Biden/Harris win

I am breathing sighs of relief every day since Saturday morning. I have felt an enormous weight lifted from my shoulders. I am sleeping better. Music sounds sweeter.

Trump has lost and despite all of his whining, law suits, recriminations, and tantrums--will be out of the White House on January 20. If I need to drive down to Washington, D.C. and help remove Trump with a straight jacket and handcuffs, I will gladly do so.

So allow me to backtrack. When I last posted on Wednesday, November 4, I was disappointed that the count had Biden up by a fingernail, if that. But honestly, I should have expected that. The count at that point reflected the in-person voters, which were mainly Trump voters. By the time the mail-in ballots were counted, which were overwhelmingly Biden voters because Biden voters believe in science and that the coronavirus pandemic is real, the tide had shifted. By Thursday, I was feeling much more relieved. By Saturday it was official. Joe Biden is the 46th President of the United States. Kamala Harris is the first female Vice-President in American history. (And the first Black Vice-President and the first Vice-President of Asian descent).

While I was agonizing over the election last week, I did everything I could to avoid the wall-to-wall 24-hour news coverage. That involved going out for runs/walks and watching any television that was NOT election coverage: Pen15 on Tuesday night, a PBS Nature documentary and Colosseum: Roman Death Trap (also on PBS) on Wednesday evening, and more episodes of Pen15 on Thursday night. I can't even remember Friday night.

Every major news outlet declared Biden the winner on Saturday morning, and the first thing I did was play a vinyl copy of R.E.M.'s Out of Time that I'd bought about a week before but hadn't yet had a chance to listen to. That album has never sounded sweeter. It was an extraordinary feeling of relief that will only bet better when Trump is gone on January 20.

Some thoughts the day after Election Day

I'm trying to figure out what this "Day After the Election" most closely resembles: 2000 or 2016.

2000 in that we don't know who won and aren't entirely sure when we will find out who won--and it's possible that if Trump wins he will take the White House ONCE AGAIN without a majority of the popular vote. That would be three times in the last six presidential elections that the winner will not have the majority of the popular vote. Surprise, surprise: all three are Republicans.

2016 in that many of us are thinking: who in their right mind would vote for Trump? It actually feels worse in 2020 than it did in 2016. I could almost understand the impulse four years ago to go with the outsider (even though it should have been clear to anyone with a shred of decency that Trump was/is a charlatan). But four years later, the Trump presidency was as bad or worse than I envisioned it in 2016, yet this election will likely go down to the wire.

The bottom line is that white people continue to disappoint. The Republican Party under Trump has fully embraced being the party of white grievance and they have a captive audience.

So I am on pins and needles right now. I am incredibly disappointed that this election is as close as it is. It speaks poorly of us as a nation.