2020, THE GOOD AND THE BAD

 

It is official's now:  Joe Biden has won the state of Pennsylvania, earning him the presidency.  Current President Donald Trump, who absurdly tried to claim victory before all the votes were counted two days ago, can scream and try to sue, but there is no path to victory for him.  Already the  legal challenges he has tried to make are  failing in different courts. Put simply, this election wasn't close enough for him to cheat.   Despite his  party's attempts to suppress the vote, or his attempt  to sabotage the post office to gum up mail in votes, there was just too much voter turnout, both in person and by mail, for him to pull off another upset.

First, the good news.  Despite the fears of many Americans, this election went as smoothly as possible.  There were no riots or violent confrontations, no Proud Boys intimidating voters of color.  The feared Civil War didn't arrive. And, despite the pandemic, the turnout was historically large, with over one hundred and fifty million votes cast.  That puts the turnout rate at around sixty six percent, the largest number since the year nineteen hundred.

And, of course, by rejecting Trump the country has rejected the corruption, lies and bigotry that he has displayed in the last four years.  Trump now enters the list of one term presidents, the first to lose since nineteen ninety two.  If he had won another term, American democracy as we know it would have been seriously changed for the worse; instead we have a return to normalcy, with a president who is a decent, good natured man.  And of course, with Vice President Kamala Harris the country will have its first female vice president who is also a person of color.   

But this election wasn't perfect; first of all, Donald Trump outperformed all the polls and came closer to winning than was predicted.  In fact, he got more votes this time than he did in the last election, coming in at around seventy million votes.  (Biden came in at around seventy four).   And all the things that drove his unlikely campaign to victory four years ago, the racism and xenophobia,  are still driving forces for many of those seventy million people.

And it appears that the Democrats will not win a majority in the Senate and lose a few seats in the House of Representatives.  Without the Senate, the Republican party will be able to do to Biden what they did to Barack Obama, which is to filibuster and block nearly every part of his agenda.  This will become a real uphill battle for President Biden in the next four years.  But there is still much that the president can do without congress, and so Biden will be able to reverse many of the terrible things that Trump has done in the past four years.  Like I said, there will be battles once Biden is inaugurated, but right now I'm too happy to care.  This is a great moment for the country and the world, and I want to savour it.