America is always it own best savior

Joe Biden will be a benchmark and history. His presidency will indicate where democracy began again after its greatest assassination attempt. It is a mark in democracy’s brief history comparable to Harry Truman and FDR’s inclusion of civil rights in American politics. From 1932 to 1968, democracy saw its first best shot in contemporary politics, policies that were intended to include all Americans. Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Iraq WAR under Bush and Cheney all chipped away at democracy. But through all the injustices of those events, the trampling of the constitution, the treason of candidate Nixon, the brutality of our police in 1968, the torture in Iraq, there existed a thread of democracy.

Domestic isolationism

I doubt America would have survived during the last four years were it not for state’s rights. Somewhat ironically, it was kind of like the threat of Communism, like the domino theory. If one state fell to Trumpism the others will follow. Thank you Thomas Jefferson for making states sovereign. For a number of reasons this feature of government saved America during the Trump administration. It gave states the ability to “secede” from a union determined to impose undemocratic policies on them. State governors pulled double duty the past four years. In a pandemic response botched and downplayed from the beginning, state governors became integral in controlling it. Problem is, and was, a number of them took their cues from Trump, like the New Orleans mayor prior to Mardi Gras in February. That decision set of a cluster of clusters that have been bouncing around America infecting and killing for ten months. We can unite again, America can get a break from being a collection of individual states fighting for themselves. Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president January 20,2021. The date will mark when America could once again rely on (when it’s most needed) a federal government.

Democratic equations

It was said that Bill Clinton “picked the lock” in 1992. He found an Electoral College path to 270 that did not require him to win Florida or Texas. Clinton unseated the incumbent president with 44,909,889 popular vote. Twenty-eight years later Biden unseated the incumbent with almost twice the number of popular votes! To be fair Trump’s votes were appreciable, similarly measurable to H.W. (adjusted for inflation and his gross incompetence). In order of importance, here are the points that led Biden to victory:

• Trump being Trump
• COVID
• Being a white man and a peer. Trump had nothing to work with, nothing to exploit; starve a misogynist and racist.
• Campaigning hard in MI,WI, and PA
• His being a moderate old-school Democrat with empathy and experience in both the legislative and executive branches of government
• Presented himself as progressive enough to appeal to Sander supporters by selecting a woman of color as running-mate

As an ouster of sitting presidents, Biden’s electoral margin is second only to Clinton’s. His count of 370 was 210 more than H.W. In 1976 Jimmy Carter defeated incumbent, appointed, Gerald Ford with an Electoral College margin of less than 60 votes. Carter was then, in 1980, defeated by a Republican in a humiliating 489 to 49 electoral vote count.

Litmus test

Biden won, something most of humanity was agreed upon by 11/7/20, and the basic principle of democracy is still being tested every day by a disgruntled president and a team of the most incompetent lawyers to ever shimmie under a bar. Perhaps the most brazenly candid rejection of democracy came in Arizona, at a Phoenix Hyatt, when Rudy Giuliani proposed that the votes simply be disregarded and the state and its 11 votes be awarded to Trump, a move that would still leave him 38 votes short. All the hair dyed testimonials, the Biden augmenting recounts, the “My Cousin Viny” references, it is all moot, incredulously moot, after after the fact. It is vain posturing, the diminished self-esteemed attempt of a branding unsuccessful raconteur, trying to reclaim the 15 seconds of fame he thought he never had . At a popular vote loss of 6,269,750, I think he knows that the majority of voting America is not buying his steaks. In these terms, Trump lost to Biden by 10,979,794 votes, almost 7,000,000 more than Hillary. It is a frightening statement of America, however, that over 10,000,000 more people climbed on the Trump train in the past four years.

It took weeks to get the GSA ascertation, the green light to transition, with the first brief being only recently being made available to Biden. The concession speech (for anything) from Trump has never been written. It is a word, among many, not in his vocabulary. To concede, to admit he lost to Biden (imagine if he had lost to Hillary, or even worse, Obama) in the eyes of his conspiracy, red meat, fed base would surely cloud the smoke and mirrors that have served him so well. The jig would be up. It’d be like when Toto went behind the curtain and exposed the wizard. For $20,000 per diem Rudy will grovel and debase himself in a more professional setting than he was last seen playing his Giulianis on the set of Borat. Rudy and Sydney Powell, the lawyer too delusional for Trump, are employed not to prove Biden lost, but to lay the seed for a grassroots conspiracy theory that will be sustainable in the numb MAGA minds, at least until November 5, 2024.