I watched a Biden news conference about the Colonial pipeline hack a few days ago. Although I don’t care much for Biden’s politics, I was impressed with his management of this crisis. He didn’t get bogged down in politics on this one. People in his administration knew what they needed to do to help get gasoline flowing again, and they did it very fast. Kudos for them.

It’s really a shame that despite this excellent work by the Biden admin, the MSM airwaves are still jammed with Trump, and news of people fighting about Trump among the steady drumbeat of optimism that Trump will soon be indicted, 24×7, while nobody bothers to give Biden a pat on the back for a job well done.

I must admit that Liz Cheney had me cheering her on because it’s hard to not get lost in the moment when someone like Cheney is taking on Trump addiction with the truth and being made a martyr in the process. But after the initial activation of my hooligan instincts, I had to step back to try to make some sense out of what’s going on. My links into politics are stale these days, and I have not heard any rumors about what might be happening with Cheney.

This might have had something to do with negotiations to create a commission to study the Capitol riot on January 6. If so, it makes some sense that Cheney and McCarthy may have had a fundamental disagreement that ended with Cheney losing her leadership role and McCarthy shrugging it off saying nobody disputes Biden’s election. I noticed he didn’t say legitimate.

But for all the infighting, I don’t necessarily understand why it must be about Trump, the former president. The election is over. Biden won in every legal venue – everywhere that matters. The nation chose Biden to govern. Everyone is better off if Trump is forgotten while he thinks long and hard about WHY he lost (not because he didn’t stretch the law far enough) and what the real purpose of government is. Surely, ignoring the fact that Trump lost and is neither in the public interest nor consistent with the oath every member of congress must take.

The WHY of Trump’s loss is isn’t trivial. We know it wasn’t because Biden is charismatic, or campaigned hard, or spent a lot of money, or has better ideas. He is and did none of those things. The polls through late spring 2020 show it was not COVID in the singular sense, either, even though his coronavirus taskforce pressers were hardly about COVID management. It wasn’t the expiration of COVID relief either. Trump took care of that with an executive order. So why, then.

Everyone has their own opinion about the WHY Trump lost. I know why I did not vote for Trump. He spent more time on demands and policing of unquestioning loyalty than governing. He can’t delegate and can’t govern. He forgot that the presidency is about the people and general welfare of the nation, not about him, and there’s nothing mooring him to reality. But more fundamental that this, his incivility, irrational knee-jerk decisions, lack of forethought and empathy make him dangerous. What happened on January 6th is proof of that. Scores of dead Syrian Kurds are proof of that. Iranians shooting missiles at our bases is proof of that. Fifty-three thousand dead New Yorkers are proof of that. I’m a New Yorker and it is only by the grace of God that I did not end up six feet under on Hart Island after he knew how deadly the virus is and how it spreads up front, and not only purposely hid that information, he lied about it and paid/extorted others to lie about it (Yes, we all know about sponsorships that are dressed up to look like news).

People – real human beings – needlessly died because of Trump’s stupidity and incompetence and voting him out doesn’t seem to afford his riddance. WHY? Republicans cling to this boisterous catastrophe when the rest of us would like to turn the damn page. We voted to turn the page – and the majority said we want Trump gone.

PS: I did not vote for Trump, but I did vote GOP mostly everywhere else. That was, of course, before I understood just how out of touch they truly are. It will not happen again.