Jeff Edelstein: Trump is out, Biden is in, and I feel no joy
For a good chunk of the last four years, I’ve been looking forward to this day. I fully expected the day Donald Trump was no longer president of the United States of America to be a day I was filled with joy.
I’m not filled with joy today.
I’ve never been on board the Trump train, always thought he was going to be a disaster for the country - in fact, this is what I wrote on Inauguration Day, 2017: “I still believe Trump’s victory will cause more harm than good to the America I thought I knew. I hope I’m wrong. Wake me when America’s great again” - and was really looking forward to getting this guy out of office.
Of course, the first few years were a sideshow of sorts. Sure, his rhetoric split the nation, but overall, it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. And it had little to do with Trump. The president, as it turns out, is relatively unimportant as long as things are running smoothly enough. So let’s not blame Trump for the Black Lives Matter protests and riots, but let’s also not credit him for the booming economy.
In short: Some of us Trumpbashers learned we could live with someone like him in the White House. Not our preferred president, but our president nonetheless. And yes, his flirtations with dictators were unseemly and his “there’s good people on both sides” bit was racist and his clear disdain for anyone who wasn’t his toady was certainly unpresidential bordering on juvenile, but … things were fine enough.
And then, all of a sudden, they weren’t.
I am not blaming Donald Trump for the coronavirus pandemic, but he was certainly not the best man for the job when it came to dealing with it. A robust federal plan was needed, a robust White House statement was needed, a robust proposal to defeat this virus was needed. What we got instead was lies. “This is deadly stuff,” Trump told Bob Woodward in a Feb. 7 taped conversation. “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”
Three days later, to the American public ...
“I think the virus is going to be - it’s going to be fine,” he said. “Looks like by April, you know it theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
It only got worse from there, with his anti-mask talk and all his other COVID-denial jibberjabber.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands Americans, dead.
Could he have prevented it? No. But he certainly could’ve helped mitigate it by being honest.
Imagine Trump, when this started, asking Americans to stay home, asking them to mask up, asking them to ask not what your country could do for you …
Instead, he just fanned the flames.
Of course, this all came to a head on Election Day, when he lost to Joe Biden. Make no mistake: Remove the coronavirus from the equation, Trump wins re-election. But he badly bungled the coronavirus response, and it cost him the presidency.
And while the coronavirus continued to be the greatest threat to Americans’ health since the 1918 flu pandemic, Trump then decided he was going to attempt to upend democracy itself, which culminated (I hope) with the attack on the Capitol earlier this month.
It’s been a rough year.
So today, I do not feel joy. I do not feel joy that Joe Biden is about to be sworn in as our next president. I do not feel joy that Biden will prioritize the coronavirus response. I do not feel joy knowing we’re going back to a socially progressive White House. I do not feel joy in any of the politics of the situation.
My only feeling? Relief.