Everybody happy? Everybody feeling good?
Well, I have a few thoughts.
1) There are a lot of issues the new administration is going to have to deal with but could they please add these to the list and a little higher than you might initially think. Let's get serious about reforming or eliminating the electoral college. We are the laughingstock of the world to scream about democracy but say well yeah I know this person got over 50% of the vote, but 250 years ago the founders had to give slave states a sop called the Electoral College so they'd feel better about themselves and yeah well the guy with fewer votes won. This has to end. Majority rules, that's what you're taught from pre-school on. And while on the subject it's time to go to full in on mail in elections. The highest number of people voting EVER was when states loosened their restrictions on mail voting because of COVID. 145,000,000 people participated because if they didn't want to they didn't have to wait in line for hours, they didn't have to beg for time off from work, and they didn't have to face intimidation at a polling place. This is coming from the guy who wrote odes to the polling place as the embodiment of civic engagement. This is the reality of life in the 21st Century. Mail in voting works. It works really well. Especially in states like California where we count votes as they come in and even Florida where they stop accepting ballots on the Sunday before the election so on Monday they can start counting. And if Republicans shout that that doing these two things means Democrats will win every election then perhaps it's time to re-evaluate the principals of your party. Maybe you need to start thinking as leaders and not as politicians.
2) Democrats, don't go patting yourself on the back just yet. This election was about one thing and one thing only -- Donald Trump. This victory is because Republican voters crossed over (hello Lincoln Project) to vote ABT, anybody but Trump. 70 million people still voted for Trump which would be a record for any presidential candidate were it not for the fact he lost to a guy who got 75 million votes. Look down the ballot. Lindsey Graham got re-elected? You couldn't beat a mealy mouthed lickspittle Trump lapdog in a year when Trump was defeated? Did you flip any state legislatures so Republicans can't gerrymander the hell out of my beaten up census? Hell you even have to wait till January when passions won't be as high and nothing else will be on the ballot in Georgia to try and win two senate races against Republicans who were so stupid they got caught selling off their stock portfolios after the first COVID briefing. And that's probably gonna be just to get to 50-50 so Kamala can break ties. While you still control the House you lost 8 seats, for the most part seats you flipped in the Blue Wave two years ago. Those Republicans who voted for Biden this time will likely return to the fold when a more "normal" GOP candidate runs four years from now. You sure 40,000 of them won't be in Pennsylvania? Or Georgia? Or Wisconsin?
3) One thing I truly hope is that the Trump years will kill forever this notion that "We need a good businessman to be president". I know, I know, Trump is not a good businessman, but my point is that it is a total fallacy that businessmen make good leaders. They don't . They make money. That's their job. The job of government is not to make money. At the absolute best government should be a zero sum proposition, but in point of fact government should run a deficit and use the money it takes in to stimulate the private sector. Also it is the government's job to regulate the private sector to prevent "an overabundance of exuberance" from crashing the entire thing down on our heads. A businessman will never do that. The professional political class is who needs to be making the laws, not someone with his thumb of the scale.
4) What is with Cuban Americans in south Florida? Hey compadre I know you didn't like the dictator Fidel, but you voted hand over fist for the dictator Trump and thus handed him the state. Your guy Batista is not coming back, your ancestral farms and property are not going to be returned, and if you really want to help your brothers on the island then demand the US engage Cuba in real trade agreements and start opening things up. As long as you lap at the mojito the Republicans get you drunk with they are never going to help the people of Cuba. But maybe that's what you want, things to get so bad there that a Batista Jr. will sneak in under the cover of night and bring back a right wing military dictatorship that's hand in glove with the Mob. How'd that work out for you the last time?
5) Don't think I'm letting you off California, I got a few things to say to you as well. Really, you don't want a nurse or doctor to be mandated to be in a dialysis clinic cause that's what that proposition was about, not in any way about closing clinics. But you didn't read the proposition you just saw the TV ads. And you want Uber and Lyft to economically rape their employees (yes, you drive for them, you work for them, that makes you an employee) cause that's what you voted for. But you didn't read the proposition you just saw the TV ads. And you think it's perfectly fine for huge corporations to keep on not paying their fair share of property taxes cause that's the reality of that proposition, not the "oh poor us we're gonna lose the family farm" who would have hardly been effected by it at all. But you didn't read the proposition you just saw the TV ads. But you did vote to restrict the amounts of information Big Tech can gather on you. But then again, Big Tech didn't run any TV ads opposing that so you actually read the proposition.
6) 70 million Americans voted for the man who through his incompetency, his hubris, his hatred of anything instituted by his, let's all say it together, African-American predecessor KILLED a quarter of a million fellow citizens. 70 million Americans voted for the man who said white supremacists are "fine people". 70 million Americans voted for the man who pissed on foreign allies, got into a disastrous trade war, cozied up to any and all dictators, separated children from parents who were LEGALLY attempting to enter the country and now can't reconnect the families, put those children in cages, lost interest in and never built his fabled wall along the border, spent most of his day watching Fox news to see how many times his name got mentioned, moved so fast to appoint a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsberg that Merrick Garland's name wasn't even able to be mentioned, showed contempt for experts in science or military affairs or economics because "I know more about it than anyone else" and you can go on and fill in your own favorite Trump calamity. 70 million people. 70 million people who believed him that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are the evil socialists who are gonna...well what exactly? Make sure you can get health care? Make sure the air is fit to breath and the water fit to drink? Make sure you get paid a fair wage for a fair day's work and not have some corporate suit come along and say sorry we're not making enough money so we're shipping your job overseas? Make sure that if you are not white or not even the right kind of white you're not going to have a cop beat or kill you? 70 million people believed him and his crime family were only doing the best for the country and if they skim a little off the top well that's okay cause everyone does it (no, they don't). 70 million Americans believed his crap. Thank the universe for the 75 million who didn't.
But tonight let's pop the champagne and toast Joe and Kamala. And tomorrow lets all get back to work to heal up the jagged knife wound the past four years have infected us with. It's not going to happen overnight. It might not even happen in the next four years. But we've got to make a start and we've got to keep working. We owe that to those who came before us and those who will come after.
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