Like many others, I drifted into fitful sleep before midnight on Tuesday. The dreamed-of Biden landslide was clearly not materializing. Even an optimistic spin on the partial results couldn’t fend off 2016 deja vu as I tossed and turned. I heard President Donald Trump’s bizarre “victory” declaration through a fog and then slept until dawn.
Sunlight started to disinfect my mood as Trump’s early leads in key states were sliced away by mail-in ballots, especially in urban and suburban counties in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
My mood steadily brightened with the rising sun. As I write, it seems highly likely that Biden won the presidency.
Perhaps understandably, many Democrats expressed mixed emotions — relief that Biden won and deep disappointment at the razor-thin margin and the apparent failure to win the Senate. Several family members and friends wrote anguished messages, deeply stunned by the realization that nearly half the country still supported Trump’s race-baiting, crude, mean-spirited, dishonest presidency. Their despair seemed to blind them to the meaning of Biden’s apparent victory.
Biden’s victory is exhilarating to me. Understanding this requires perspective. The nation is neither as good as we thought a decade ago nor as bad as we thought a week ago.
The United States didn’t become racist and resentful overnight. Think, for example, of 2012. Many of us were thrilled by Obama’s reelection, but he won less of the popular vote than Biden in 2020. White nationalists, neo-Nazis and gun-toting “patriots” didn’t suddenly appear in 2016. Less offensive Republican voters — “drown the government” zealots, anti-regulation libertarians and hypocritical evangelicals — have populated America’s neighborhoods and voting booths since 1980, when Ronald Reagan hypnotized half the country into voting against their own interests, seduced by the hope that the prosperity for poor and working-class white folks was just around the corner. For 40 years Lucy has dangled the football and pulled it away.
Trump’s incessant dog whistles called forth the worst among us. His ubiquitous presence on social media has distorted reality. It is not reality. We think the country has changed more than it has because of the sheer volume of Trump’s pathology. Even on liberal cable, it has been all Trump, all the time. That has magnified his impact into surreal, delusional proportions.
Trump’s thin Electoral College victory in 2016 invited a small fraction of his most ardent supporters to posture and preen in their MAGA hats. They got more attention than merited.
The bulk of Trump’s supporters are the same people who shopped at your neighborhood store and offered friendly greetings when you passed by while walking the dog in 2012. They have been bamboozled by Trump’s incessant stream of lies and their amplification by his sycophants on Fox News and conservative radio.
I don’t excuse their willful ignorance, but it is understandable that incurious people would find confirmation of their own biases quite compelling when the confirmation comes from the Oval Office. That bullhorn will now be silenced.
The fish of state rots from the head, but the stench will dissipate as quickly as it arose once we wrap Trump up and toss him away (or toss him in prison). Much of what Trump has done can be undone by spring.
Imagine …
■ Dignity in the White House, with a dog, laughing grandchildren and no immediate relatives on the payroll.
■ An aggressive, science-based approach to the devastating pandemic.
■ No children in cages.
■ Tyrants challenged and friends embraced.
■ The press treated as a cornerstone of democracy, not an enemy of the people.
■ William Barr unceremoniously ejected from the Justice Department.
■ Rudy Giuliani back to being an obnoxious know-it-all at the end of the bar.
■ The United States rejoining the family of nations and the Paris climate agreement.
■ A vibrant woman of color serving as vice president.
■ Competent professionals restored to the Cabinet and State Department.
■ Executive orders restoring environmental protections.
■ A president who speaks “Black Lives Matter” and is willing to consider reparations.
These things are worth celebrating.
And finally, to my despairing friends: The 48% who supported Trump are not our primary community. Look more closely. Our community is among the urban and suburban precincts where Trump was rejected by 70%-80% of voters. Our country is the one that rose in outrage and solidarity at the killing of George Floyd and countless other people of color.
Black Lives Matter Plaza is an open public space just two blocks from the heavily barricaded White House. That symbolism portends the future.
Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.