OK, I am assuming now that Joe Biden will on January 20 be sworn in as the next President of the United States of America. If it is Donald Trump, then what I say here will still be necessary to save the world’s oldest democracy.
Biden received the most votes in US history. But he did not do better than Hillary Clinton in 2016. She was ahead of Trump by 3 million votes, which means that Trump did much better in 2020 than in 2016. Those who hoped for a “blue wave” are disappointed, but they should have been more realistic: the country is deeply divided. People tend to only talk to other like-minded folks, which isn’t unusual, of course. But these days they also tend not to want to listen to anyone else, and especially, any opinion makers and news media other than those that confirm their world views.
Biden’s biggest challenge is making the necessary reforms to make America really democratic again. (If it ever was, I hear you thinking…) The last time we had a major reform, it required the deaths of over 600,000 Americans to resolve it.
Lincoln’s reform
We all had to learn the Gettysburg Address in school. Despite its brevity, Lincoln changed the course of the understanding of our democracy. Remember, the first people allowed to vote after the Revolution were white men of property. The enfranchised were a minority…
