The biggest loser

Finally, it’s over. Even if we’re concerned about how he’ll depart, if eventually, he’ll leave peacefully or possibly in a straitjacket. And what he might inflict during the remaining days of his tenure.

Across the country, there was and is jubilation. My Brooklyn son called, “Mom, listen to the crowd here.” Oh, how I wanted to be there, in Brooklyn, with him. The energy on the street was joyous and contagious.

After the call, I went to my balcony where I saw and heard the same excitement. Donning a mask and grabbing hand sanitizer, I headed out to participate, to breathe the relief, Mr. Right at my side. We watched a parade of vehicles: cars, big-ass trucks, SUVs, populated by the young, middle-aged, and the old. Horns honking. Tears of happiness. Laughter. Some among the gleeful stood, emerging from a sunroof, waving a flag, waving a sign, or waving an exuberant wave. Others, their car windows down, held signs, “BIDEN-HARRIS” and, of course, we saw the expected “FUCK TRUMP” posters. Swarms of pedestrians too, not only claiming the sidewalks but also gathered at corners, whooping it up, up, up to the ozone, dancing, screaming that the Trump horror show’s discredits were rolling to … The End.

There is something exquisitely delicious about the fall of such a stable genius, the slumlord whose nationalism, white supremacy, antiestablishment appeal, promise to drain the swamp and to make America great again catapulted him from Reality TV stardom to the White House. His fans loved the handles he assigned his political opponents. Crooked Hillary, Little Marco, Low Energy Jeb. Crazy Bernie, Little Michael Bloomberg, Goofy Elizabeth Warren (also Pocahontas), Monster and phony Kamala, and for Joe Biden: Beijing, China, Corrupt, Crazy, Quid Pro, Sleepy, Sleepy Creepy, Slow Joe, Basement Joe, Hiden O’Biden. Hit Google for a list of those Trump has called “loser”.

(Admittedly, I won’t pretend to disagree with Trump, the person whom Noam Chomsky calls the worst criminal in human history, on many of the above monikers for most of the above politicians.)

Again, there is something exquisitely delicious about Trump’s defeat. After all, Joe Biden has been a colossal loser, not only for his wretched foreign and domestic policy record—for example, his work on behalf of the credit card industry, support for the Iraq war, his Zionism, his sponsorship of the 1994 federal crime bill, and paving the way for Clarence Thomas—but also in running unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination twice, once in 1988 and again in 2008.

Therein lies my euphoria. Donald Trump’s nightmare, something totally unacceptable to him, is losing. What could be any worse for him than losing to a loser?

Missy Comley Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.