BIDEN AND BEYOND

This is an act of faith and an act of hope.

Faith in that fragile thing Alexis de Tocqueville called "Democracy in America".

And hope that a system structured more than two centuries ago for a different time and different place can rise to the occasion and self-correct in this time and this place.

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020, I will vote for Joe Biden for President.  I have voted in every election since 1976.  I mean all of them.  Off years, mid-terms, local, state and national.  

This, however, will be the most important vote I will ever cast.  

The Covid pandemic, which might have been avoided had the President read his intelligence briefings last December, and which certainly would have been significantly mitigated had an all hands on deck policy embracing masks, testing, quarantines and tracing been adopted early on, has killed over 230,000 Americans.  It has destroyed lives, families and whole communities.  Its economic consequences defy modeling.  The best picture of what is happening is not  a V, U or W.  It's a boomerang.  22.3 million jobs were lost by May.  9.3 million had been recovered by the end of September.  But a new Covid wave threatens to send us back to the future as we head toward winter.

Instead of combating the disease, President Trump politicized it.  Never before -- not with the 2009 swine flu pandemic or the 1918 flu epidemic or even AIDS -- has public health been turned into an overtly partisan issue.  

But Trump did it.

He couldn't help himself.  

He never can.

And it is killing more than those tragically falling to Covid.

It is killing American democracy.

It did not have to be this way.  After Trump surpised the world  -- and himself  --  by winning the Presidency, everyone was willing to give him a chance.  In spite of the lying, the "pussy grabbing", the obnoxiousness, the sheer lunacy of a mouth -- as often as not -- apparently disconnected from any functioning brain.  

In spite of it all.

In fact, in the aftermath of that surprise, Hillary Clinton gave voice to that willingness for all of us who had chosen her and rejected him.  The morning after the election she spoke to her own supporters. "We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought", she said, "But I still believe in America and always will.  And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future.  Donald Trump is going to be our President.  We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead."   

Even then, the result was incongruous. Slivers of votes in the rural precincts of three rust belt states had sent the world and the country into a collective bout of "How the hell did that happen" and "What now?" The truth, however, was that Trump had hit a nerve.  The quarter-century, neo-liberal consensus that made economies global and elites rich contained one big flaw.  

Not everyone was being invited to the party.

And, like most who stand forever on the outside looking in, wondering why the cool kids do not want to hang with them, the outsiders were pissed.  They hadn't gotten a raise in thirty years.  Their jobs were being shipped overseas.  And they had nowhere to go.  For some, sorrow was bathed in addiction. For others, it was bathed in anger . . . 

At the PhDs who studied but never helped them.

The politicians who courted but never delivered for them.

And the elites who secretly despised them.

So they embraced Trump.

In truth, of course, Trump was one of the elites.  Indeed, one of the elitest of the elites -- private schools, inherited wealth, gold plated penthouses and trophy wives.  

But he didn't sound like an elite.  

He was ill-tempered and foul-mouthed.  He did not respect his political opponents.  He made fun of them.  He ranked them out.  He thought they were beneath contempt.  In truth, he thought they were all full of shit.

Which was pretty much what a lot of those white guys in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin thought as well.

So they gave him a chance.

And Hillary told the rest of us to give him a chance as well.

So we did too.

And he has blown it.

Every day and in every way.

He has blown it for those of us who do not count neo-Nazis or white supremacists as among the "fine people";  who do not think our government should separate asylum seeking parents from their children;  who do not want their President bribing a foreign leader to orchestrate a phony investigation into a political opponent; who understand alliances and common cause are the only way to preserve the peace and meet global challenges like climate change; who know the Civil War ended 155 years ago and civil rights are long overdue; and who realize that  truth is not optional and lying is not a measure of authenticity.  

But he has also blown it for the very people who put him over the top.  

Despite promising, he did not re-build America’s infrastructure.  His tax breaks for the rich did not trickle down and transform Appalachia, which still does not have enough broadband, and his tariffs have not resurrected American manufacturing or ended trade deficits.  Though his always-promised but never delivered health care plan does not exist, he is still in the Supreme Court trying to get Obamacare declared illegal.  And he may succeed.  Despite the opposition of more than half the country, he and Mitch McConnell have packed the Supreme Court with conservatives.  The pandemic has created 9.1 million Covid survivors, and in Trump's world, they are walking pre-existing conditions that insurers will not have to cover.

I am a life-long Democrat.  I have run for Congress as a Democrat and even served for a time as a member of the New York State Democratic committee.  Trump's supporters like their man because he gets in the face of people like me.  

But instead of liking him because he kicks my ass, maybe they should stop letting him kick their own.

Joe Biden is not perfect.

But he may be perfect for this time. 

He knows that Covid does not have an address or a political party.  He knows that progress on economic inequality is a matter of policies that increase wages, cover costs and generate growth.  Instead of outrage or the Trump-like empty promise of a "big" plan "next week" or "just after the election", he offers small bore incrementalism -- a $15 minimum wage, a public option added to Obamacare that increases the number of insured, ending the ban that stops Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.  It may not be fancy.  But it will work.

Biden has always been ambitious. 

But he has never been an elitist.  

Or a phony.

He does not have to tell us he feels our pain.

Because too often in his own life he has experienced it. 

America is at a crossroads.  

If Trump is re-elected, it will almost certainly be without a popular vote majority and possibly because he and the GOP have suppressed the vote and succeeded in making sure that some of it is not even counted.  They have enlisted an army of lawyers who stand ready to march into close states in an effort to stop any post-election day counts of mailed-in ballots.  Different states count different votes at different times.  Some are counting the early vote now.  Some aren't.  Some count the election day vote first.  And because Republicans have cast fewer early or mail-in votes than Democrats, at least one of Trump's long-term operatives, Steve Bannon, has said the President plans to declare victory on election night when he may be leading.

If this comes to pass, Americans should hit the streets.

Every vote must be counted.

And no winner should be declared until every vote is counted.

If anything other than that happens, American democracy dies.

Don't let it.