More of the Same

 

The president had the opportunity to make believers out of millions of Americans yesterday, but all that he did was to deliver more of the same.

The contrast between the two administrations, the outgoing one led by Trump and the incoming one led by Biden is stark.

The personal vilification and vile attacks upon others coupled with falsehoods and factual inaccuracies with laser focus on his grievances and almost no empathy for the millions of Americans suffering the effects of COVID-19--either medically, financially, or psychologically will become a sad exclamation point on the past four years and likely erase any good that the Trump administration did.

His legacy is also in ignoring and underestimating the veracity of the coronavirus. In watching his speech yesterday, I did not see many facial coverings in the crowd. I fear for the people who attended the rally. The speech is available on YouTube, which is where I watched it. 

During the rally yesterday, the president read off a long list of facts which he professes indicate that he did not lose the election, but he missed the analysis of all of the individual facts when they are aggregated--it was personal. The republicans down-ticket did well and Biden did not have coattails because the American electorate focused, in a manner never seen before, upon the singular job that he was doing as president. And resoundingly, by more than 7 million votes, voted to remove the president from office and go in a new direction. It was personal--that is what the statistics show. Had there been fraud, the republicans would not have done so well down-ballot--that they did well is a sure sign that the election was not rigged as he continues to profess. 

Holding super-spreader events, as happened yesterday, fanning the flames of unrest with fake facts, and under-estimating the impact of the coronavirus is his legacy, sadly. 

By contrast, the hopeful, unifying tones of the incoming Biden administration are reassuring. Instead of ignoring the "elephant in the room" and staying that it is not his problem, the president-elect and his team are already planning to attack the coronavirus head-on. There is work to do in the country and the incoming teams seems well postured to tackle these problems. And let's look at the stock market--it set a new all-time high in the days after it was clear the Biden was the president-elect and had managed to remain close to those levels. The new administration is engendering something ewe haven to seen in a while--hope!

There is hope that in 45 days we no longer will have to suffer with more of the same.

-- Bob Doan, Elkridge, MD