In 2018, Roger Angell published an urgent call in this magazine to vote. He had cast his first vote for President, for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1944, with a mail-in ballot while serving in the Central Pacific as a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. In his youth, Angell wrote, he had a conviction that his vote was worth dying for; nearly seventy-five years later, at the age of ninety-eight, he felt passionately that it was worth living for. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about the 2020 election. In “Can Biden’s Center Hold?,” Evan Osnos profiles the former Vice-President as he makes the case for his ability to heal ideological rifts and offers a new vision for a beleaguered country. Dana Goodyear writes about Kamala Harris’s background as a prosecutor and charts her political trajectory. In “Donald Trump’s Consistent Unreliability on COVID, and Everything Else,” Steve Coll examines the consequences of the President’s persistent failures during the pandemic. In “Is Russian Meddling as Dangerous as We Think?,” Joshua Yaffa explores what we know about the impact of Russian election interference and the rise of disinformation. Finally, New Yorker editors and writers offer a Presidential endorsement for Tuesday. Taken together, these pieces provide a bracing reminder of the stakes in this year’s election. If you haven’t already done so, please vote. Roger would appreciate it.
— David Remnick
After a career built on incremental progress, Joe Biden is promising a Presidency of transformational change.
She has been criticized as a defender of the status quo. Can she prove that she’s a force for change?
It is painful to reflect on the tens of thousands of lives that might have been saved if a less reality-challenged President had occupied the White House.
In focussing on the tactics of the aggressors, we overlook our weaknesses as victims.
It would be a relief simply to have a President who doesn’t abuse the office as a colossal grift.
