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November 3^rd was a very good day, the best Tuesday, in fact, that I have had since November 1, 2016, the week before Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.  

I have waited for the country to correct that colossal mistake for four very long years. 

That is one reason I am frustrated by the mixed thoughts and feelings I have about the 2020 election, not least because a mixed reaction makes me easy prey to negative thoughts and feelings.

Considering the reactions of some Democrats to the Biden/Harris victory, it is obvious negative thoughts and feelings are overpowering their positive ones.  

Of course, it can be discouraging when a man-child like Donald Trump receives more than 70 million votes, but before we allow discouragement, disappointment, and disgust to spin out of control, I suggest we pause long enough to embrace just how great this moment is.

Joe Biden becoming the next president of the United States is a very, very good thing, a big deal, in fact, whose significance should not be lost on us. 

Before that happened most Americans doubted the country could survive four more years of Trump. Biden’s victory saved us from that threat. 

Let’s not minimize that. If we do we allow Trump to control our reactions to his defeat. That gives him influence, even control, over us, something that can happen only if we let it. 

Let’s not do that. Let’s not allow what we didn’t achieve to overshadow what we did achieve. Let’s not let the minority vote Trump got seem bigger than the majority vote Biden got.

This victory will have a critical impact in ways that will become more and more significant as time passes and we see the difference it has made. 

We can start with the fact that all the cabinet secretaries Trump has put in place will be gone, including Bill Barr as Attorney General and Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. 

All the undersecretaries and every other political appointments Trump has made will also be out the door, including General Services Administration administrator Emily W. Murphy who has refused to sign the documents necessary for the transition to begin.

It means all the executive orders Trump has issued will be undone that will result in the US rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization and the Muslim ban being rescinded, just to name a few. 

It means the federal budget priorities with which negotiations start will include funds for dealing with the pandemic, economic recovery, expansion of healthcare, climate change initiatives, and many other priorities we believe are important.  

It means Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, will make all judicial appointments across the nation.

I am not suggesting Democrats resist letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. That’s a cliché not worth the time it takes to say it. No, this is about Democrats enjoying something good because it is good. 

What is more, celebrating just how good this victory really is will serve as a pre-requisite to our having the right frame of mind to take stock of the negative reality this election has forced us to face, that Trumpism is a real thing.

Trump will soon be history, even if he tries to stay in the spotlight. Trumpism, on the other hand, will continue as a political force for the simple reason that it is now the Republican Party of today.

There should be no lingering doubts about that. Because the Republican Party is all in on Trump’s attack on truth and trust, Trumpism lives on. 

That’s how Tom Friedman described his reaction to the size of the Trump vote. It was dismaying, he said, because “we have just experienced four years of the most divisive and dishonest presidency in American history, which attacked the twin pillars of our democracy — truth and trust. Donald Trump has not spent a single day of his term trying to be president of all the people, and he has broken rules and trashed norms in ways that no other president ever dared — right up to Tuesday night, when he falsely claimed election fraud and summoned the Supreme Court to step in and stop the voting, as if such a thing were even remotely possible.”

Yet, Republicans voted for him without any moral qualms at all, which is why 6 out of 10 white people in this country voted for Trump just as they did in 2016.  

No wonder Friedman entitled his column written the morning after the election, “There Was a Loser Last Night. It Was America.”

Honestly, the size of Trump’s vote caught me off guard. I thought Republicans were better than that. I was wrong.

I am determined to find out why I was wrong, but not today, not tomorrow, not until I have had – we all have had – a chance to celebrate what has happened, just as so many did last Saturday that was one of the most inspiring events I have ever witnessed. It literally made my day.

Obviously, Trump isn’t the whole problem, but he is a big part of it and when he is gone we are going to be shocked by how much difference that is going to make. 

Some people say he will continue to control the Republican Party, that he might even get his own cable channel, assuming, of course, that he won’t be in jail, but nothing he says or does in 2021 is going to change the fact that he lost the election. 

It was a great victory, historic, in fact. My theology won’t let me go so far as to say with the Psalmist that Tuesday’s election was “the day the Lord has made.”

But I can say without reservation that I will “rejoice and be glad in it.” ever how it came to be. 

So should we all.