Reflection. The need to look back, assess, and critique. Perhaps of the self, or the past in a more generic sense. And we live too, in the political realm, many of us pushing and pulling against the rising tide of discontent over the past four years.
The time of year calls us to this state of mind. The winter solstice, its history intimately linked to our own human presence on this earth. Over the course of time, we have gravitated to this season, a season full of ritual, holidays, holy days, and celebrations of light observed by people across the globe.
As a writer, I am drawn to discourse, polemics, to the moments in time when we find clarity in the written word; when prescience we each experience are formed and concretized, especially in narrative form. I am drawn to the strength and will of all those who did not relent to the oppressive mood that the Biden administration put upon us.
And as we approach 2025 with new hope for our country, the promise of an administration that will restore the values and strength that we yearn for, remember that hope is what we never let go of. And from hope comes a prescience, a knowing that the future of light will be preserved.
Over time, I have been buoyed by all those who listened to their gut, or as my mother would say, held the gift of “intestinal fortitude.” All those with the thew and strength of mind and spirit. “Perseverance.” It’s what she might say if she could.
On the eve of Joe Biden’s inauguration, I wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Daily News Record. It wasn’t easy. I drew on the reserves of memory, the vibes and recall of a different era. Sleepy Joe and the Case of the Missing Mandate is the title. It appears here:
Joe Biden, the presumptive president-elect, has declared that “voters have given us a mandate for action on COVID, the economy, climate change, systemic racism. They made it clear that they want the country to come together, not continue to fall apart.”
Mandates are part of each presidential election cycle. Every president or president-elect in modern history claims one.
Indeed, presidential rhetoric would seem empty and halfhearted without the familiar claims that we have grown accustomed to hearing; the candidate’s pledge to fulfill, to provide those things that his constituency votes for.
But just what is a mandate, and how closely do Joe Biden’s words reflect the electorate’s wishes?
The word itself conjures a certain authority. “Mandate” derives from the Latin, mandatum, “commission, command, order.” Literally, it translates as “to give into one’s hand.” The concept of mandate as presidential prerogative, though, did not take shape in the collective mind until the mid to late 20th century, beginning perhaps with the Reagan era.
Implicit in the definition of mandate is the idea that a majority of the electorate is invested in the candidate’s platform and has a strong desire to see it realized through legislation.
But this is hardly the case now. Biden’s 74 million popular vote count belies the fact that President Trump’s supporters retain a potent and resonating voice, and that the president, too, garnered a record-setting 70 million votes. This fact is reflected in the House’s unexpected pickup of seven Republican seats, a gain that dealt a blow to the Democrats’ much-anticipated “blue wave.”
Meanwhile, the innards of the Democratic operation are disassembling, the wheels coming off the party bus.
The Democratic Party, which has successfully rehabilitated its image from racist origins and is now allegedly sympatico with themes of inclusion and diversity, must reckon itself with the fact that Donald Trump’s voice resonates with millions of minority voters. In fact, President Trump has garnered record-setting GOP support from Afrin Americans, Latinos, Asians, as well as gay voters, a trend that will continue into the foreseeable future.
Joe Biden’s legacy, though, is bound to the status quo, to years of stagnant, elitist thinking that forever mires him to authorship of the 1994 crime bill, a notorious piece of legislation that relegated so many African American men to life inside prison walls.
Biden’s lackluster campaign reflects an attempt to pull himself away from who he really is, the senator whose prominent role in the instigation of the Iraq War is legacy itself.
In spite of Joe Biden’s call for unity, for declarative action on the problems of our day, he remains a caricature, one who has been cobbled together by Democratic handlers, a desperate attempt to redact the legacy of Donald Trump.
In the end, “Sleepy Joe” will always be a ghost of a president, one in search of a mandate that never was.
_________
Fast forward to the now; to the long solstice of 2024, to the days and weeks that lead up to it, the days and weeks that symbolized for so many of us the dim and decaying state of the Biden administration. Those of us who felt the pain and despair of Biden’s long winter were told – incessantly – that we were not only wrong, but hateful, bigoted, despicable, racist, homophobic, “transphobic” and on and on, ad infinitum.
We knew it was not us. The party of “inclusivity” has been giving so many the bum’s rush for too long, dismissing concerns of lawlessness in major cities, the devastating influx of millions of illegal immigrants crossing our border with no redress, and the crushing harm done to women and children by the antiscientific doctrine of “gender” ideology. But the inflection point was coming.
And alas, that inflection point is here.
Let’s welcome the refugees from the party of “inclusivity,” those who made their big debut in 2024! Those who grew weary and burdened of the relentless gaslighting and outright lies dispensed over the course of generations.
And that inflection point resonates. The sound of water poppling outward, slowly, to the masses.
President Trump won 20 percent of the Black vote this time. In fact, he won more Black voters than any Republican candidate in over fifty years. Other renegades from the Democratic polls include first-time voters, Hispanics, and many more who were oppressed by the boot of an elitist enterprise.
Let’s remember that the ghost of Joe Biden’s illusory mandate is behind us.
We stand today, survivors, instigators of a new tomorrow. A real mandate in hand.
