This weekend has been pretty good. Trump has been voted out and a portion of the world is able to breath out a long, slow sigh of temporary relief. The grim circus is coming to an end with at least two and a bit months of awfulness for the US to endure. I hope they make through this lame duck period with something intact, nothing can be for certain but a spark of hope still remains under the smouldering, semi burned out car that is American society.   

No time for glee, time for  work.

While it is true that US politics does not have a direct effect on the daily routine in Finland’s government, out in the country at large, our general political conversation, our irrational need to form groups and how reputations and legitimacy of a group in one country affects similar groups here, the US sadly does have an effect. Four years of Trumpism has told us one thing, when stuff happens over there, it encourages people to do stuff here. Its global, everything is now global. I wish this wasn’t the case but we are tribal, we are all now interconnected digitally and so this is now our reality. And we on the left had better adapt fast as our track record on this is poor.

“Presidents and Parties comes in block packages of proposals, ideologies and historical precedence.”

We lefties, and the Democrats are in a precarious situation. The US (as well as other countries like the UK and Poland) have been ideologically split in two with one side aggressively trying to dismantle their own democracies and civil liberties. The US who, as always, exhibit an exaggerated grotesque version of any given property, now has one half of its population in open agreement in some sort of illiberal Russian style, oligarchy/monarchy type of rule in place of its current Constitution. Before you email me about finer nuance’s of voter motivations, I will remind you that Presidents and Parties comes in block packages of proposals, ideologies and historical precedence. You can’t just walk into a shop and buy the chocolate part from of a box Neapolitan ice cream. You have to buy the whole lot, the strawberry and vanilla too. It’s the same with Trump and his Republicans. Their rot over four years was shamelessly celebrated, packaged and showcased as a virtue and 70 million+  people willingly signed up for it. Needless to say, if the opportunity arises soon in the future, they will push again for the same rot.

And this is the precarious situation.

Had this weekend’s win been a little more decisive, the Democrats would have some wiggle room for flexible planning, perhaps more space to try out novel ideas with analysis and adjustments.  But they do not have that space. With such a narrow mandate, Biden and co  have no choice but address the centre ground promptly and effectively.

Working people need to quickly feel that their labours actually result in fiscal gain, however small, they need some stability, they need some relief from constant weight of mounting debt on their necks. They need to feel some fairness in their lives. The newly repopulated west wing will have to communicate this progress continuously at least at the same volume as the previous administration did with their social scapegoating, insults, lies and peacock-like grandstanding.

And all this in the middle of an uncontrolled pandemic and threats from far right paramilitary unrest.

“The consequence of a Biden failure now will see Kanye west or someone else equally idiotic and dangerous in the oval office”

I would not want to be Biden, the next secretary of state or any member of their staff. Once again the Democrats have been handed a broken country, deliberately stripped of assets and taxes in order to judiciously repair ready for the next Republican abuse.

I am sure the transition team’s long work days started weeks if not months ago. They have only but one chance to show the country that they are the true way forward. The consequence of a Biden failure now will see Kanye west or someone else equally idiotic and dangerous in the oval office and they rest of the world, including Finland dealing with their own dangerous clowns enthused into action by the US of A

Please, this weekend, do be happy, do crack open a bottle of wine or craft beer. But dont do it in glorious triumph, this is but a final chance for whole a generation, offered by the gods of statistical chance. And we cannot afford to waste it.