La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

In every election supporters – voters – of the winning side shout, blow their horns, ring cowbells and light firecrackers. That happened in La Conner as well as around the country Saturday morning with the news that Pennsylvania had been called for former Vice President Joe Biden. He will become the nation’s 46th president. Kamala Harris joins him as vice president with a string of firsts: as a woman, an African American and of south Asian heritage, a child of immigrants.

Their victory is substantial and will have a larger margin by the time the state of Washington certifies its election results Nov. 24. Our tallies will join other vote by mail or primarily by mail states to boost the new president’s totals to over 80 million votes, by far the most cast for any presidential candidate in history.

President Trump is right: the 70-plus million ballots cast for him through Saturday are the most ever for an incumbent president. Better news for him: his vote total will grow through the month. Alas, it will not alter the fact that he will fall farther behind Biden in votes cast and it will not change the Electoral College defeat: Biden will probably have the same 306 votes that Trump received in 2016.

Here are true statements: Joe Biden is no Hillary Clinton. And, Donald Trump is unique in all the world.

It is true that by day one of his presidency in 2017 Democrats were calling for Trump’s impeachment. It is also true that Clinton won 2.86 million more votes. And it remains true that there is no one else like Trump.

With this year’s election settled, are we going to come together as the American people, as Biden is emphasizing? Or will the dedicated and militant factions of the 47.7% of Trump’s supporters, women and men, mass in cities and the nation’s capital on January 20, 2021 wearing pink pussy hats in defiance of Biden’s election?

In 2021 Biden may or may not be “Sleepy Joe,” but his mandate starts with that 306 vote Electoral College win and is bolstered by a some five million popular vote advantage. If there will be a rearguard action against the Democratic agenda opponents must, to be credible, prove their case.

That is what Thomas Jefferson did in the Declaration of Independence, listing the new United States’ complaints against King George III: “To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

But rather than continue the complaining, we, the people, all of us, red and blue, Republican and Democrat, can use this moment to turn in a new direction: reconciliation. We need desperately to heal, from the corona virus pandemic ravaging our country and the world; from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; from racial injustice, ancient and current.

The Democrats, as winners always do, are willing to stretch out the hand of friendship. They are not huge winners; they have a mandate but not much of an advantage. They do presently have a largess of spirit they are challenging Republicans to match.

The Republicans claim the mantle of the religious right. Christian charity is needed to present a matching largess of spirit, a reciprocal reaching out, why not a larger tenderness?

“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist” said Indira Gandhi. The mainstream Democrats, the majority of the voters, are reaching out that hand of friendship. Will mainstream Republicans, who have followed their leader in raising clenched fists, choose to relax their grips and join hands with their neighbors and fellow citizens?

COVID-19 prevents us from gathering together for Thanksgiving but 2021 presents the opportunity to come together in thanks that we can start anew in unity with a new president. More than giving him a chance, let us take a chance on each other. The only way to build bridges to the future is together.