President Elect

It was nice to come home from my long run on Saturday morning - eight miles in company with good friends, on another unseasonably warm November day - and see this on the news.

The final results keep changing day by day, but Joe Biden has either 273 or 290 electoral votes out of 270 required, and a popular vote lead of about four million.  The news networks declared him President Elect sometime Saturday morning.  

Joe Biden will have a tough road ahead.  The current administration has done much damage to our country and to our relationships with our allies, and its incompetent leadership has allowed the Covid-19 pandemic to spread without any containment, like those massive wildfires this year in California that one would hear described as "five-percent contained," or even less.  Last week, our country set a record for new infections:  100,000 in one day.  That comes to about one every second.  In the time it perhaps has taken a reader of this blog to reach this point in today's post, 40 people became infected.  One person dies of the virus every 80 seconds by last report.

We watched Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris speak to the nation last night, and they could not have given a more hopeful speech.  Hope has been in short supply these days!  He said, in part, what we are all longing to hear from a President:

"I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify. Who doesn't see red states and blue states, only sees the United States. And I will work with all my heart with the confidence of the whole people, to win the confidence of all of you."

We're with you, Joe!   Let us know how we can help!

It has been a long roller-coaster ride the past four years.  We knew four years ago that out nation was heading in the wrong direction.  In January of 2017, while we were staying in Atlantic Beach, Martha and I drove to Union Park in New Bern to attend the Women's March.  Millions of people around the nation, both men and women, attended similar gatherings, peaceful marches in protest of Trump's election.  I wrote this at the time (January 21, 2017):

"I feel that this is a similar profound moment in our history when good people must stand up and speak out against this President and all that he represents - the very worst representation of our nation, in my opinion - and the regressive policies he has already started to implement."

That prediction turned out to be far worse than we could have imagined, with an economy in tatters, children separated from their parents at the border and locked in cages, Nazis marching in the streets, and a deadly pandemic raging out of control.  

But now we can look forward with hope to the beginning of the long, hard road ahead, of making things better again.  I have learned as a runner that we can heal after an injury and run once again.  Let us pray that this nation can heal in the same way, and head forward on the right road.  

Siempre Adelante Nunca Atras - always forward, never back.