By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
Americans are witnessing an amazing dual-track drama being played out simultaneously by the winner and loser of the 2020 presidential campaign.
President-elect Joe Biden is proceeding as if everything’s hunky-dory with the result of the election. Indeed, it is in many of our minds. Biden has captured 279 electoral votes, enough to win the election; there will be more of them added to Biden’s total when the counting is completed. He has formed a coronavirus task force to begin working on possible solutions to the killer pandemic.
Biden meanwhile is looking at possible Cabinet appointees and other high-level staff positions in the White House.
Legal challenge? What legal challenge?
Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump is saying the election is “far from over.” He is mounting lawsuit upon lawsuit in courts across the land. He alleges the election was “stolen” from him by illegal voters. Proof? Evidence? There’s none to be found. Trump has failed to produce a shred of either. All he does is tweet out allegations with no basis in fact.
Adding to the chaos is that he fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper today, ending a lengthy feud that developed when Trump threatened to deploy active-duty military forces to put down protests of racial policy; Esper pushed back hard against that hare-brained and patently dangerous notion. Trump was enraged. Today he wacked the Pentagon boss. He’s gone.
I prefer to concentrate on the Biden approach to forming a new government. He is proceeding with all due diligence and care. He is getting his briefings on the pandemic and other national security issues. He knows how this goes. He’s been there before, having served for either productive years as VP in the Barack Obama administration.
This drama will end eventually. Trump will run out of legal challenges. Biden will continue apace to form a government. We’ll have a ceremony in Washington on Jan. 20. Biden will take the oath; whether Trump is present to witness it in person remains an open question … which, frankly, doesn’t concern me in the least.
Then the new president will go to work.
That’s how it is supposed to play out. Is this a great country, or what?