Link: The Center Cannot Hold - Photos by Seth Herald. Words by Will Sennott.
“DETROIT – It was 3:05 p.m. on Election Day in Macomb County, about 25 miles northeast of Detroit and a bellwether whose voters have predicted the outcome of the last seven presidential elections.
In the weeks leading up to this day, fear and distrust had become constant conditions for an electorate destined to decide the political fate of a nation. On both sides of party lines people harbored suspicions that the other will try to steal the election, or that the election is rigged. Some had lost all faith in the democratic process. The possibility of violent confrontation continued to linger, the foiled plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer just a month prior. The reality that Joe Biden would likely become the next president of the United States would not set in for another two or three days.
Across the country, storefronts were boarded and gun sales continued to surge. But so far the day had held a tension of nervous calm here, sunlight streaking through the window of a diner as the only waitress on duty floated across the linoleum tiled floor with a pot of coffee, refilling the cups of a few stragglers.
I had my notebook flipped open, trying to pull together a cohesive narrative about what I had heard from voters at the polls today. There was a Black woman from Detroit who says she grew disillusioned with the Democratic party after she and her husband both lost their manufacturing jobs during the Obama years, and is now voting for Trump. And there was a white guy from the same district, wearing a cossack hat and a tactical gas mask, who said he voted for Biden because, as he sees it, it’s the next logical step in the peaceful and inevitable establishment of a full communist utopia.
“What do you think about this election?” I asked the waitress at a small diner. “I think it’s good versus evil,” she said, looking down at me with wide-eyes through a pair of square-framed glasses.”
