While we can repeat over and over again that Joe Biden was elected president of the United States and will be sworn into this highest office in our land next January 20, for many Americans and even media pundits, it is difficult to say the verdict is in. Nervousness persists, and it is intensely palpable. …

President-Elect Joe Biden has reportedly expressed concerns about the many possible criminal prosecutions of Trump distracting from his presidential mission. Just as Barack Obama declined to pursue prosecution against the Bush-Cheney regime for its outright lies about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, leading us into a prolonged and unnecessary war with Iraq, costing thousands of American lives and billions of dollars that could have supported Americans at home, so to has Biden expressed an interest in moving forward and not prosecuting the past.

This concern has legitimacy. Every political agenda has a key public relations and communications agenda. Ambitious political agendas, such as passing major healthcare legislation, require the support of public opinion, of the American people. Garnering this popular support will depend on the Biden administrations ability to communicate with and persuade Americans, and making a case to the American people in this way requires air time, media coverage. …

In the early evening of last November 5, two days after the election when mail-in votes were in the process of being counted and the tide seemed to be turning in Joe Biden’s favor, Donald Trump took to the airwaves to throw a tantrum, baselessly wah-wah-ing about election fraud like an infant upset simply because he was not getting his way.

Democracy, it turns out, is suitable only for a more politically mature citizenry, while autocracy is for infantile and angry grown men who think exercising power means repressing others and getting your own way. …

In October 2018, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and opened fire on the praying congregants while shouting anti-Semitic slurs, murdering 11. Even as he entered the hospital after having been shot by police, to be treated by Jewish doctors, he was still yelling, “I want to kill all Jews!”

The echoes of Trump’s rhetoric in Bowers’ own xenophobic complaints about immigrant outsiders invading the United States were obvious, the Trump administration’s denials of Trump’s words having inspired the shooting notwithstanding.

We all remember the jaw-dropping and terrifying images of the torch-carrying white mob chanting “Jews will not replace us” as they marched in Charlottesville, Virginia in the summer of 2017. And we remember Trump’s refusal to condemn them, which shouted loudly a tacit approval of the anti-Semitic white supremacists from the highest office in our land. There were “fine people on both sides.” That was the judgment Trump offered to all American ears, from those of developing infants, to those of impressionable youth, to the ears adults looking to be emboldened, including a teenager like Kyle Rittenhouse who would shoot and kill two people protesting the police shooting of an African American man in Kenosha, Wisconsin. …

Hopefully our now soon-to-be former President, also known as Individual-1 in a court filing against Trump’s former fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen by the Southern District of New York in 2018, will soon enough find himself housed in a prison and clothed in an orange jumpsuit. Trump was accused of a crime in this filing and has been under seemingly constant investigation for shady financial dealings and political corruption since stepping into the White House. …

Election day, to be sure, inspires an array of complex emotions.

The feelings at work in our anticipation may include hope, nervousness, worry, anxiety, excitement, and more.

For those of us whom Trump has sickened and who are terrified by his autocracy and unabashed and relentless cruelty, vindictiveness, and complete lack of respect for human life, the dominant emotions are a combination of hope and dread — hope that Trump will be removed, dread that he won’t be.

Elections, also, though, especially the run-up to elections with local campaigning and vetting of candidates, has been accompanied by a powerful joy I’m not sure we always identify or properly recognize. …

While reports from Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Moody’s all link a Biden presidency to a healthier economy and more powerful recovery, Donald Trump continues to peddle lies that the economy will collapse under Biden, stoking fears that people’s 401Ks will evaporate. He persists in these lies despite inheriting an economic recovery from Biden and President Barack Obama that featured record-setting consecutive monthly job growth.

Far from destroying the economy, Obama and Biden saved it, just as during the Great Recession they saved the thousands of jobs by bailing out the auto industry when a sizeable Republican contingent, including Mitt Romney, argued that faltering U.S. …

Recently Anand Giridharadas told the story of Don, an 87 year-old veteran living in California suburb who supported Donald Trump in 2016 and historically had been a diehard republican. This year he will be voting for Joe Biden.

The story of historically republican voters abandoning Trump for Biden is not in itself remarkable; it’s actually pretty prevalent these days.

Don’s story, however, as Giridharadas relates it, reveals much more about the political dynamics that characterize not just Trump’s use and abuse of power but also the larger political and media culture in the U.S. …