Friday, November 6th.
A winner had not been declared.
It appeared Biden pulled ahead in Georgia by a literal handful of votes, less than a thousand. More amazingly, he was up 30,000 votes in Pennsylvania. If he took Pennsylvania, it was all over. It seemed marginalized voters turned out to cast ballots in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Atlanta, the same voting bodies That Guy wanted to suppress, the same American, ‘shithole’, ‘crime-ridden’ (his words, not mine) cities he bashed the entire time he’d been in office.
Surprise.
Karma came back to bite, led by Black women of power.
Hoo. Fucking. Ra.
At 8 PM PST, Biden was ahead in all four remaining battleground states: Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. He spoke, with Harris at his side, delivering a speech designed to soothe tempers and relay an air of a President-elect who was ready to switch approaches to the pandemic, the economy, and the racial strife. It was quite a contrast with the prior day’s bitter litany of lies and grievances from the incumbent. It was evident no matter what Biden did or didn’t accomplish in his first term, it was gonna be nice to resume a semblance of order in the executive office, a man who could at least emulate a modicum of grace.
Yes, having another old school whiteboy in office wasn’t exactly one giant leap for humankind. Yet virtually anybody else was better than That Fucking Guy. I liked Biden well enough, despite his Pennsylvanian, good old boy propensities, and I admired his strength of character in overcoming his horrific losses of losing one spouse and two children. For that measure of emotional evolution alone, I thought he’d do fine in the Oval Office. He probably wasn’t going to radicalize the presidency, but I probably wouldn’t need to worry myself with a prospect of him going off half-cocked and nuking a city in China out of spite. It was that easy for me, still, what can I say? The guy least likely to kill us all, tends to be the guy who gets my vote. Avoiding the end of the world is the thing that moves my politico needle most.
Saturday, November 7th.
At the risk of further validating my whiteboyism, I tossed out another pop culture nugget and cited one of my favorite movie lines, that of Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in the movie Tombstone, upon revealing a winning hand to another card player:
Isn’t that a daisy.
Apparently, Joe Biden was going to be the huckleberry to That Guy’s Johnny Ringo. (Not digging Tombstone automatically revokes the American whiteboy card). Pennsylvania wrapped up their count at long last that morning.
Joe Biden had become the 46th president of the United States.