"We have to continue to fight." -- Sarah, 10th Grade
At this point in 2020, it’s hard to be shocked. There have been looming fears of war, 250,000 deaths, and a gay-but-still-homophobic scene in TV show Supernatural. It’s now second nature to brace yourself when there’s any kind of news. And Yet. Despite all odds. All around the world, the streets broke out in joy last week. Based on something they’d heard in the news. It was the almost too-good-to-be-true announcement that Joe Biden had won the U.S. presidential election, and defeated Donald Trump. There was the sound of pots banging. Cheering in the streets. Thousands of people singing “YMCA” in near-perfect unison. Many sentimental tweets were spun about this being the final rebuke to fascism. Which begs the question: is it?
It’s worth mentioning Biden was never the betting horse. Name brand recognition made him a front runner, of course, but at the end of the day he was largely seen as an out of touch, fairly bland, old man. It’s a far cry from senator Bernie Sanders’ fiery speeches, or Elizabeth Warren’s even fierier takedowns. No extremely far left policies like the ones we’ve seen from leading congresswoman and twitch streamer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Biden’s past was quickly used against him, and not without good reason. His mishandling of the Anita Hill case. The 1994 Crime Bill he supported. It was easy, early on, to dismiss Biden’s run.
As the New York Times put it, in an article best described as hesitantly cheerful, “many Democrats feared he was too late. Too old, too moderate, too meandering to excite ascendant voices in his party, too rooted in the more civil politics of the past to nimbly handle Donald Trump.
There was something about him, though. Biden is, yes, our oldest soon-to-be president. He recites irish poetry, has a stuttering disorder, and a rescue dog. One of the first songs to play after Biden’s victory speech was Coldplay’s “Sky Full Of Stars”, a tribute to his dead son Beau. Biden succeeds in being a sensitive enough blank canvas for weary democrats to paint their aspirations on. You couldn’t say anything of the sort about any of the other candidates. Polls kept reflecting this as well. At this point, who could count on one hand the amount of “Biden Polling Extremely Well” headlines they’d seen? Slowly but surely, Biden became our Last Hope.
As quickly as Biden was confirmed to be the democratic nominee, there was backlash. One of the biggest democratic instagram pages was aptly called ‘Settle For Biden’. In a similar vein, one Wall Street Journal article was titled “Biden: Not So Bad, Given The Alternatives”. Other supporters took a much less subtle approach--there’s a reason we quickly forgot about the rape allegation against him. No major news network would report on it.
An early-on notable anti-Biden Democrat was the aforementioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC. Known for her progressive left policies and being beloved among Gen Z, Cortez originally stood by Bernie Sanders. Her criticisms have continued long after election day. In a New York Times interview, she said, “It’s really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them. When they feel like people don’t see them, or even acknowledge their turnout”. Her views, while polarizing, were not hers alone. For better or for worse, this all faded out of the national spotlight as soon as Donald Trump did another crazy thing.
What can be written about Trump that hasn’t already been said? I could go on for pages about what his presidency, his campaign, has done to America. I could talk about his gross handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple paragraphs could be spent listing the first ten or so racist things he’s said that come to mind. I might go the contemplative approach, and dwell on his psychology. The many people who have armchair-diagnosed him with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Dementia. No other president has been such a sheer wall of noise. It doesn’t matter where you go--you can’t escape the next thing to come out of his mouth. We, as a nation, have suffered from an inability to quiet bigotry in a wig.
So Trump was a nightmare here and beyond. Now that we’ve defeated him with a less complicated yet bland-seeming older white man, what are we to do?
On November 7th, indie-pop band Foster The People took to Twitter to tweet what they believed was an answer: “As tempting as it is to gloat and poke your finger in the eye of the Republicans that have been doing that to us for four years, remember these wise words from the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., ‘Hate cannot drive out Hate, only love can do that.’” The tweet received an equal mixture of likes and angry comments. We remain divided still, on even how to interact with the losing party.
It’s worth mentioning Biden was never the betting horse. Name brand recognition made him a front runner, of course, but at the end of the day he was largely seen as an out of touch, fairly bland, old man. It’s a far cry from senator Bernie Sanders’ fiery speeches, or Elizabeth Warren’s even fierier takedowns. No extremely far left policies like the ones we’ve seen from leading congresswoman and twitch streamer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Biden’s past was quickly used against him, and not without good reason. His mishandling of the Anita Hill case. The 1994 Crime Bill he supported. It was easy, early on, to dismiss Biden’s run.
As the New York Times put it, in an article best described as hesitantly cheerful, “many Democrats feared he was too late. Too old, too moderate, too meandering to excite ascendant voices in his party, too rooted in the more civil politics of the past to nimbly handle Donald Trump.
There was something about him, though. Biden is, yes, our oldest soon-to-be president. He recites irish poetry, has a stuttering disorder, and a rescue dog. One of the first songs to play after Biden’s victory speech was Coldplay’s “Sky Full Of Stars”, a tribute to his dead son Beau. Biden succeeds in being a sensitive enough blank canvas for weary democrats to paint their aspirations on. You couldn’t say anything of the sort about any of the other candidates. Polls kept reflecting this as well. At this point, who could count on one hand the amount of “Biden Polling Extremely Well” headlines they’d seen? Slowly but surely, Biden became our Last Hope.
As quickly as Biden was confirmed to be the democratic nominee, there was backlash. One of the biggest democratic instagram pages was aptly called ‘Settle For Biden’. In a similar vein, one Wall Street Journal article was titled “Biden: Not So Bad, Given The Alternatives”. Other supporters took a much less subtle approach--there’s a reason we quickly forgot about the rape allegation against him. No major news network would report on it.
An early-on notable anti-Biden Democrat was the aforementioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC. Known for her progressive left policies and being beloved among Gen Z, Cortez originally stood by Bernie Sanders. Her criticisms have continued long after election day. In a New York Times interview, she said, “It’s really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them. When they feel like people don’t see them, or even acknowledge their turnout”. Her views, while polarizing, were not hers alone. For better or for worse, this all faded out of the national spotlight as soon as Donald Trump did another crazy thing.
What can be written about Trump that hasn’t already been said? I could go on for pages about what his presidency, his campaign, has done to America. I could talk about his gross handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple paragraphs could be spent listing the first ten or so racist things he’s said that come to mind. I might go the contemplative approach, and dwell on his psychology. The many people who have armchair-diagnosed him with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Dementia. No other president has been such a sheer wall of noise. It doesn’t matter where you go--you can’t escape the next thing to come out of his mouth. We, as a nation, have suffered from an inability to quiet bigotry in a wig.
So Trump was a nightmare here and beyond. Now that we’ve defeated him with a less complicated yet bland-seeming older white man, what are we to do?
On November 7th, indie-pop band Foster The People took to Twitter to tweet what they believed was an answer: “As tempting as it is to gloat and poke your finger in the eye of the Republicans that have been doing that to us for four years, remember these wise words from the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., ‘Hate cannot drive out Hate, only love can do that.’” The tweet received an equal mixture of likes and angry comments. We remain divided still, on even how to interact with the losing party.