DENNIS E. CURRY • Guest Opinion
On Nov. 7, 2020, Joe Biden finally defeated President Donald Trump, capturing the White House and ending what amounted to a nightmare for many inside and outside America.
This election, in sum — how wrong the polls were, the final electoral college map, and the degree of popular support shown for Trump despite his loss — will be researched and written about for years to come.
There are, however, a few things that stand out on initial appraisal now. As is often the case, the most interesting of those relate to symbolism and not statistics.
The role that Arizona would play for Biden in the march to 270 electoral college votes — the threshold of victory — fluctuated in importance over the course of the week. As it turned out, given Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, Arizona would not be a necessary prize.
But some poetic justice did take place in Arizona related to John McCain’s Senate seat, however. The late senator, prisoner of war and presidential candidate had an interesting political persona. He was not always right, but he was always respected.
Such respect is afforded to those who value principle, and McCain, in many ways, was principled to a fault in political life (save his stupid vice-presidential selection in 2008). This, of course, drew the ire of the “aprincipled” and “anti-principled” Trump. In the months leading up to his presidency and in the weeks after McCain destroyed his health-care overhaul in the Senate, Trump would be persistent in his attacks and denigration of McCain. Even after the senator succumbed to glioblastoma, a horrific cancer that has also taken the likes of Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie, Trump, contemptible as ever, would not relent.
McCain today gets the last laugh, for what that is worth, from beyond the grave — not due to the electoral college votes delivered by Arizona into the Biden column, but more interestingly in the fact his former Senate seat has flipped from red to blue.
Downie, too, has something fitting to say that matched this moment, not from beyond the grave but from lyrics he wrote while on this Earth: “For a good life we just might have to weaken / And find somewhere to go / Go somewhere we’re needed / Find somewhere to grow.”
Former astronaut and retired U.S navy captain Mark Kelly will now fill John McCain’s shoes in the Senate — something the old war hero would no doubt have appreciated.
Perhaps most symbolic of all was where Trump was and what he was doing when the presidential race was called for Biden just after noon on the East Coast. Major news outlets had been projecting video from outside the White House as demonstrations in favour of Biden grew. (Security around the White House grounds is notoriously heavy and had been beefed up in the leadup to the 2020 election.)
Despite all the security that comes with a presidential detail and with living at the White House, there is one fault in the armour — and that’s the fact it doesn’t insulate you from acoustics. The chanting, singing and celebration of demonstrators at the gates outside the complex, something not seen like this since the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011, is easily within earshot of the West Wing and can be easily heard from the Oval Office.
Trump’s team, realizing the numbers and the reality they faced, had earlier ushered him off of White House grounds, away from Twitter and to an isolated golf course in Virginia.
As news outlets covered the demonstrations in New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere across the country and around the world, one panel flashed on screen showing Trump in a golf cart bobbing and weaving as golf carts clumsily do. Slowly, Trump disappeared into obscurity behind a hill demarcating the course and the surrounding land.
While the chances of Trump disappearing quietly into the night or showing grace in defeat as this transition collects steam are exceedingly low, this image of him riding off into the sunset was striking.
Famed author Stephen King, well-versed in villainy and indeed in nightmare scenarios, perhaps said it best Saturday afternoon, tweeting: “Sometimes … the good guys win.”
Those who sloppily drew false equivalences between Trump and Biden had it wrong in 2020. While the race was close in some quarters, there was, without doubt, a good guy and a bad guy in this story.
This point is underlined for all to see by the large and peaceful demonstrations gaining steam across America as this article was being written — in Atlanta, Philadelphia and indeed outside what is soon to be Joe Biden’s White House.
The nightmare is over.
Dennis E. Curry is a senior medical student studying at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
