Yesterday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the election by earning over 4 million more popular votes than the incumbent and collecting somewhere near 300 electoral votes, well above the 270 required for victory. No, it wasn’t the landslide many of us hoped for, but neither was it ambiguous in any sense. It was a very solid win.
So what does this mean for the country? Right now, we are entering the gray zone of Trump’s lame duck presidency. He is still in charge, and technically his power is undiminished. But practically, his influence is slipping away hour by hour, day by day. A week ago, his bluster, his threats, and his attacks, as childish and irrational as they were, still seemed somewhat potent. After all, he was/is the commander in chief of the military and he wields tremendous political power over almost all branches of his corrupted government. But today, despite the fact that the vast majority of the Republican leadership still publicly clings to their standard bearer, Trump’s blustering, to me at least, now feels empty and impotent. He has always whined and complained, but now it feels as if there is nothing below that surface. Perhaps there never was.
With this election, we haven’t solved the fundamental problems of Trumpism but we have at very least bought some time to address them. Yes, we will in all likelihood have a divided government, even after the Senate runoffs are complete in January, so legislative progress will be difficult at best. But we will have two years before the next midterm election to set a new tone, to reverse some of the damage via executive orders, and perhaps even reestablish some constructive dialog with and within Congress. During these two years, we have the opportunity to further convince the country that cooperation, civility, international engagement, and rational domestic problem-solving can produce results that benefit all of us.
The challenges are daunting, but the Biden/Harris team has already revealed part of their strategy: the pandemic must be brought under control before we can hope to solve our other major problems. To this end, tomorrow President-elect Biden will announce the creation of a new Covid-19 task force which will begin planning immediately so it can be effective on inauguration day. The group will be composed of people who have actual expertise in the fields of epidemiology and public health. For the first time, there is real hope for a federally coordinated, focused and rational response to the virus that has killed over 237,000 people in our country and crippled the economy. For details on this and other priorities, see https://buildbackbetter.com/.
For the majority of our country, yesterday was a wonderful time of celebration, relief, and renewed hope. But I know it didn’t feel that way for all Americans. It is vitally important that we acknowledge that, and work to understand it. It would be an enormous mistake to assume that most Republicans are anything like the person of Donald Trump. They are not. As our President-elect has said several times, we should not think of our opponents as enemies. There will always be opposing views and conflicting policy efforts, and progress toward a more perfect union actually depends on this dynamic. But real and lasting progress can only be made when we spend as much energy on finding common ground as we do on defending our own small pieces of turf.
We’ve been given a chance at a new beginning. We’re at that unique point in time when everything is potential and nothing is yet kinetic. As we move into the kinetic phase, we are standing on one piece of solid common ground: a desire to defeat the virus. If we can come together around that goal, perhaps then we can find a way to cooperate on the next one, and the one after that.