I wrote here the morning after the election in November that there were grounds for optimism -- Biden was gaining in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona, which provided enough votes to win in the Electoral College. The last stage of that anachronistic, indirectly democratic process, but the only process we have right now, was completed last night.
I don't like Vice President Pence in the least. He's enabled and promoted four years of Trump's fascist regime. But, in the end, he did his job in Congress certifying the electoral vote yesterday. It's a measure of how far we've gone away from decency and integrity in the Trump regime that a Vice President deserves praise for doing his job, but there you have it.
Yesterday also brought the news that the Democrats will control the Senate, and therefore both houses of Congress. Warnock's and Ossoff's victories in George are profound game changers, which will open the way for Biden with Harris's help to enact all the major components of his rebuilding a better America. (In addition what needs to be done in making health care universal, countering racism, gun control, protecting the environment -- I've also long yearned, on a relatively minor, personal level, for a rail system in the United States as high-speed and effective as the ones in Europe and Japan, and I think that will now finally happen.)
There's still an enormous amount of danger to be dealt with, ranging from every minute Trump is still in the White House to the tap root of fascism Trump called forth* to the still-raging pandemic. But we've finally reached the light at the end of one of the long, deep tunnels we've been struggling the navigate, and the view looks better from here.
*The storming of the U.S. Capitol, which happened a few hours after this blog post, is a tragic and infuriating example of what this fascism can do. See my comments in the NY1 video below:
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