Born Again

How about that! 

Democrats stole—sorry, won—another big election in Georgia yesterday. Now we have the White House and majorities, albeit slim, in both houses of Congress. It’s been a long time since we've been in that position.

Joe Biden is no firebrand progressive, but he’s the right man for the task before us. He’ll make a sincere effort to heal divisions. If there is anything everyone agrees on about him it is that he is empathetic and sincere. He won’t try to use his congressional majorities to adopt sweeping liberal policies. He’ll be moderate. We need liberal policies for the future, but right now we have to restore faith in government. Half the country voted for Trump and his stingy, nativist platform. We’re not going to win them all over right away, or even ever, in many cases—there are plenty of folks still fighting the Civil War, or the “Lost Cause”, as they call it—but we can do better than Trump did at bringing the country together.

There is so much hard work ahead that we will do well to just make a start on the things that most of us, even most Trump supporters, know we need. Infrastructure repairs, for a start. The economy runs on roads and bridges. The electric grid runs on wires and generators and software. Our water supply runs through underground pipes. All of those are out of date, some dangerously so.

The other area where most of us, as individuals, feel the need for better protection is healthcare. Repairing the Affordable Care Act will be a good start. If we get a chance to do things like add a public option to Medicare, or reduce the age of eligibility, to test how well those kinds of expansions work, so much the better. State aid to the poor through Medicaid expansion is still missing in many states; that is literally killing a lot of people. The Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid expansion under the ACA had to be voluntary for the states, but maybe there is something we can do with a change in the law to push, or coax, reluctant states to get on board.

There are plenty of other sensible and humane policies that we can move forward on now, like immigration reform. Not to mention the power of the President to restore our place in the world as a policy leader and beacon of hope.

I had become a little cynical and pessimistic watching Trump and McConnell and their followers run roughshod over the country. I don’t like that in myself, so I am relieved to feel a new lightness of being, a new hope. 

One might say I am born again. 

I never thought Jesus was a white man, being from the Middle East and all. And now I know he isn’t even a man. With her resurrection of the black vote in Georgia, the role of our savior is now being played by Stacey Abrams.