America, Interrupted
The end of Donald Trump. For now…
Yesterday was a fantastic day. A needed one. I fully believed in this outcome and even when things were looking dire to many, with flashbacks to 2016 illuminating left and right, I trusted the process and the process prevailed. After a year more brutal than any in memory, let’s celebrate this day and hope this is a turning point.
But I also want to be realistic and honest. And I think we all should in order to remain vigilant. Joe Biden got more votes than anyone in the history of our democracy — 75 million and counting — which is amazing. At the same time Donald Trump got the second most votes of anyone in the history of our democracy in losing. And I fear that if it were any other candidate other than Biden, who Trump-hating Republicans were comfortable voting for, Trump would have won again.
So if there’s a victory the Democrats should celebrate today, it’s that they made the right choice in picking a candidate. Everyone else who was in the running late would have been disastrous. And so let’s be very clear and again, honest: the Democrats didn’t win this election, Donald Trump lost it. The Democrats simply allowed him to do so.
70 million people voted for Trump. 70 million. 70 million. Say it a thousand more times. After what we’ve all been through the past four years, and especially the past year of complete and utter incompetence and buffoonery. Four years ago, I wondered if this country was going to have to learn a lesson the hard way in the election of Trump. And now you could argue that we’ve learned a few lessons in such a manner, but certainly COVID is top of mind as the key hard lesson, with so many lives lost.¹ And yet, looking at these results, it seems as if no lesson was learned at all.
The hope today is that the past four years of Trump has been a blip on the radar of our democracy. An interruption, a distraction, and now we’re back on track. The fear is that this election is the blip. And I don’t mean that in the sense that Republicans will win again — I sincerely hope that at some point in my life they put forward a candidate I’m excited about voting for — it’s that Trump or his literal ilk will be back. You can take it to the bank that they will try in 2024, the question is where America will be at that point.
And so I’d say to the Democrats celebrating this win today, look inward. Result at the top of the ticket aside, it’s clearly time to reboot the party, much as it is on the Republican side. We all need to make the most of these next four years. To make America great again, as it were.
I am so, so, so happy that my young daughter no longer has to grow up in a world where a morally corrupt con man is President of the United States. That’s what I keep thinking about today. And why I’m so thrilled with this outcome. I take solace in the fact that she won’t remember the shitshow that was the first couple years of her life. Now we need to make sure that the country going forward is worthy of her memories.
¹ And while you certainly can’t blame Trump for COVID-19 itself, nor can you for the majority of lives lost, I believe you absolutely can blame him for some subset of lives lost, as America has performed badly below and beyond comparable countries. Is that number in the thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? More? It’s impossible to know. But even if it’s just one. If just one life could have been saved if Trump and his administration had taken the virus and the response to it seriously, that would have been worth having a different president in office. Just to save one life. Obviously. This isn’t a statistic, it’s a life. And it was lost because Trump was incompetent. Or just didn’t give a shit. Or both. Or whatever. Good riddance.
