Biden’s message of healing struck just the right notes
Displaying the same staggering incompetence that has led to hundreds of thousands ofdeathsduring the COVID-19 epidemic, Boss Trumpmade two big tactical errors in his failed effort to keep theWhite House: First, he telegraphed his scheme to overturn the election, and then he waited too long to make his bigmove. These blunders broughthimto a classic, indelible Trumpian moment: simultaneously demanding that vote-counting stop in Pennsylvania and Georgia, but continue in Arizona and Nevada. The difference being that Trump was temporarily leading in the first two, but trailing out west.
Instead, he appears at this writing tohave lost all four states.
Just as he lost the national popular vote, it bears emphasizing, by one of the largest margins in
U.S. history — inexcess of5million votes. Spontaneous celebrations broke out in the streets of almost every large American city when the result was announced. It felt awfully like the collapse of authoritarian regimes elsewhere in theworld. You’dhave to be actively delusional to believe that even this Supreme Court could find a way to overturn it.
Trumphimself appears to be a True Believer. Nevermind that he had no winning political strategy. Yes, his frantic series of C OVID super spread err allies brought millions of enraptured supporters to thepolls, but they also stimulated larger numbers ofAmericans to cast their votes against him. If MAGA believers risked their lives, Trump’s opponents felt they were saving their own.
Disenfranchising millions of absentee voters amid the COVID pandemic was never going to work. A politicianmore firmly in touch with reality would have realized that.
Even sycophantic Attorney General William Barr has implicit ly acknowledged as much. His order instructing U.S. attorneys to look into allegations of voter fraudhas a caveat that gives the game away: “While serious allegations should be handled with great care, specious, speculative, fanciful or farfetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries.”
Then there’s Secretary of State MikePompeo, whohas predicted that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
In his dreams. Pompeo is not a stupid man, but he badly wants the 2024 Republican nomination.
GOP senators, too, appear to think theymust judiciouslyhumor thebig crybabyuntil thehissy fit passes. Trump’s angry toddler act— crying, screaming, throwing food on the floor, holding his breath until he turns blue and breaking things— won’t actually change anything. Eventually, he’ll wear himself out.
Or not. I really don’t care. Do you?
Even Fox News cut away from WhiteHouse Press Secretary KayleighMcEnany when she alleged widespread voter fraud without a scintilla of proof. Then there was RudyGiuliani, holding forth in the parking lot of a landscaping business appropriately located between a crematoriumand anadultbookstore that hisbookers hadevidently mistaken for the Four SeasonsHotel. Trump’s personal lawyer, as one British reporter put it, endedup “struggling to be heard over aman in his underpants shouting about George Soros.”
The exact proportion ofMAGA TrueBelievers in thepopulation isn’t clear. Presumably, the same fools who bought into the “birtherism” conspiracy theory Trump used towinnotoriety inthe first place are equally prepared to believe in themythof a stolen election.
But not very strenuously over time, I suspect. Formost people, politics is a secondary passion, like being a football fan. You think you’ll never survive your teamlosing, but the sun comes up and there’s another game. Clinging to a lost cause can get tiring, leaving a personmired in an ever more irrelevant past.
Here’ s how Charles Mac kay, the 19th-century Scottish author of the classic book “Extraordinary PopularDelusions andtheMadness of Crowds,” put it: “Men, it hasbeen well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they gomad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, andone by one.”
Freed fromthe spell of Trumpismandthe dailynecessity of rationalizing amalignant narcissist’s follies andoutrages, manywill find themselves inwardly relieved. Over time, MAGAhatswill become the equivalent of Confederate flags, a symbol signifying that you’re a re
sentful loser.
Meanwhile, here’s how an American president talks:
“Let’s give each other a chance,” Joe Biden said in his speech laying claim to having won the 2020 election. “It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to each other again. To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans. The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.”
That’s a message millions wanted to hear.