Previously Published in The Messenger
While Republicans across the country rejoice in the victory of Donald Trump (R-FL), others are much less enthused. However, we can pick out two clear winners in this.
The first big winner of this election is, believe it or not, Joe Biden (D-DE). We’ve said many times before that Biden’s cognitive impairments were obvious from before 2020. We’ve also expressed our disapproval at the people around him who pushed Biden around and essentially kept him in the public eye in such an embarrassing way.
We don’t think Biden is this irredeemable person. We think he fits nicely in the same category with Jimmy Carter (D-GA): Good man, horrible president.
But even though we disagree vehemently with his policies, it was quite sad and even aggravating to see him paraded around so obviously in mental decline. Biden deserved to have his last years spent on the beach in Delaware, not taking on the hardest job in the world. He deserved to retain his dignity and legacy, agree with his record or not, preserved as such, not as a horrible president who was even further humiliated by what appears to be a near-oblivious state from him.
We also disagree with conservatives who said Biden began “trolling” Harris by putting on a Trump hat on the campaign trail as a response to the coup in July. If Biden has had no clue where or who he was the past four years, we doubt he’d be mentally sound to pull something like that off.
In the end, we disagreed almost the entire way with Biden, but we wish him well. We’re glad he can spend the rest of his time relaxing and not working a job that likely aggravated his aging and no longer lends himself to unmerciful public scrutiny.
As of now, Biden is effectively done. He just needs to help in the transition, which he has assured will be smooth and peaceful, and he can finally return to being a private citizen.
The other big winner in this election: everyone who was tired of seeing campaign ads on every commercial cycle and yard signs on the side of the highway, receiving constant phone calls for donations and votes, and hearing all the vitriol and rhetoric of the past year. We think we can all use a break from this and we can all be relieved that the election is over.
In a hyper-partisan world, it’s easy to see so many people, especially online, genuinely panicking about the result of this election. Likewise, we’re sure if the election had gone the other way, there’d be a good amount of panic as well.
However, one aspect of this election is necessary, as Trump, Harris, and many have said: unity.
The biggest loser in this election: the people who think that their neighbors hate them because of who they voted for and that the world is over.
Our response: get real.
Sure, there are some objectively bad people with objectively bad policies on each side, but much of the common ground has obviously been lost because of how sports-like politics has become, where it’s about social media followings and debate zingers than it is about bridging a gap on policy.
But your fellow man is still your fellow man, and if every election is the “single most important election of our lifetimes,” then no election is.
Go to work, take a trip, try a new restaurant. Enjoy life and breath easy knowing that your local electeds, who you can easily meet and chat with, will make a much greater difference in your life than those at the top will.