I’ve never felt more patriotic. I suspect that many of you are similarly bursting with pride. We pierced the fog of lies and surmounted every MAGA obstacle strewn in our path – the sabotage of the Postal Service, the shuttering of polling sites, the serial denigrations of mail ballots and of the electoral system itself. We bonded in record numbers to strike an historic blow for decency, morality, sanity, science, and, most important, democracy.
As the clock was poised to strike midnight for America, we jettisoned a malevolent fascist wannabe and replaced him with a man and woman who intend to do what the loser was never equipped to do:
Govern.
Govern with a respect for factual reality and scientific expertise. Govern with a competent team that respects the art of governance. Govern in a way that reassures our western allies that we’re not nuts. Govern in a way that prompts our children to look up, not down.
Governing will not be easy – governing this far-flung land has never been easy, check our history – and most Republicans on Capitol Hill, still in thrall to the MAGA mentality, will likely erect the usual roadblocks. But there is much that Joe Biden can do, substantively so, to break Trump’s sociopathic spell and renew American greatness. Before we inevitably slide into the “here comes the hard part” phase, let’s bump elbows and celebrate our democratic achievement. Let’s celebrate what we will soon have:
A president who can lower the national temperature. And oh, do we need that. As S. E. Cupp, a sane conservative commentator, rightly noted this weekend, “The hate, the gaslighting, the constant tweets, the corruption, the distractions, the rank incompetence, the racism and bigotry, the sexism and misogyny – it’s taken a toll on our psyches. Whatever your politics, we need a break, we need to heal, we need to recover from this.”
Imagine what it will be like to awaken each morning without seeing caps-lock rage tweets festooned with exclamation points. Imagine what it will be like to read tweets from an administration that’s actually doing real work to safeguard our health and lives. Speaking of which…
A president who brings scientists to the fore. No more quack ruminations about the benefits of injecting bleach. No more quack predictions about a magically vanishing virus. Biden said last night: “Our work begins with getting Covid under control. We cannot repair the economy or relish life’s most precious moments – hugging our grandchildren, birthdays, graduations, all the moments that matter most to us – until we get it under control. On Monday, I will name a group of leading scientists and experts as transition advisers to help take the Biden-Harris plan and convert it into an action blueprint.”
Biden doesn’t need to navigate Mitch McConnell to tackle the virus. As president, he’ll have the executive powers to lead for real. (Perhaps he’ll revive the White House pandemic response team that Trump fired in 2018.) We’ll be able to sleep soundly knowing that the war on the pandemic will be led by public health experts, not toadying grifters. And speaking of executive powers…
A president who can erase Trumpism with the stroke of a pen. He’s teeing up executive orders to abolish Trump’s ban on most travel from Muslim-majority countries, and to revive the program that allows “dreamers” (people brought to America illegally as children) to remain here. He’ll put Uncle Sam back in the Paris climate change agreement, and rejoin the World Health Organization.
A president who puts competent people in charge of key departments. Unless Democrats manage to snatch the Senate by winning both Georgia runoff races in January (probably a tall order), McConnell and his minions will likely try to block Biden’s Cabinet appointments. Fine. If that happens, Biden will make them “acting” secretaries. It’s not an ideal solution – that’s what Trump typically did – but it’ll be better, for instance, to have a real environmentalist running the EPA, instead of a hack like Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist and climate change denier who sabotaged scientists.
A president who will repair our tattered global reputation. A commander-in-chief’s powers are greatest in the international realm. Under Trump, we’ve become a joke (gee, never saw that coming). The Pew Research Center recently reported: “Since Donald Trump took office as president, the image of the United States has suffered across many regions of the globe. As a new 13-nation Pew Research Center survey illustrates, America’s reputation has declined further over the past year among many key allies and partners. In several countries, the share of the public with a favorable view of the U.S. is as low as it has been at any point since the Center began polling on this topic nearly two decades ago.”
The joke stops now. A Republican Senate can’t stop Biden from rebuilding our ties to western allies (when news of his victory reached Paris, bells rang across the city), and reassuring NATO that we’re reliable, and signaling the Kremlin that the groveling is over. Even Trump’s buddy in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has gotten the memo about the new world order: “I have a personal, long and warm connection with Joe Biden for nearly 40 years, and I know him to be a great friend of the State of Israel.”
A president with a progressive mandate. That’s the bottom line. Biden has racked up more votes – at least check, 75.2 million – than any candidate in history. His share of the vote total (currently, 50.7 percent) is greater than Truman’s share in 1948, JFK’s share in 1960, Nixon’s share in 1968, Carter’s share in 1976, Clinton’s share in 1992 and 1996, and it matches Reagan’s share in 1980. He’s well within his rights to claim a mandate.
“What is our mandate?” he said last night. “I believe it is this: America has called upon us to marshal the forces of decency, the forces of fairness, to marshal the forces of science and forces of hope in the great battles of our time. The battle to control the virus. The battle to build prosperity. The battle to secure your family’s health care. The battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country. And the battle to save our planet by getting climate under control.”
By all means claim a mandate. Heck, George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, and was dragged across the finish line by a 5-4 Supreme Court, yet he behaved as if he’d won in a landslide, powering his tax cuts through Congress in year one. Biden toppled an incumbent, a rare feat that we made possible.
Yes, we the people pulled it off. I mentioned earlier that I’ve never felt more patriotic. I suspect I have lots of company. Our shared love of democracy (as flawed as ours is), of the rule of law, of press freedom, of the Constitution as a seminal document for the rights of humankind – all of that, and more, have fueled our shared determination to, in Lincoln’s words, “touch the better angels of our nature.” Electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was the essential first step. The fight to keep the forces of darkness at bay will be long and hard, but our new leaders know what needs to be done to repair this wounded nation. So do we.