November rain, pt.2

Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain

Four years ago, I wrote. A week had passed since Donald Trump upset Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election. I wrote out of sadness and confusion over Trump's victory and fear of the unknown future a Trump presidency presented. Trump had already exhibited racist, xenophobic behavior and he had just won the right to the most powerful position in the world. 

Saturday morning - 10:28 am central time, to be specific - the Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner in Pennsylvania, giving him 273 electoral votes and the title President-elect of the United States. So here I am, writing again. Let's forget, for a second, that a Biden administration isn't going to get anything done because professional obstructionist Mitch McConnell is going to do to Barack Obama's former vice president what he did to Obama himself. Let's forget that Biden won't move the country left in any meaningful way because he's a center-left Democrat who has no interest in listening to progressives. We can, and will, fight those battles another day.

On January 21, 2021, Donald Trump will be a private citizen again.

Now, as I type that, there is a small part of me that fears he will find a way to invalidate the choice of the American people through litigation or political corruption. There is fear he will do what he has done for four years and leverage every last ounce of his power as president and find a way to stay in the White House illegitimately.

Legal experts say he has no leg to stand on. Yesterday, I watched Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsburg confirm Trump's recount efforts, as well as his frivolous lawsuits, will likely fail. Many Republicans have decried Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud. Naturally, Trump sycophants Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and Jim Jordan have joined the chorus of fraud, but I guess that's what job security affords someone.

Former president George W. Bush made a congratulatory statement today to the president-elect and went out of his way to confirm the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Bush is, by far, the most high-profile Republican to dispel Trump's claims of voter fraud.

Hopefully, that means my fears are unfounded and, on January 21, 2021, Donald Trump will roll out of bed a failed businessman and a failed former president.

The last four years have been exhausting. Donald Trump completely deconstructed the office. One of the few promises he kept was to run the government like a business. He certainly ran the country like one of his businesses, as he ran it right into the ground. His family was omnipresent, corruption ran rampant, anyone who was even remotely disloyal was removed, and Trump himself spent most his time either lying, tweeting or golfing. It was so deliciously perfect that Trump found out he had lost while on a golf course, once again neglecting the duties of his office while his reelection hung delicately in the balance.

It's been an emotional weekend. Twitter was full of videos of celebrations across the country and a lot of them got me choked up. CNN's Van Jones nearly broke down on live television out of sheer relief that the racist-in-chief had been voted out. As a white man, I don't know the stress minority Americans must have felt under Trump's presidency, but I could see its release in Jones and so many others online this weekend.

Hell, there were people around the world celebrating Trump's loss. Leading up to last week, the general sentiment I read from people outside the U.S. was, essentially: "What the hell is going on in your country?" And it was a valid question. As a nation, we stepped our toes right to the edge of the end of democracy. The next step forward would have seen us tumble off a cliff into an uncertain future, one that likely would have been even more divisive and severe than the first four years Trump was in office. More than 71 million Americans voted for that future, which is the clearest sign that we're still not sailing in smooth waters as a nation. 

All that matters, however, is that he's gone. He can kick and scream all he likes, but most of the country is either ignoring him or confirming he's completely full of shit. The healing officially began yesterday morning, but it began in earnest last night, when Joe Biden addressed the nation not as a former vice president, but as President-elect. 

For the first time since Biden left the White House as Obama's vice president, we will have a caring, thoughtful, bipartisan adult running our country. The racism, xenophobia, division and hatred will not magically disappear, but their most visible and powerful enabler will no longer be leading the free world. He will retreat to Mar-a-Lago full-time, no longer encumbered by the responsibilities of running the United States (not that he took the responsibility seriously in the first place). He will continue to tweet his nonsense long after he's been evicted from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Millions of blind devotees will continue to fight for populism and nationalism in the face of Americans who will look to make America great again by bringing love, inclusion, care and understanding back into the national discourse.

This weekend marks the beginning of our journey back to becoming the United States of America once again. We have a lot of work to do. But we finally have someone in the White House who wants to unite us and not divide us. We finally have someone who is going to look out for all Americans, not just the ones who voted for him. We finally have a responsible adult in office instead of a 70-something infant. 

Congratulations to our President-elect, Joe Biden. Congratulations to our Vice President-elect, Kamala Harris, the first woman, first Black man or woman, first Asian-American man or woman, and first child of immigrants to hold that position. You both have a mountain of work in front of you, but I look forward to everything you're bringing to our country and the leadership you will bring to a country badly in need of it.