‘Return to normalcy’ hardly what Biden’s base demands

Joe Biden ran for president on a “return to normalcy.” His challenge is that there are three competing definitions of normalcy for him to contend with.

Biden didn’t actually use the slogan “return to normalcy.” But as numerous political observers (including yours truly) noted during the campaign, that was both Biden’s implicit appeal and his best shot at victory. As Jonathan Martin and Sydney Ember of The New York Times wrote in March 2019, “Biden, in speeches at home and abroad, has used much of the first part of this year pledging to restore the dignity he believes that the country has lost in the Trump years, promising a restoration rather than a revolution.”

For much of the primary season, the competition among Biden’s Democratic opponents was over who could offer the most radical agenda. When it became clear to rank-andfile voters — and a few key Democratic leaders — that such radicalism could cost Democrats the general election, Biden surged to front-runner status.

The interesting thing about Biden’s return-tonormalcy campaign is that it predated the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s not how it worked with the original version.

Under Woodrow Wilson, America was racked with extraordinary turmoil. World War I cost more than 100,000 American lives and yielded few tangible benefits for the U.S. In fighting the war, Wilson stirred nativist passions, crushed political dissent, imposed food rationing and widespread censorship, and stoked racial unrest. Race and labor riots and anarchist bombing campaigns made the tumult of the 2020 summer riots and protests pale by comparison. And then there was the pandemic of 1918. Some 650,000 Americans died from the Spanish flu. Adjusted for population, that would be like 2 million deaths today.

It was against this backdrop that Republican Sen. Warren Harding of Ohio promised a return to normalcy. “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise,” he declared. He won the 1920 election in a landslide with 37 out of 48 states and 404 electoral votes.

Biden has accomplished the easiest of the three normalcies already. Simply by refraining from venting his id on Twitter, he has turned down the political temperature.

But there are other normalcies Biden has to address. Today, for most Americans of either party, a “return to normalcy” means being able to eat out, go to work and, most of all, send their kids back to school. If the first normalcy was instantaneous upon his inauguration, this second one is proceeding at a snail’s pace. Biden is getting a grace period, but national exhaustion with the pandemic is cumulative, and patience is in short supply.

Biden’s reluctance to forecast when Americans will return to anything like a pre-pandemic life may be prudent. He clearly believes in under-promising and over-delivering — a marked contrast with Trump. But there’s certainly hardball politics involved as well.

Biden’s almost unprecedented suite of executive orders dismantling much of Trump’s legacy but also pushing a base-pandering agenda on everything from energy to racial and transgender issues is its own kind of a return to normalcy — the normal partisan and ideological activism we’ve come to expect from presidents.

Who can sign up now?

Under Phase 1B, Ohioans 65 years and older, K-12 school staff and residents with severe congenital, developmental or earlyonset and inherited conditions, including cerebral palsy; spina bifida; severe congenital heart disease requiring hospitalization within the past year; severe type 1 diabetes requiring hospitalization within the past year; inherited metabolic disorders including phenylketonuria; severe neurological disorders including epilepsy, hydrocephaly and microcephaly; severe genetic disorders including Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, PraderWilli syndrome, Turner syndrome and muscular dystrophy; severe lung disease, including asthma requiring hospitalization within the past year and cystic fibrosis; sickle cell anemia; alpha and beta thalassemia; and solid organ transplant patients Who is next? Gov. Mike DeWine has not announced who will be in the next vaccine group or when it will start.

Where to get more information: For more information and to search the list of COVID-19 vaccine providers near you, including public health departments, go to vaccine.coronavirus. ohio.gov. Ohio Department of Health’s general information help line is 1-833-4-ASK-ODH (1833-427-5634). You can also call 1-866-243-5678 to be connected to your local area agency on aging for help for older adults with vaccine site options. Who is vaccinated so far: As of Tuesday, 1,474,872 people in Ohio (12.62% of the population) have been given at least one dose and 707,396 people in Ohio (6.05% of the population) have been given both doses.

How to sign up: Appointments are limited, required, and sometimes are all filled. The following is not a comprehensive list, but here are some of the major vaccine providers in the area that you can check with:

■ Kettering Health

Network: ketteringhealth. org/coronavirus or call 1-844-576-3627

■ Premier Health: premierhealth.com/ vaccine or call 937-2764141 between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.

■ Kroger: kroger.com/ ohiocovidvaccine or call 1-866-211-5320.

■ CVS: cvs.com/ immunizations/covid-19vaccine or call your local pharmacy

■ Walgreens: walgreens. com or call your local pharmacy

■ Discount Drug Mart: discount-drugmart.com or call your local pharmacy