Fluid ImaginationBy running again—despite his age, despite his low approval ratings, despite his poor showing in the polls against Trump—Biden could be engaging in one of the most selfish, hubristic, and potentially destructive acts ever undertaken by an American president. If he winds up losing, that’s all anyone will remember him for. Bill Maher has said Biden could go down as the “Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the presidency.” Or of democracy.
— “It’s Not Just That Biden Is Old,” The Atlantic
From Free Community College Won’t Be in Spending Bill, Jill Biden to Say:
“One year ago, I told this group that Joe, my husband Joe, was going to fight for community colleges. But…”
Anything after Dr. Biden’s “but” is just more bullshit to cover up the corruption and immorality of corporate Democrats.
Since I’m not a dumb-ass Trump supporter, I’ll say it outright: Fuck Joe Biden.
From For Voting Rights Advocates, a ‘Once in a Generation Moment’ Looms:
“You’re president of the United States. You need to do more than hope that it passes,” said [the Executive Director of the Black Lives Matter Fund] of Mr. Biden. “He needs to use everything he’s learned over 47 years in Washington, D.C., to get [HR 1] passed.”
President Biden’s campaign against his younger, fresher-faced Democratic primary opponents in 2019 and 2020 focused on his vast experience in Washington D.C. He claimed that this experience, particularly working across the aisle with his Republican colleagues in the Senate, would allow him to push through a Democratic agenda more successfully than his opponents.
He didn’t seem willing to use that experience on behalf of the millions of Americans who work for minimum wage. But he has no excuse for not using it to work on behalf of every voting-age American. This bill doesn’t help “a party.” It helps everyone. He needs to fight.
Today is supposed to be a good day. Former President Trump no longer wields a modicum of official power over the United States of America, and if enough Senators do their job correctly, he will be banned from holding power again. Former President Donald J. Trump will be shunned.
Today is supposed to be a good day. Senator Mitch McConnell has lost his grip on the economic, political, and moral progress of this country. He can still exercise tremendous influence as the Senate Minority Leader, but a single senator from Kentucky can no longer prevent the nation’s progress outright.
Today is supposed to be a good day. The President of the United States once again possesses the capacity for empathy. The Vice-President of the United States is once again capable of eating a meal with a person of the opposite sex without requiring her significant other to be in attendance. The overseers of our Federal bureaucracy once again recognize the challenges posed by climate change and (at the very least pay lip service to) the moral and fiscal imperatives those challenges engender.
Today is supposed to be a good day. Every employee in the executive branch is now free to admit that the citizens of the United States are suffering under the weight of a very real pandemic and that any immediate help the government can provide is already too late in coming and cannot delay a minute longer. Every employee in the executive branch can now be activated to address the real crises that stand before us rather than waste their time, effort, and resources trying to sustain the graces of their Dear Leader.
Today is supposed to be a good day. Transparency, honesty, and a commitment to sharing even the hardest of truths have found a home in front of our national press corps. The White House Press-Briefing Room is once again recognized as a national conference room where professional interrogators can question, criticize, and clarify the actions and decisions of our public servants without becoming villainized for exercising their rights as citizens of our free republic.
Today is supposed to be a good day. Cynicism, cronyism, and unfettered capitalism have been ushered out the door of the White House. A belief in the necessity of the regulatory state has resumed command of our national economic tools and stands ready to enforce our regulations with the might of the majority.
Today is supposed to be a good day. The legislative and executive branches of the Federal government belong to the nation’s popular majority. The Party representing that majority claims to believe that a democratic government belongs in the hands of the majority (charitably informed and voluntarily restrained by the observations and insights of any citizen who finds themself in the minority). Promising to remove all barriers between a voter and their vote, this melding of power, philosophy, and political principle ought to increase the influence of the people on the levers of our democracy.
Today is supposed to be a good day.
But I fear it may be too late.
Tomorrow the sun will rise. My daughter will come downstairs and show her love for our puppy. My wife and I will make breakfast, make lunch, kiss each other and our daughter and our puppy goodbye, and go off to work, where my wife and I will each come face to face with all of the children who are feeling the weight of this pandemic, the stress in their parents’ lives manifesting as lost patience, abusive hands and language, emotional and physical neglect, addiction, depression, divorce, trauma, and fear. We’ll continue to experience the day to day challenges every child faces thanks to a year of social and educational isolation; a year of uninterrupted (nay, parental and societally enforced) screentime; a year of missed funerals, weddings, birthdays, holidays — a year devoid of ritual. We’ll listen to the students who just need to vent, and we’ll try to engage with the students who have retreated inside themselves. We’ll encourage every burst of curiosity, try to add a spark to every moment of eye contact, and strive to create more significant moments than our tasks give us time for. We’ll use our knowledge and experience, and we’ll put in the work.
But still, that kid in the corner will break down into tears and there will be nothing we can do about it. That parent will pop that pill after swearing off their addiction and there will be nothing we can do about it. That grandmother will die because the hospital was too crowded for the doctor to get to her in time and there will be nothing we can do about it.
Today is supposed to be a good day. But tomorrow, the sun will rise, and the actions and decisions of President Donald J. Trump will still influence our reality. And there will be nothing we can do about it.
From Joe Biden Just Appointed His Climate Movement Liaison. It’s a Fossil-Fuel Industry Ally:
During the climate crisis that has battered his home state of Louisiana, [recent Biden appointee to a high-profile White House position focusing in part on climate issues] Rep. Richmond has joined with Republicans to vote to increase fossil fuel exports and promote pipeline development. He also voted against Democratic legislation to place pollution limits on fracking — and he voted for GOP legislation to limit the Obama administration’s authority to more stringently regulate the practice.
Centrists Democrats doing what centrist Democrats do.
It is 3:19 PM EST on November 7, 2020. I just returned from a therapeutic dispensary (curbside pick-up while masked), where I retrieved a self-prescribed package of medicinal-grade cannabis. It has been over a week since I last took my prescription. I take it for anxiety.
As the man said, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.”
But now it is Saturday, and I have returned from the therapeutic dispensary, and the people of planet Earth have been introduced to President-Elect Joseph Biden and Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris.
My very first thought upon hearing the news was, “C’mon, Georgia.” See, when you have an anxiety disorder, you don’t get to experience the same level of relief and enjoyment as everyone else; instead, your anxiety leaps to the next closest obstacle.
You might think I’d be anxious about the Supreme Court. After all, President Trump and the Republicans out-shamed themselves to rush Associate Justice Barrett onto the bench for just this purpose: to side with the Republican Party if and when the validity of the Presidential Election come before the Court. While the Republicans already had a majority on the Court, Chief Justice Roberts’ decisions have raised some valid concerns about his willingness to rule from a place of naked partisanship, so they appointed and confirmed Justice Barrett to the Court to ensure the Republicans a favorable outcome.
Justice Barrett’s decision to recuse herself from the pre-election case in Pennsylvania gave me hope that the Republican leadership misread the strength of her character, although I am not delusional enough to imagine her loyalty to the Constitution will override her loyalty to the Party if a particular case provides her with the moral wiggle room to avoid her Catholic guilt.
While the Republicans on the Supreme Court could still reveal the partisan horrorshow beneath their dignified black robes, even my anxiety has too much faith in democratic institutions to fall into that abyss.
Our democratic institutions, unfortunately, also include the United States Senate, which has been controlled since 2015 by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Senator McConnell famously led The Party of No during the Obama Administration, which was a “daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance” to the Democratic majority’s agenda. He is also the first Senate Majority Leader since the Civil War era to deny a president the right to fill an open seat on the Supreme Court.
As it stands, experts predict the Republican Party to retain control of the Senate for the 117th United States Congress, but their prediction rests on the likelihood of the two special elections in Georgia resulting in two more Republican members being added to the Senate in January. With Alaska and North Carolina almost guaranteed to send two Republican members as well, the outcome of the Georgian special elections will determine which political party controls the Senate.
I find hope against that happening in the surprising results of the presidential election in Georgia, where the Democratic candidate defeated the Republican candidate by (as of the afternoon of November 7th) roughly 12,000 votes.
I also find hope in Stacey Abrams, a Georgian who parleyed her gubernatorial defeat in 2018 into a powerful force for fair elections and who deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the surprising results in Georgia.
Political strategists expect the two parties to spend upwards of $200 million on the two special elections. I don’t know anything about the four candidates who will be facing off, but each race has a Republican running against a Democrat, and I don’t want Senator McConnell and the Republican party to continue their stranglehold on progress.
So yes, it is a Saturday night, President Trump has been defeated at the ballot box, my self-prescribed anxiety-soothing herb is back in the house, and I’m about to leave to celebrate the nation’s victory around a campfire with my family, friends, and neighbors, but still, the anxious voice in my head won’t stop repeating the phrase, “C’mon, Georgia.”
From I Asked Bernie Sanders if It Was All Over. ‘No,’ He Groaned:
“Now, the day after Biden is elected,” [Bernie said,] “we have got to mobilize and organize all over this country to make sure that Biden becomes as progressive a president as is possible, that Democrats control the Senate and the House, and that we can put sufficient pressure on Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to carry out a progressive agenda.”