Transition

Jeremy Stahl’s headline in Monday’s Slate said it best: It Was a Good Day for Democracy. Pennsylvania judges not only threw the latest Trump case out of court but told them not to bother coming back. Then the minor functionary Republican holdout in Michigan was satisfied with his fifteen minutes and joined two Democrats to certify Michigan’s election. (One of the Rs wondered if they could just adjourn without deciding and learned this wasn’t an option.  Someone has to win, someone has to lose, not everybody gets a trophy, they were told.) 

Update: On Friday and Saturday, Trumpists lost two more baseless cases in PA, one in federal appeals court, the other in PA Supreme Court.  The PA Supreme Court decision was "with prejudice," which means the Trump strategy of getting it to the US Supreme Court probably won't work. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign paid (or promised to pay) Wisconsin $3 million for a partial recount, which result in a net gain of 132 votes--for Biden.

 Then the chief Trump operative of the GSA finally “ascertained” that Joe Biden had won the presidential election, officially beginning the transition. Apart from the certainty of state certifications, a rolling catastrophe of lost court cases, and a rising tide of demands to get on with it, she might have noticed that Biden currently leads by more than 6 million votes, a total of more than 80 million, even before New York state has fully reported. The current percentage is 51% to 47%, and will likely grow. His electoral vote lead hasn’t changed, remaining exactly the number Trump got in 2016. 

 Biden now gets funds and access to vital national security and covid crisis information, and the country and the world knows we indeed have a President-Elect. He’d been selecting and naming Cabinet and other high officials anyway—now he gets to do it using a website with .gov behind it. As for these first moves--mostly Obama-Biden veterans moving up a notch-- the professionals in the relevant departments are overjoyed at his choices, because they will be taken seriously again, as will actually governing. Apart from Barack, John Kerry is the perfect appointment for a Cabinet-level officer on the climate crisis. This as well as other appointments made or reported are playing well internationally also.

 To say the writing was on the wall doesn’t mean much when it’s Trump, who can’t read very well. But the wall was crumbling and starting to tumble down: when Republican Senators actually tell you it’s time to start the Transition, the situation is politically done.  Trump will commit more outrages to keep his picture in the paper for as long as he can, and there will probably be a few more bumps in the process, but maybe we can begin our mental and emotional transitions, too. 

 It’s a victory for democracy also because this caps an election that thousands of public servants worked hard to bring off better than anyone had the right to expect in the year of Covid and Trump, our twin plagues. Too bad there’s vaccines for only one of them, but getting the other out of the White House is worth celebrating, again. With several more opportunities ahead.

Now we just have to get through these horrific weeks of both plagues, especially Covid, as the economy falls apart and the suffering spreads.  This administration is making sure their evil lives after them as they subvert the economy, further confuse covid crisis response and prevent government from helping by starving the states and zoning out on the federal level.   It's like watching a badly written tragedy of the real.