No, Biden’s Election Win Does Not Fix America. But It Is a First Step & It Avoids a Nosedive Into Worst Case Scenario…For Now

 

For once, I feel happy about an election result.              

Yes, I know, the Senate was not flipped, and we still have to deal with Mitch McConnell and Lyndsey Graham. And yes, I know, the Democratic hold on the House seems to be shaky, at best. And yes, this was not the “blue tsunami” that Trump detractors and especially mainstream Democrats keep seemingly promising in election after election. And yes, Donald Trump very nearly pulled off a win for a second term.              

Also, yes, there are a whole number of problems that still are only too glaringly obvious with our election process. We still have gerrymandering, and with Republicans in charge in Senate again for the upcoming redistricting efforts, that will matter. There is still a ludicrous amount of money in our elections, simply obscene amounts. And yes, we still have the outdated, antiquated Electoral College system that seems to be, frankly, anti-democratic, almost designed to give us a leader who gets a minority of the popular vote. And yes, there is still an enormous amount of voter suppression, with leaders picking their voters, in effect. In a real democracy, you want voters to pick the leaders, not the other way around. And yes, voter apathy is obviously an embarrassingly obvious problem, and we still do not have the inspiring leaders to offer that could change all of that.              

Finally, and likely most glaringly, yes, this election was not the resounding landslide clearly and irrefutably repudiating Trump and Trumpism, and everything that it stands for. It should have been so, quite frankly. The fact that it was not, the fact that it was as close as it was – and it should never have been this close, even with all of the aforementioned limitations and problems – is more than a little troubling in and of itself.              

Yes, I get it. All of these things are problems, and we would be fooling ourselves if we believe that this is the end of the troubles.              

Still, at the end of the day, Trump was defeated. And that, in and of itself, is huge. Let us not underscore exactly how huge this was.              

For four years, we saw Trump fans emboldened, despite his rather obvious lies and distortions of truth. For four years, we saw Trump himself, who seems to have the luck of the devil, get away with one thing after the other after the other, and never seemingly to be held to account for very bad behavior, and the incessant lying, and the ridiculous lack of responsibility. For four years, Trump fans delighted in their man “winning” by, as they saw, and thus driving the libtards nuts.              

All of that, at least, is over.              

Biden’s presidency will likely be bland. He is a corporate Democrat, with mainstream ideas. Surely not only not a progressive, he has in fact authored, or co-authored, a lot of the very policies that tuned America in a decidedly regressive direction, from the now clearly out of control for-profit prison system, to the failed for profit healthcare system, to many of the policies that gave us the outrageous levels of economic inequality that we have grown so used to over the years, and even decades, now.              

For now, though, let us rejoice over the most glaringly obvious positive, the silver lining in all of this: No More Trump.              

For now, even temporarily, let that be enough to bring many of us together. People are celebrating, as well they should. We endured four very rough years. Years that made us question what was happening to our country, with our country. Years that made us see some uncomfortable realities about tens of millions of our fellow Americans that we might not have wanted to know or see.              

Let us remember what happened, and let us continue not to normalize or trivialize these harsh truths, either. Trump may be gone, but who knows if he is gone for good? Who knows if he will not, as some predicted, some back to run again in 2024? Even if Trump is gone, let us understand that Trumpism is, unfortunately, alive and well, and apparently here to stay.             

So be it. Again, let’s deal with it soberly. 2016 was a wake up call, and the years that followed, which now should thankfully be relegated to history, should serve as a warning to what might happen.