We Won

Democrats Need To Celebrate Today

It's always been a fun quirk of my life that my birthday is Inauguration Day - born 5 hours and 3 minutes into the second term of Bill Clinton's presidency, Inauguration Day has always been a highlight for me. I watched the first Obama inaugural from my 6th Grade classroom, offered to me as a birthday gift from my teacher, and as a useful excuse to not actually have to teach. A useful excuse to make use of the precocious birthday boy, I'm sure. Trump's Inauguration was different - I was a University student then, and I pointedly avoided my usual between-class gaunt, the student union bar, to avoid seeing it. That night was a mixer for our Model Parliament that year, and as a birthday boy, my drinks were (unsurprisingly) paid for by the collective crowd. That night, now four years ago, was good, in some ways, but it was also torture. It didn't feel good because of what happened down south, and more importantly, having it be a Model Parliament event meant having to see the Campus Conservatives - some of whom I loved, and some of whom I detested.

The year prior was my freshman year at the University of Ottawa, and the 20th had actually been the first day of Model Parliament, and I got to spend the day in the Canadian House Of Commons, on the floor. That night was possibly the best night of my life - shared with people I love, stories I love retelling, and the kind of joy for the future I always sought, but never knew, in my youth. And, as I think of how it feels today, after an attack on the Capitol and frankly an attack on the idea of American democracy and humanity, it feels so much more like January 20th, 2017 to me than it does 2016. The difference is, we won.

We won.

I know it doesn't always feel like it - both because of overzealous predictions from people like me and others, and because it took two Georgia runoffs to get the Senate - but we won. We don't have to listen to Mitch McConnell say boo about anything, we aren't at the mercy of him just not putting shit on the floor, we aren't at his mercy if Justice Breyer steps down at some point. We won.

We won despite all the obstacles posed by gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and the anti-majoritarian nature of the Senate. We won despite the GOP managing to pull out a turnout of pale, stale male turnout unprecedented in history. We won despite it all, because of activism and hard work and the right priorities. We won.

Winning means that Pete Buttigieg, whatever his faults, is the one working out US policy around clean infrastructure, not Mitch McConnell's wife. Winning now means that the EPA will be seeking to make the environment cleaner, not just repurposing memos from oil and gas companies. Winning now means we have a chance in hell to pass some real, substantive reforms to American democracy, even if the filibuster currently impedes this. (Yes, it remains my view that the filibuster is gone by July 4th.) Winning now means that Breyer can retire early, replaced by a younger Democrat, and that any other vacancy gets replaced by a Democrat. All of this is possible because of one fact - the fact that we won.

There are thousands of reasons to fear the future of America, from COVID to white nationalism to fascism to terrorism. It's a terrifying tinderbox, and no matter how skilled Joe Biden is, it will remain that way for the next four years. But, we won. We can't control all the sorrow that may come in the days, weeks, and months ahead, and we shouldn't try to. But we need to remember one thing - we won.

Let your hair down today, relax, and enjoy the day. There may, and almost certainly will, be bad ones after, but today is a victory. Let us all remember the feeling that I felt as I walked out of the student union bar that night, five years ago now - the sense of just pure happiness, secure in the knowledge that I had won some battle in the war of my depression and anxiety. We won, and at least for one day, we should all act like it.