From Grayson Schementi, in response to: Letter To The Editors, Issue 4 – Volume CX, In Response to “The Best of a Bad Situation”

Dear fellow readers,
This election was a bad situation, and to portray it as NOT one simply shows a lack of understanding of America’s electorate and of President-Elect Biden’s policies.
But let’s start with politics. There is a reason that an overwhelming majority of incumbent Presidents win reelection (only 11, including Trump, have lost). After all, they have the Presidential seal, Air Force One, an uncompetitive primary, and the ability to control the 24/7 news cycle. So, when it came time for the primary, Democratic voters understood this. But, look, I am not writing this to relive the primary, even though I just brought it up for no reason, but to address a portion of Eli Moog’s letter to the editors, “In Response to ‘The Best of a Bad Situation’ By Sophia Jones”. That line is: “to address a line in Sophia Jones’s article ‘The Best of a Bad Situation’. That line is ‘Biden’s America won’t be a great America.’ I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement.”
I wholeheartedly disagree with Eli’s disagreement. I say this because America is hurting right now. Thousands of Americans are dying every day from a deadly disease. America’s economy has been knocked to its knees. And America is facing a reckoning with systemic racism. Arguably, these crises were not made for any man alone. No one man can solve them, let alone President-Elect Joe Biden. Raised in Wilmington, Delaware, his career has included a stint as a public defender and two terms as Vice President to America’s first Black President.
This unique experience has NOT prepared President-Elect Biden to lead our nation on the topic of race as working for one black dude does not prepare you to lead our nation on the topic of race, and this experience has NOT prepared President-Elect Biden to continue America’s attempt to finally live up to an equal and just nation as he would rather work with segregationists to pass something bipartisan than take a stand based on principle alone.
Let’s not forget, though, that by his side will be a history-making VP, who is the embodiment of the American dream and locked up non-violent minority drug offenders at an incredibly high rate, thus preventing others from achieving the American dream in their own lives because they smoked pot.
When it comes to our economic recovery, President-Elect Biden approaches the issue thinking about Wall Street, as they are his donors, not about working Americans, like his childhood friends from Scranton. And that’s important because for the past four years, President Trump has been solely focused on a similar demographic — occupants of Mar-a-Lago.
When it comes to COVID-19, Joe Biden is going to listen to the scientists and make informed public health decisions. But like many other politicians in American history, he is defined by loss, giving him unbounded empathy, which he will use to reach out to every family that has lost a loved one while still not providing every American affordable health care. He will restore the president’s position as a moral leader, and in doing so, maintain the status quo that allows people to experience great loss in the first place. Under his leadership, I am confident the same number of lives will be saved as under any other presidential candidate, a vaccine will effectively be distributed as it would under any other presidential candidate, and we will return to an equally corrupt America once this pandemic ends at the same time that it would have ended under any other presidential candidate.
But most importantly, I think President-Elect Biden has a chance to restore America’s place in the world, keeping our feet on the world’s neck, and restore America’s confidence in our government’s ability to not pass anything because we prefer stability over progress. I understand this may be a really really easy prediction to make, as partisan politics will always exist unless we decide that, hey, maybe they shouldn’t, but it’s time that Washington returns to regular, gridlock, partisan, swampy, big-money, racist, warmongering “order.” If we continue on our current path of delegitimizing our institutions when they don’t fit us, or making bogus rules so the President can send us into a war in Iraq, then we won’t succeed.
The moment Democrats start playing dirty by not letting a coronavirus relief bill pass the house for purely partisan reasons, we become no better than Sen. McConnell or President Trump. President-Elect Biden understands that, and it’s why he supports Nancy Pelosi. He campaigned on the promise to restore the soul of America, and yet a significant portion of his voters “settled” for him. Joe Biden does not carry the soul of America and his campaign slogan has zero policy implication.
Finally, in my opinion, President Obama was a so-so president. And Joe Biden will be another so-so president, one who will use his mandate to get moderate or conservative lite policies to get things done and restore America’s soul, something that he does not carry and suggests no policy decisions that would actually restore the soul of America. He will not be our FDR, Washington, or Lincoln. Joe Biden is not a revolutionary. Under a Biden-Harris administration, America won’t be perfect. End of sentence.
Joe Biden will be better than Trump in every conceivable way. Joe Biden will be one of the greatest leaders in the world for the next four years. He is a man of honor and integrity. But Joe Biden, and America, can be the greatest country on Earth, and still be miles and miles and miles from the goal. We can be better. We can be so much better. Joe Biden won’t take us there. But he is what we settled for.