To those in the world who see “incredibly damaging messages… being sent…about how democracy functions,” nota bene: “…there are…safeguards in place…We are going to follow the law and follow the process.…In state after state, the president’s lawyers have been laughed out of court…the voters clearly rejected him for re-election…. Even some of Mr. Trump’s onetime enthusiasts and former top aides have abandoned him on his claims, often with sarcastic derision.”

My point here—David Sanger’s implicit point—is that the American example is working quite well, thank you.

Nowhere else in the world has authoritarian nonsense been so roundly rejected.

Trump’s Big Money backers are quite pleased to see everyone displace blame for the destruction of U.S. government on Repub-lican intransigence and on their loyal agent, the orange-faced golf club king (who, by the way, is true to form during today’s G20 meeting). [Trump played golf.]

Trump became occupier of the Oval Office because it served the purposes of a trans-national plutocratic cabal (nothwithstanding Yuval Noah Harari’s proper caveats about “one big global” one) wanting unregulated capital to have free predatory reign in the U.S.

Trump’s true “base” has always been backroom capital. They laugh to see everyone so paniced about the sycophantic Repub-
lican opportunists, let alone the suckered commoners who adore a shameless bull in the china shop.

Marketing—especially bait-and-switch—dresses the emperors of
the plutocratic cabals, though they’re not the only group laughing. There are the other puppets in authoritarian regimes. [full comment]

the ridiculousness of Trump’s political tantrums [which will] become radioactive as soon as he’s again a loser TV huckster
hyping recycled vaporware from a Mar-a-lago back room….
Come February we’ll be so focused on getting beyond the pandemic, then implementing the Democratic agenda—Building Back Better—that there won’t be time to take seriously memories of an incompetent real estate salesman who accidentally became president and remained clueless about what leadership is.

…It’s time…to see each other again—to listen to each other again.
To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans…. Democrats and Republicans and Independents. Progressives, moderates and conservatives…. we can decide to cooperate. And I believe that is part of the mandate from the American people. They want us to cooperate.

That’s the choice I’ll make. And I call on the Congress—Democrats and Republicans alike—to make that choice with me.

America created progressive pragmatism, that is: balancing idealism with realism, aspiration and feasibility, high hopes and gracious patience. We are a democratic republic that is con-
servatively progressive. Biden is as America as it comes.
[full comment]

American political pragmatism can be progressively Conservative and at the same time conservatively Progressive. And this is something that McConnell can appreciate—and should appreciate, if he really wants to see economic recovery be channeled by him into Kentucky. [full comment]

We owe Biden respect for the proposals he advocates more than
the clear warrant for his empathy, with all due respect, of course. We owe Americans who support Biden the intelligence to be attracted to Biden’s proposals, not primarily his empathy.

The large share of Americans want decency, integrity, and authenticity in leadership because they value that in their lives. And they want secure access to health care and educational excellence because those are prevailing values that Biden represents. [full comment]

I believe that Biden is going to surprise us, and shape the most important presidency since FDR:

Not since LBJ have we had a president with the track record of Congressional relationships that Biden has. Never has a first term president had the Executive Branch experience that Biden has, including the collaborative foreign relations experience that Biden promotes.

Clearly, his transition process is aiming to bring on board the best-and-brightest, with Progressives near to mind, but with wisdom about feasibility.

President Biden will quickly establish a norm of political leadership that the Republican future will have to measure up to. Biden will annul the hucksterist appeal of marketing vaporware. [full comment]

Biden is assembling the best and brightest for an administration that can be the most constructive for American prosperity since—since the last two Democratic administrations which each survived for eight years—echoing the progressivism of LBJ and FDR.

Biden success means that predatory capital will be fairly taxed for the sake of educational excellence and infrastructure improvement that will amplify prosperity well into 2024.

The middle of this decade will be amazing. [full comment]

…progressive politics [do not] somehow prevent prosperity… a fair market can promote innovation and long-term investment that can reap greater benefits than a series of short-term returns that are constantly worrying about today’s financial market volatility.

We never claim that regulation of traffic inhibits the efficiency
of transportation.

A progressive fair market enables stable prosperity. This is what,
I imagine, Paul Krugman is intimating by noting (needless to say) that “the political benefits of the [Biden] boom…should be harnessed in the service of fixing America for the long term.”

A great dimension of prosperity is the awesome sacrifices earlier generations have made to give us the comfort so many of us have. Thankfulness is reason to “pay it forward” with support of long-sighted fiscal policy that is adequately funded by fair taxation for the sake of our grandchildren (for everybody’s grandchildren!)
with reliable health care, higher education for everyone who wants it, climate leadership (healthy climate as sacred global public good), healthy markets, thriving communities, and so on.

A progressive fair market—a fairly progressive market—is what
the Biden boom will be about, I hope. [full comment]

Biden’s bipartisanship and legacy of relations with Republican Senators will bode well (in my view,…), given the fully-recovered economy that will preface the 2022 elections, thereby pressuring moderate Republicans to cooperate during 2021.

Authoritarianism is dead in America. Those Trumpist voters who were non-voters before Trump will go back into the woodwork,
if they don’t see hope for the Republican Party, based in the Lincoln Republican values that Biden embodies. The Republican Party has a lot of work to do, if it’s going to remain viable.” [full comment]

The Fourth Estate should insist that McConnell be accountable to the shared values that Biden conveyed in his Saturday evening remarks [after he was declared the winner]. We can be a nation with high degree of shared values about what We are about.

Our shared sense of American humanity—which is the spirit of Biden’s appeal to renew the soul of America—can be the basis for justifying bipartisanship, without reverting to demonizing the distorted ideology of one’s adversary (who is not The Enemy, as Biden has repeatedly emphasized—and which apparently alludes the apex predator McConnell).

Also, Congressinal paralysis is likely to bolster the Democratic case against Republicans in 2022 more than it leads to a new Trumpism. Authoritarianism is dead in America.

Succeeding with the apparently impossible task of building trust by citizens who don’t trust Biden (and Democrats) will be necessary for Republican Senate cooperation on Biden’s ambitious agenda, because those Senators can’t afford to appear to ignore their Trumpist constituencies.

So, Biden must become the Educator-in-Chief about how he is in fact—and in detail—the president for those who didn’t vote for him. He must be the Educator-in-Chief about how his agenda really serves American values that are also rural values and family values, etc. that Republicans can endorse. But building trust will be a continuing challenge.

Most of all, though, Biden has to stay true to his character to pro-vide the stable, appealing leadership that will cause citizens to trust him on crisis management.

That’s all of a kind: Leadership that builds trust through truthful-ness, character, transparency, and educational example can build support from Republicans that Trumpist voters can live with, for the sake of working with Biden in Congress.

But building trust in the American presidency will be an endless challenge—no thanks to Trump’s present attempt to destroy Biden’s chances to succeed sooner than later, just when we most need success soon.

You don’t see states within the U.S. regarding each other as adversaries. And friendly competition between the U.S. and the E.U. never looks to undermine the other continent. Healthy competition doesn’t have to look like war by other means.

There comes a point—a Greta Thunberg point of candor—where one simply, starkly wonders why can’t China and Russia be collaborative states, like nations within the E.U. are with each other?

“Can’t we just get along?” Isn’t the point of humanity to advance prosperity everywhere? Isn’t that good for business: supporting healthy development assistance? Funding the U.N. well? Using all that idle capital to invest in future prosperity, in healthy regions. What’s wrong with valuing long-term investment for future generations, not just short-term satisfaction?

A thousand years from now, leading minds will lament how slowly we evolve—how primitive so much of humanity still was in this century. [full comment]

No wonder Putism maneuvered so intently against the prospect of a Biden administration. No wonder kindred sycophants in the GOP— those once-upon-a-tme Never Trumpers—are playing along.

An array of kindred world leaders are ready to re-integrate trans-national engagement with the Paris Agreement, support for the WTO and WHO, IMF leadership, and NATO strength, altogether to make the appeal of global public goods prevail for international relations. [full comment]