The headline says it all: If Team Biden — Joe, the Pandemic Response Team he’s already formed plus the rest of his remarkable brain trust — succeeds in its pandemic response, the next steps in healing America will be easier. Team Trump have set the bar remarkably low. Even “success bordering on failure” will look like total success by comparison. That’s not fair so we’ll forget we even mentioned it. Consider the optics. Job One — stop the pandemic from sickening us while also getting the economy up off its knees. It gets done. Would that build at least a modicum of trust in at least some of the more reasonable Trumpanistas? If even one puts down the Trump kool aid and returns to the fold, we can call it “success”.
I knew I couldn’t help myself. Think of the direction we’re headed in. Think of the direction we’re already turning toward. Think of the timing of it all — and I mean “it all”. Donald Trump made Joe & Kamala’s success here a sure thing. Unless Covid-19 suddenly mutates in some bizarrely, horror movie, “Bidenesque” fashion, the worst of the epidemic’s impacts on our lives will have Trump’s fingerprints all over them. There will be a clear demarcation point from when “we started to get better”. That demarcation point will be January 20, 2021 — the day Joe and Kamala and the rest of Team Biden went to work ON America’s behalf instead of AGAINST it.
Project forward with me. It’s now late April 2021. The numbers reveal a devastating winter but an improving spring. At the very same time that Team Biden has been putting science to work taming the pandemic, it’s also flooded the economy with cash — aimed to work from the bottom up. Now cash-flowed for the near-term while the epidemic releases its grip, confidence grows in the American consumer.
And also meanwhile — Team Biden has returned the Department of Justice to being a Department of Justice instead of a corrupt president’s consigliere. Suddenly subpoenas are being issued. People are being made to speak under oath. Important people. Important Republican people. Suddenly all that oversight that never got done starts getting done. But most important of all, there’ll be the matter of the counter-intelligence investigation that We The People assumed was being handled somewhere between Team Mueller and the FBI. You know — the one Rod Rosenstein killed dead on the downlow? THAT counter-intel investigation? Well, it’s back on now.
And we’ll KNOW it’s back on and the speculation in the press will be the new, exciting, talk-about-it-24/7 parlor game that every talking head can play. Who will get touched by charges of treason? Maybe it’ll be “Who WON’T Get Touched?” Either way, THAT will be entertainment.
This, too, will be part of the backdrop against which Team Biden’s success with the pandemic will play as they finally turn toward the next parts of their agenda — healing on their minds. Remember: success is virtually guaranteed. Donald Trump made it so.
Who knows? Some of us may even stop to thank Donald — who, remember, will be deep in his own personal nightmare, his legal bills through the roof, the charges and lawsuits piling up like lies in a news conference. Thirty percent of this country will never come around. They just won’t. We need to stop chasing them and, instead, start thinking of how to mitigate their damage. Every benefit coming to us will go to them. They don’t have to say “thank you”. They won’t.
Nothing in life is perfect. Can’t be. Our union isn’t perfect but, fortunately, it’s designed to be made more perfect as needed. Like now. Timing is everything. So’s framing.
We’re about to stop thinking one way about the world and start thinking another. That’s how big a moment in History this is. The problem with journalists is they live too much in the moment. It’ll take historians to point out what those moments all meant.
It isn’t rocket science to project what will happen. It’s just a grasp of the actual facts that have already been reported. The election, the pandemic, Trump’s impeachment, Bill Barr’s criminal obstruction of justice, the lies about the Mueller Report, the fact that there even IS a Mueller Report, the fact that we still don’t know just how deeply connected Donald Trump, his family, his circle, the Republicans around him and every Republican around them are to Russia (or any other foreign player in our politics). But those things are all out there.
And they’re just the tip of the iceberg. While healing from the pandemic’s hold, we will be treated to a steady diet of stunning criminality on one party’s part.
Make no mistake. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party is going to have to produce returns and early. It won’t be fair. It never is. But progressivism is going to get an unusual tail wind behind them. They should enjoy it but not take it for granted. And they should not for two seconds take credit for it — the successful pandemic response. That’s what our government is supposed to do, ya see.
They’d be taking credit for doing the jobs they get paid to do. THAT, ya see, is going to be what makes Team Biden’s job easier. Pure, unadulterated competence. The bar is soooooo low.
Ah, hell. I did it again. I gave Trump credit.
Our news media, as they often do, keep asking the wrong questions. How can Team Biden succeed? No, no, no, sillies!
The correct question is, post Donald Trump, “HOW CAN THEY FAIL?”