New Mexico, while sitting in the backseats of Uber vehicles and standing outside of voting precincts and touring shuttered restaurants, I detected one common feeling that binds together this deeply fractured nation: fear.