We did it!
Millions upon millions of people went to the polls
on November 3, 2020, to elect the folks that will elect Joe Biden our new
President on January 6, 2021. It was a nail biter. The nation is dumbstruck,
befuddled, ecstatic, or sad. The people spoke! The
states counted! Our democracy works!
I like the Electoral College. My beliefs about it are
fervent. I may be a minority of one. This is, of course, the only case in which
I think, “we have always done it this way” is a good thing. I just like the idea that in the United States of America, the States elect the President. The notion that we are a
republic resonates with me though I call us a democracy quite often; democratic-republic
rears its head often, to cover all the bases.
The AP projected Joe Biden the President-Elect on
Saturday morning.[i]
Each side wonders what the other side could have been thinking; why did they
vote for that man? Within minutes of the announcement, large crowds gathered to
celebrate in Times Square, in downtown DC, and in other cities across the
nation. Other groups took to social media to condemn the election results,
accusing the other side of fraud and
threaten armed insurrection. Mitch McConnell has already stated that he would
not make Biden’s life easy in the next four years, and they are long-time
friends.
The country is sorrowfully divided, and the election
results proved it, red and blue, conservative and liberal, coastal and
heartland, educated and not so much, blue-collar and white-collar, religious
values or none; and fifty other comparisons. We have always been that way,
maybe not so much as today, but after an election, we came together to help form
a more perfect union.
Living near the
liberal capital of a very liberal state creates a world view for us that seems
to differ from The Villages in Florida or the ranchlands of the mid-west,
Northern Plains or the rust belt. Each section of the country has its own
definition for its values, its aspirations, its demands of its leaders.
I’m one of the dumbstruck. I spend an inordinate
amount of time reading newspapers, blogs, and magazines. I make a point of
listening to both sides of reality on cable TV. I listen to other people’s
views. I like to think I’m reasonably in the know. But, wow!
It never occurred to me that so many people would
cast a vote for the sitting President.
How could they? His policies destroyed our role as the global leader, he
started a tariff war with China that increased the price of nearly imported
goods and lied to the people when he said China would pay the tariffs. His administration tore babies from the arms
of their mothers when they asked for political and economic asylum and then
lost them. His daily tweets were daily lies, claiming that covid-19 would go
away quickly, or that the reason we had 25% of the world’s cases was that we
tested more people. He promised to reduce the debt but increased it to record
highs. He promised to drain the DC swamp but filled it with incompetents and
campaign workers who went to jail for corruption. More serious, perhaps, was his constant
denigration of our institutions. The litany goes on. The election was a
personal repudiation of Trump.
The Republican Party, on the other hand, was able to
grow its membership in the House of Representatives, and perhaps keep control
of the Senate. It grew control of legislatures and governorships in a majority
of the states. That will help them keep control of the Congress for the next
ten years, as they gerrymander their districts based on the current census.
The red-blue map tells a story that the left needs
to hear, and understand. An old adage
says that you run to your party’s extremes in the primaries but run to the
middle in the general election. Even in the middle of a hundred-year pandemic,
half the nation’s voters were willing to stay with the incumbent whose
administration fumbled the fight to eradicate the virus. Given a choice between
healthcare and economic health they chose economics. The President won 64% of
the white working-class men, a traditional Democratic stronghold.[ii]
In California, the voters turned down or reversed significant laws passed by the
very liberal legislature. Even on the left coast, moderation is a valued value.
Back in 2017, a survey indicated that a lot of people
were not in favor of Obama Care, but they liked the Affordable Care Act. How
you say things matters. Labels can stop a movement in its tracks; new-green-deal,
defund police, Medicare for all, socialism, to name a few. The left-wing
progressives who fought for Biden will want to extract their due, and their
ideas may be worthy of enactment, but how they are communicated will determine
if the people will agree with them.
The most important objective for the new
administration will be to restore a country that now considers opposing views
to be evil, where members of both sides of the aisle won’t talk to each other,
where governing is considered a zero-sum game, and where ideology is more
important than striving for a more perfect union. It will take compromise.
I’m ready for
someone to lead us, not bully us. I’m ready for someone at the helm with
character rather than sociopathic tendencies; I’m ready for someone who cares
about the country and its role in the world rather than himself. I’m tired and
I want an end to the chaos.
I’m ready for limits on Presidential Tweets; one per
month and make it worth reading.
I wonder what
it is like to go from “Hey Joe” to “Yes, Mr. President?”
