South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Expect to see a pivot from hot to cool
Biden’s tone and approach contrasts with that of Trump
WASHINGTON — At the last presidential debate, Donald Trump and Joe Biden fielded a question about people of color who live alongside chemical plants and oil refineries that seem to be making them sick.
As is his way, Biden recalled growing up so close to Delaware refineries that when his mom drove him to school in a morning frost, the wipers spread an oil slick on the windshield.
Trump responded in his ownway, too. “The families thatwe’re talking about are employed heavily and they are making a lot of money,” he presumed. “More money than they’ve ever made tremendous money.”
These menwere authentic in that exchange. On debate night and through the campaign they offered voters a distinct choice between a red-hot president who put the bottom line before all else and an unflashyDemocrat who invited Americans to cool down and come together.
Biden promised straight talk and sobriety on the lethal pandemic, respect for the facts (if you don’t count his flubs), aspirations for racial justice and a revival of the verities of American democracy that Democrats saidTrumpwas tearing apart.
And the nation pivoted, embracing at least the chance of reconciliation in this country. Will Americans accept the olive branch Biden extends? The election was far from a comprehensive repudiation of the polarizing president.
After nearly five decades
in public office, Biden was never going to be the most energizing candidate in the field. What he didwas tap a majority’s desire to stop the noise, to reject the bleating on Twitter, to turn the page from a period marked by confrontation, division and chaos, often driven by the WhiteHouse itself.
“Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end, here and now,” he said in his victory speech Saturday night.
The Trump years had all been too much for lifelong Republican Edward Drnach, 61, of Ellicott City, Maryland, who voted for a Democratic president for the first time.
“I’ve just had it,” Drnach said of Trump. “Whether he says something stupid, or whether he breaks ties with an ally, or whether he kisses up to a dictator, I’ve had it, and the whole boat
load of things that come along with him, his whole family, et cetera.”
At least some of Biden’s victory was driven by an animus toward Trump that was far greater than the rejection of Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush, the only two other elected incumbentsto lose sinceHerbert Hoover in the Depression. It was great enough that the left swallowed its disappointment at their party’s choice of a conventional candidate and swung behind him.
From the start, if anyone can remember a start, Biden and running mate Kamala Harris clutched their consistent lead in opinion polls like a precious vase, wary of moving too much lest it slip and shatter.
Campaigning in the midst of a pandemic, they stayed studiously distanced. Like a throwback to
the age of drive-in movies, people gathered in and on their cars in fields and parking lots to hear Democrats speak, honking their horns in approval.
When Trump viewed the Democratic events, he didn’t see a respect for public guidelines; he saw only sparse crowds. His own events, often in states suffering heavy virus infections in the closing days of the campaign, drew thousands, standing shoulderto-shoulder.
Biden will take overwith an entrenched conservative majority on the Supreme Court and a federal judiciary reshaped with Trump’s lifetime appointments. He inherits immigration barriers that were fashioned both from policy and from the steel beams that form Trump’s imposing if unfinished border wall. Biden prepares to
assume office in a pandemic that won’t turn on a dime simply because he takes it seriously and doesn’t scorn the experts.
“Joe Biden is a goodman who wants the best for everyone in this country,“said Gabriella Cochrane, a 54-year-old corporate recruiter in Virginia Beach, Virginia, who voted for him. “Not the richest. Not the whitest. For everyone. His soothing presence is what this country needs right now.”
Whatever hurdles Biden faces with Congress, prepare for a change of style that will also come with a change of substance, at least in areas where a new president can flip a switch.
The rollback of environmental regulation from the WhiteHouse is over. Maskwearing will be encouraged. Goodbye to White House tweets — more than
22,000 from Trump since he took office.
The Democrat comes to office with the support of scores of Republicans who served as national security officials, U.S. attorneys, governors and lawmakers, part of a larger pool of ordinary Americans who also traditionally vote for Republican presidents but this time didn’t.
That pivot does not signal smooth sailing inWashington, however, where the toxicity in the country promises epic showdowns across the range of policy— taxes, immigration, trade, foreign affairs andmore.
Biden’s broad coalition of college graduates, women, urban and suburban voters, young people and Black Americans prevailed over Trump’s core of white voters without a college degree, rural voters and religious conservatives, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey. Both sides went into the fight entrenched — about threequarters said they knew who they backed.
Then there is the pandemic, which has upended so much of American life and may have ultimately cost Trump the presidency. The election exposed how close to home the crisis has come: About 1 in 5 voters said a close friend or family member died from the virus and roughly 2 in 5 said their household lost a job or income because of it, AP VoteCast found.
Trump closed the campaign exasperated by all the attention still being paid to “COVID, COVID, COVID” as the virus rages and the death toll has surpassed
237,000.
Biden brings a different approach to the crisis simply by acknowledging its severity, pledging to be guided by the public-health authorities and promising that Americans at long last will hear the truth about it from theWhiteHouse.