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At this the time of year we typically take a nostalgic look back at the past twelve months. But, like the Trump presidency, 2020 AD is fully worth putting in the rear view mirror with little desire to look back.
Ah, but was 2020 all bad? Sort of, but not quite.
On the election front. They were once clear front-runners, at least after Iowa and New Hampshire: Bernie Sanders was surging and Pete Buttigieg was showing appeal. Elizabeth Warren was vowing to fight, fight, fight. And Amy Klobuchar and Corey Booker, once appealing options, were becoming less and less viable. And Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang were curiosities who kept things interesting. Julian Castro and Kamala Harris clashed with Joe Biden at the debates, Harris strategically, and Castro nastily. Biden was looking old and vulnerable, about to become a footnote in the 2020 Presidential race.
Then came South Carolina and, miraculously, everything turned around.
As I look back, I feel certain that none of the other Democratic wannabe’s would have beaten Trump. Too liberal (spelled s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t by the Republicans), too inexperienced, too nice, too gay, too uninspiring. Although he tried to throw every negative label in the book at him, Donald Trump never managed to pigeon hole the Democratic nominee. The only characterizations that stuck to Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. were decent, compassionate, and empathetic. However much Sleepy Joe might have lost it, he came across as the anti-Trump, the man of the people who cared about regular folks and could feel their pain. In these hard times, wouldn’t you like someone in the White House who gives a damn about someone other than himself, who cares about something other than the stock market.
On the pandemic front, co-mingled with politics. COVID 19, the awful disease that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, had one positive byproduct. Trump couldn’t deal with it—at all. He wouldn’t wear a mask because it wasn’t in his DNA to appear weak. He kept telling us that we were rounding the bend, that it would mysteriously disappear. Take the wonder drug hydroxychloriquine, he opined, or even better, gulp down a swig of Chlorox. Stupidity and absolute denial were not winning strategies for defeating the disease or defeating Joe Biden.
Like everything else in his life, Trump made the virus and the campaign all about himself, made the election a referendum on His Excellency. In the meantime, Biden played it cool and low-key. He avoided any major gaffes and flew, effectively, under the radar. By election day, millions of socially distanced and masked voters, sort-of-for-Biden and all-in-against-Trump, made their feelings known.
When the ballots were counted, especially as the mail-in votes flooded in, going 80-20 for Biden in the big cities and suburbs of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan, Trump never knew what hit him. He cried foul, and many weeks later still whines endlessly and denies reality. “I was robbed,” he proclaims endlessly, “it was all massive voter fraud.”
But there wasn’t. Why? Because candidate Trump warned in advance that there would be, and every county in every state worked assiduously to count the vote in ways that couldn’t be faulted. Isn’t is wonderfully ironic that Trump sealed his ultimate fate by threatening a phony election and assuring an honest one.
Joe Biden, who has seen his share of tsuris in his life, seems to specialize in moving into executive positions when the chips are down, first as Barack Obama’s vice-president during a devastating financial crisis, now inheriting the lead role in a divided, virus-burdened country. But more than Bernie or Elizabeth or Pete or Amy or Corey, Joe was able to find the formula to wrest the White House from that terrible man (what’s his name? I’ve already begun to forget him).
I enter 2021 with a sense of cautious optimism. What’s-his-name will soon be gone. Vaccines, I am assured, are on the way. The bar has been set pretty low, but we can’t help but think that better days are ahead.
To coin a phrase: Out with the old, in with the new. To 2021, I take a deep breath, rise a glass filled with optimism, and warmly wish everyone the best. L’chaim.
Well said, Ed.