For the most partisan and committed Biden supporters, his victory was a foregone conclusion. A good man – a man of principle, faith, and honor – would have to defeat a man of dishonor, arrogance and pride.
Donald Trump was not simply an opponent, candidate for the other side, a man of objectionable but debatable conservative premises, a talent for showmanship, supreme confidence, and a silver tongue. He was a morally corrupt, ethically deviant, and spiritually vacant man. Defeating him would not be simply an electoral victory, but a supremely righteous one.
Progressive observers generations in the future would see the fall of Trump not simply as a rite of American electoral passage, but a White House exorcism. They would see those who defeated Trump as Crusaders and their victory no less important than the liberation of Jerusalem. No, the election of 2020 was not just any election, one of a continuous four-year cycle, but one of existential note. The removal of Donald Trump rid the world of a Satanic presence, nothing less.
During the runup to the election Biden supporters were encouraged by polls which showed their candidate far ahead – not quite enough to celebrate, but to gloat. A home video of Biden supporters smirking as a Trump supporter convoy went past went viral.
The women on the street corner – fat, dowdy, and bubbly with enthusiasm – shouted Trump-hate at the passersby. The shouts were those of progressive camaraderie, not the virulent, aggressive, threatening hostility of the racial anarchists who had violently disrupted American cities. No, they laughingly shouted ‘pedophile, capitalist, homophobe, RACIST’. Their candidate was going to win, so why not have a little fun at the opponent’s expense? The convoy was passing too quickly for retribution, no danger there, and the ladies piled on. ‘Misogynist, wife beater, abuser, molester, creep’.
When the race tightened and Biden supporters had their doubts, there was some pulling in of their horns, a bit of uncharacteristic silence. ‘What if??? What really if???’ they wondered, but the doubts turned to joy as the final electoral votes were counted. Now they could finally and at last be exuberant.
My god, not only was a woman going to be Vice President, but a Black woman, a woman of color and of ethnic diversity. A three-in-one diversity prize; and while Uncle Joe was not only an old white male but a very old white male, nobody cared. Everyone knew that 3-in-1 Kamala Harris would be Biden’s Rasputin and the claque of young revolutionary firebrands would be her foot soldiers. Despite her marriage to an old white, American male.
In fact, no one had ever paid Biden any attention whatsoever. He was for all intents in purposes a puppet – a doddering old man struggling to make sense and only the standard bearer for Madame 3-in-1.
What had he done, actually? Not much in his forty-seven years in politics except to be a good earner for his state, a small politically insignificant place of some oil refineries, a small piece of the Chesapeake Bay, and the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Anyone going north to Boston and New York or South to Washington had to go over this bridge, so if anything it helped remind people that Delaware was actually a place not just a span.
The 2020 election was not about Biden, a political supernumerary who demurred four years ago and left the presidential race to charmless, mean-spirited Hillary. The race that Biden left was more about hating the succubus on the Left than loving the vaudevillian on the Right. You shoulda run then, Joe, his fans said. You coulda been a real contender and shown the door to the opportunist, carpetbagger Hillary who thought her ‘gender’ would shoo her into the White House.
No political campaign has ever been about Biden. In Delaware it was bringing home the bacon. As Vice President it was bumbling about in the White House kitchen while Obama reigned. As candidate in waiting after Trump’s victory, it was four years of maybe this, maybe that, should I or shouldn’t I while the Democratic party hoped sincerely that he would put money down on a nice retirement home in Wilmington.
When he finally was pushed front and center by the Party, he was still a man in the middle, a demurrer. At the same time, however, the robust, macho, strong man of the conservative Right ruled the roost. You can do it, Joe, said his crew, you’re the man for the job; and yet he still wavered until the producers of the comedy won him over. Go out there with a mask and keep social distance, Joe, they said, and you will be OK. And he did.
We saw very little of Joe Biden during the campaign. At first he appeared in his bunker basement, managing his time and his family responsibilities and then, timidly but with a good foot forward he appeared in public, masked and socially distanced – excuses for his timorousness and unwillingness to engage the overwhelming, bombastic Trump.
Finally Biden was outed – he existed, and as fanciful as it sounded, he was indeed the Democratic candidate for President. Now what? he asked his retinue. Show ‘em what you’re made of, Joe, they responded; and so Biden took to the hustings, to small, masked, socially distanced gatherings, and did his best to muster some of 3-in-1’s hatred for Trump and white males in general (who can forget the mauling she gave Brett Kavanaugh who was for her a stand-in for all elite white male racist supremacists) but he was always tepid at best.
Fortunately for Joe, the race was never about him, what a great leader of the Free World he would be, and what a man of great intellect and great accomplishment he was. Poor Joe would always be just a place holder, but no one in the Party cared in the least. His shills and dutiful retinue would help him win, and then would run the White House for him.
His publicity team took a photo of him with a dog from a Delaware Humane Society shelter. Joe and his dog were clearly good company, and the love of animal and master was clear and evident. This image of Joe and Man’s Best Friend would show the world that this was a man of good intent, compassion, and love, and it would not be the last of Team Biden’s Madison Avenue efforts to prop up this hopelessly underachieving man.
Other than those who actually believe that Trump is evil, most of the rest of us will miss this man of Hollywood, Las Vegas,the Catskills, and the mean streets of New York. There has never been a president like him, nor will there ever be. Hated as he was by the Left, he shook up the calcified, arrogant, self-important establishment of Washington. He gave lie to their self-appointed legitimacy, political influence, and overbearing sanctimony.
Not only was he the people’s president, he was his president, and his ‘I don’t give a fuck’ approach to the Establishment was exactly what the doctor ordered. It was about time that the pompous hangers-on – Pelosi, Schumer, and their lackeys – be given notice that they were but venal opportunists way past their pull-by date.
The opposition is already closing ranks and intends to treat Biden exactly as the Left treated Trump. There can be no forgetting the bilious hatred of the man and the grotesque caricatures which could never have been drawn of Obama, a sanctified, member of a protected class of American – a Black Man – or Hillary who escaped ridicule because she was a woman, an equally a protected, endangered species.
So Kamala Harris will take office in January; or rather President Biden will assume power; but anyone who has paid any attention to politics knows exactly where the real power, guts, and testosterone lies.
Well, we wish him well and good luck. The country cannot fall apart completely, even with a dodderer at the helm. We hope he will fail and fail quickly so that the midterm elections in two years can recoup some of the Republican losses. Attempts to implement an impossible, Utopian, fanciful program can only fail, and the sooner the better.
Anyway, a fond farewell to Donald Trump who made reading the morning paper a delight.
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