Willie Nelson Understands

“ Well , you can ’ t make a record if you ain ’ t got nothin ’ to say , ” Willie Nelson sings on “ Shotgun Willie , ” the opening track from his LP of the same name , from 1973 .
Nelson , who turned eighty-seven in April , has released seventy full-length records since his début , in 1962 , and doesn ’ t seem anywhere close to running out of material .
In September , he published “ Me and Sister Bobbie , ” a memoir co-written with his older sister and longtime piano @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chapters , the Nelsons tell the story of how they were brought up by their grandparents in the tiny town of Abbott , Texas , and the decades of triumphs and devastations ( romantic , professional , familial ) that they helped each other through .
Nelson has published memoirs before ( his first , “ Willie : An Autobiography , ” was released in 1988 , and his most recent , “ It ’ s a Long Story : My Life , ” came out in 2015 ) , but “ Me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and intimate .
While music became a lifeline for Willie , Bobbie , who is now eighty-nine , suffered deeply for her art .
In the nineteen-fifties , she briefly lost custody of her three sons , after her in-laws successfully argued that she spent too much time playing music with her brother .
“ Women were made to be homemakers .
Women weren ’ t meant to make music , ” she writes .
“ This sharp-tongued lawyer called me the kind of woman whose only means of earning a living was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to me as a harlot .
I broke down in tears.
” Although Nelson is now one of the most beloved and iconic figures in American music—the bandanna , the braids , the ever-present haze of marijuana smoke—he didn ’ t find real success until he was in his late thirties .
“ I ’ d been struggling like the dickens to make some money at the music game and failed miserably , ” he writes .
Part of what makes Nelson ’ s music so resonant across generations is his deep and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a cellular level , what it feels like to lose a partner , your house , all your money , those big dreams .
Before he moved to Nashville , in 1960 , he worked as a radio d.j.
, pumped gas , did heavy stitching at a saddle factory , worked at a grain elevator , and had a brief gig as a laborer for a carpet-removal service .
He eventually discovered that he had an uncanny aptitude for hocking encyclopedias door to door .
“ Folks I was selling to were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scraping by with hardly any food in the fridge .
Then here comes this slick-talking Willie saying that , for only the daily price of a pack of Camels , the whole world of knowledge would open to them , ” he writes .
Nelson felt too guilty about the entire enterprise and quit .
( He still jokingly refers to himself as a better con man than musician . )
Once he arrived in Nashville , things didn ’ t click into place overnight .
One snowy evening , he recalled , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the street , “ half hoping a car would ride over me.
” None did .
“ I had to get up off my ass and , like everyone else in this cold world , keep on trying to figure out how to make a living.
” Nelson and I spoke on the phone in mid-October .
In conversation , he laughs often and loudly .
It is a sweet and welcome sound .
In “ Me and Sister Bobbie , ” you write that you were “ born restless .
Born curious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it been challenging for you to be grounded these past few months ?
It ’ s been a real challenge .
I ’ ve never really run into anything like this before—but neither has anyone else !
We ’ ll have to sweat it out , I guess .
I ’ m here in Texas now .
You ’ ve done a few virtual broadcasts since quarantine started .
As someone with a couple million live shows under your belt , how have those felt ?
Well , it works all right .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the same thing , you know ?
I miss the audience .
And I know the audience misses the music—whether it ’ s me or someone else up there , the audience has come a long way and paid a lot of money to come in and clap their hands for somebody .
There ’ s a great energy exchange that we just can ’ t have right now .
I can remember the last show that we did , at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo .
That was back in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we got to play music .
We had eighty thousand people there .
I ’ ll never forget that show .
In your new book , you and your older sister , Bobbie , share the story of your life together in alternating chapters—we get her version of events , and then your version of events .
Toward the end of the book , you write , “ Having Bobbie in the band changed the course of my music in more ways than most people understand.
” How else did she influence your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible , I ’ m sure .
Because she could read and write music from the time that she was a little girl .
She ’ s an incredible musician .
It ’ s impossible not to learn something when you ’ re four years old , and you ’ re sitting there on the piano stool by her .
She was the one who first suggested that you record standards for your album “ Stardust , ” from 1978 , which , incidentally , remained on the country chart for a full @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those songs all our lives , so it wasn ’ t like they were strangers .
I love the songs “ Stardust ” and “ Moonlight in Vermont ” —those are some of my all-time favorite songs .
To be able to play them with my sister and my family—well , that was just the best .
Another idea that comes up a lot in the book is Texas itself .
At times , it almost feels as if there ’ s some kind of invisible line that keeps tugging you both back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back to where I was born .
Bobbie and I were born in Abbott , Texas , which is a really small town of three or four hundred people .
Used to say the population never changes , because every time a baby ’ s born a man leaves town .
So , anyway , I grew up in that town , and—excuse my language , but our motto down there was all we know how to do is fight , fuck , and throw rocks .
[ Laughs ] It was fun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t matter .
We just had a good time wrestling and boxing and growing up , like kids do .
You describe the Abbott United Methodist Church as the site of some of your earliest musical memories .
I ’ m curious what you recall about the hymns that you sang there , and how performing that music made you feel ?
Well , the church is still there , and me and Sister Bobbie are still a huge part of it .
We bought that church a few years ago @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preacher up there is a real good friend .
He ’ s doing a good job—with this pandemic and everything , it ’ s hard to get a crowd together , but people still love to go to that church .
For the most part , it seems that you didn ’ t really see your proclivity for mischief and your religious faith to be at odds .
But were there ever moments where you did feel that tension acutely ?
You know , it ’ s funny .
I have mixed emotions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve made my money was playing in honky-tonks .
One good example is the Night Owl , in West Texas , north of Waco about thirty miles .
It ’ s close to Abbott , six miles from Abbott .
I grew up playing music there .
I picked cotton up until I was ten or twelve years old , so to be able to make some money playing music in a beer joint—I felt pretty lucky .
And the funny part of it was the people that I was singing to on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of them on Sunday morning , at church .
Abbott has a Methodist church , across the street is a Baptist church , across the street is a Church of Christ , down the road a little bit is the Catholic church .
So we have churches all over the place—it ’ s impossible to live in Abbott and not go to one of those churches .
There ’ s a line in the book where Bobbie writes that , as a child , you were never afraid of anything .
Is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ true—you name it , I ’ ve been in trouble for it .
I ’ ve never learned to be afraid .
I ’ m still not afraid .
I ’ m afraid of fear .
Who was it that said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself ?
Yes , I think you ’ re right .
I got into martial arts when I was kid , and I ’ ve been in it all of my life .
There ain ’ t nobody trying to run over me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wouldn ’ t be smart .
I get along with everybody because I don ’ t have any fears .
I don ’ t care how big you are—I can probably kick your ass !
[ Laughs ] I believe it , Willie !
I ’ d put my money on you every time .
I ’ ve got several black belts , but I ’ ve also got a fifth degree in Korean mixed martial arts .
A fifth degree is about as high as you can get .
When did you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a kid .
Remember funny books , comic books ?
Charles Atlas was in there with body building , judo , and jiu jitsu .
I learned all those things when I was a kid .
It was something to do , and it was healthy for me .
It kept my body working and busy .
I got into all kinds of sports : football , baseball , basketball , you name it .
I ’ m much better at martial arts than I am at golfing .
Some of your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were pretty young when you realized that love and sex are some of the powerful forces in the world .
A major theme in the book for both you and Bobbie is the intoxication of romance—how devastating it can be to lose someone , and the way in which those experiences sometimes drive us to do stupid and reckless things .
How did it feel to relive some of those moments ?
Well , mixed emotions there , too .
Some of it I enjoyed going back through , and a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get back to .
I had a lot of heartaches and bad memories .
So , you know , it was a little of everything .
You say of your first guitar , “ I knew by holding it against my chest it was hearing my heart .
It became a part of me.
” I wonder , does music feel like the most instinctive way to express your feelings ?
Is it easier to play through some of that stuff than to express it out loud ?
Oh , I don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I owned , my grandfather bought it from a Sears , Roebuck catalogue .
It was a Stella guitar , and I think it cost four or five dollars .
I ’ ve had all kinds of instruments .
I love Trigger , the guitar I have now , because I can get a sound out of it that I like .
I ’ m a huge Django Reinhardt fan , and I get a tone out Trigger that ’ s similar—it ’ s similar to what I like about Django .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ held onto her for all these years ?
Oh , I suppose I ’ ve just made Trigger female , like a ship— Well , Trigger in my mind is Roy Rogers ’ s horse named Trigger .
So I guess it ’ s a male .
Have you always loved horses ?
I think today I ’ ve got about seventy-five .
I ’ m around horses a lot , and I ’ ve learned there is a truth to the old term “ havin ’ horse sense.
” Those old cowboys @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ cause horses are smart—they ’ re smarter than we are .
When I get on a horse , it ’ s just a little step up in the world .

“Well, you can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothin’ to say,” Willie Nelson sings on “Shotgun Willie,” the opening track from his LP of the same name, from 1973. Nelson, who turned eighty-seven in April, has released seventy full-length records since his début, in 1962, and doesn’t seem anywhere close to running out of material. In September, he published “Me and Sister Bobbie,” a memoir co-written with his older sister and longtime piano player, Bobbie Nelson. Through alternating chapters, the Nelsons tell the story of how they were brought up by their grandparents in the tiny town of Abbott, Texas, and the decades of triumphs and devastations (romantic, professional, familial) that they helped each other through. Nelson has published memoirs before (his first, “Willie: An Autobiography,” was released in 1988, and his most recent, “It’s a Long Story: My Life,” came out in 2015), but “Me and Sister Bobbie” feels especially tender and intimate. While music became a lifeline for Willie, Bobbie, who is now eighty-nine, suffered deeply for her art. In the nineteen-fifties, she briefly lost custody of her three sons, after her in-laws successfully argued that she spent too much time playing music with her brother. “Women were made to be homemakers. Women weren’t meant to make music,” she writes. “This sharp-tongued lawyer called me the kind of woman whose only means of earning a living was playing piano in honky-tonks. He referred to me as a harlot. I broke down in tears.”
Although Nelson is now one of the most beloved and iconic figures in American music—the bandanna, the braids, the ever-present haze of marijuana smoke—he didn’t find real success until he was in his late thirties. “I’d been struggling like the dickens to make some money at the music game and failed miserably,” he writes. Part of what makes Nelson’s music so resonant across generations is his deep and visceral connection to failure—he understands, on a cellular level, what it feels like to lose a partner, your house, all your money, those big dreams. Before he moved to Nashville, in 1960, he worked as a radio d.j., pumped gas, did heavy stitching at a saddle factory, worked at a grain elevator, and had a brief gig as a laborer for a carpet-removal service. He eventually discovered that he had an uncanny aptitude for hocking encyclopedias door to door. “Folks I was selling to were living in bare-bones apartments. Many were scraping by with hardly any food in the fridge. Then here comes this slick-talking Willie saying that, for only the daily price of a pack of Camels, the whole world of knowledge would open to them,” he writes. Nelson felt too guilty about the entire enterprise and quit. (He still jokingly refers to himself as a better con man than musician.) Once he arrived in Nashville, things didn’t click into place overnight. One snowy evening, he recalled, he lay down in the middle of the street, “half hoping a car would ride over me.” None did. “I had to get up off my ass and, like everyone else in this cold world, keep on trying to figure out how to make a living.” Nelson and I spoke on the phone in mid-October. In conversation, he laughs often and loudly. It is a sweet and welcome sound.
In “Me and Sister Bobbie,” you write that you were “born restless. Born curious. Born ready to run.” Has it been challenging for you to be grounded these past few months?
It’s been a real challenge. I’ve never really run into anything like this before—but neither has anyone else! We’ll have to sweat it out, I guess. I’m here in Texas now.
You’ve done a few virtual broadcasts since quarantine started. As someone with a couple million live shows under your belt, how have those felt?
Well, it works all right. [Laughs] But it’s not the same thing, you know? I miss the audience. And I know the audience misses the music—whether it’s me or someone else up there, the audience has come a long way and paid a lot of money to come in and clap their hands for somebody. There’s a great energy exchange that we just can’t have right now. I can remember the last show that we did, at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. That was back in early March—that’s the last time we got to play music. We had eighty thousand people there. I’ll never forget that show.
In your new book, you and your older sister, Bobbie, share the story of your life together in alternating chapters—we get her version of events, and then your version of events. Toward the end of the book, you write, “Having Bobbie in the band changed the course of my music in more ways than most people understand.” How else did she influence your art?
Well, in every way possible, I’m sure. Because she could read and write music from the time that she was a little girl. She’s an incredible musician. It’s impossible not to learn something when you’re four years old, and you’re sitting there on the piano stool by her.
She was the one who first suggested that you record standards for your album “Stardust,” from 1978, which, incidentally, remained on the country chart for a full decade.
We’d been playing those songs all our lives, so it wasn’t like they were strangers. I love the songs “Stardust” and “Moonlight in Vermont”—those are some of my all-time favorite songs. To be able to play them with my sister and my family—well, that was just the best.
Another idea that comes up a lot in the book is Texas itself. At times, it almost feels as if there’s some kind of invisible line that keeps tugging you both back there.
It goes all the way back to where I was born. Bobbie and I were born in Abbott, Texas, which is a really small town of three or four hundred people. Used to say the population never changes, because every time a baby’s born a man leaves town. So, anyway, I grew up in that town, and—excuse my language, but our motto down there was all we know how to do is fight, fuck, and throw rocks. [Laughs] It was fun. We fought bumblebees, each other—it didn’t matter. We just had a good time wrestling and boxing and growing up, like kids do.
You describe the Abbott United Methodist Church as the site of some of your earliest musical memories. I’m curious what you recall about the hymns that you sang there, and how performing that music made you feel?
Well, the church is still there, and me and Sister Bobbie are still a huge part of it. We bought that church a few years ago. It actually launched us. The preacher up there is a real good friend. He’s doing a good job—with this pandemic and everything, it’s hard to get a crowd together, but people still love to go to that church.
For the most part, it seems that you didn’t really see your proclivity for mischief and your religious faith to be at odds. But were there ever moments where you did feel that tension acutely?
You know, it’s funny. I have mixed emotions about it. The way I’ve made my money was playing in honky-tonks. One good example is the Night Owl, in West, Texas, north of Waco about thirty miles. It’s close to Abbott, six miles from Abbott. I grew up playing music there. I picked cotton up until I was ten or twelve years old, so to be able to make some money playing music in a beer joint—I felt pretty lucky. And the funny part of it was the people that I was singing to on Saturday nights—I was also singing to a lot of them on Sunday morning, at church. Abbott has a Methodist church, across the street is a Baptist church, across the street is a Church of Christ, down the road a little bit is the Catholic church. So we have churches all over the place—it’s impossible to live in Abbott and not go to one of those churches.
There’s a line in the book where Bobbie writes that, as a child, you were never afraid of anything. Is that true?
Well, it is true—you name it, I’ve been in trouble for it. I’ve never learned to be afraid. I’m still not afraid. I’m afraid of fear. Who was it that said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself?
F.D.R.?
Yes, I think you’re right.
That’s a strong philosophy to live by.
I got into martial arts when I was kid, and I’ve been in it all of my life. There ain’t nobody trying to run over me or nothing! [Laughs] It wouldn’t be smart. I get along with everybody because I don’t have any fears. I don’t care how big you are—I can probably kick your ass! [Laughs]
I believe it, Willie! I’d put my money on you every time.
I’ve got several black belts, but I’ve also got a fifth degree in Korean mixed martial arts. A fifth degree is about as high as you can get.
When did you start practicing martial arts?
When I was a kid. Remember funny books, comic books? Charles Atlas was in there with body building, judo, and jiu jitsu. I learned all those things when I was a kid. It was something to do, and it was healthy for me. It kept my body working and busy. I got into all kinds of sports: football, baseball, basketball, you name it. I’m much better at martial arts than I am at golfing.
Some of your earliest songs were about heartbreak. You were pretty young when you realized that love and sex are some of the powerful forces in the world. A major theme in the book for both you and Bobbie is the intoxication of romance—how devastating it can be to lose someone, and the way in which those experiences sometimes drive us to do stupid and reckless things. How did it feel to relive some of those moments?


newyorker--2020-11-08--The Cryptic Crossword: No. 75

The Cryptic Crossword: No. 75

Some clues have been edited for clarity .
Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle ’ s answers in @ @ @

Some clues have been edited for clarity. Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle’s answers in our archive.


newyorker--2020-11-08--Joe Biden’s Faith in America

Joe Biden’s Faith in America

It made sense to begin with Kamala Harris .
The joyful celebrations across the country through the day had been in Joe Biden ’ s name but in the spirit that Harris had been appointed to the ticket to embody : of young people in cities , of many different races , who had a feeling for the future .
Harris , who will soon become the first woman , first Black person , and first South Asian person to hold the office of Vice-President , took the stage on Saturday night wearing a white suit , perhaps a nod @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legacy of the suffragettes .
She quoted the late congressman and civil-rights hero John Lewis , who wrote , shortly before his death , “ Democracy is not a state .
It is an act.
” Harris said that what Lewis had meant “ was that America ’ s democracy is not guaranteed .
It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it , to guard it and never take it for granted .
And protecting our democracy takes struggle .
It takes sacrifice .
But there is joy in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
She smiled wide and let her shoulders heave to breathe in the atmosphere .
She was speaking before some few hundred people and their cars in a waterfront lot in Delaware—it wasn ’ t Grant Park , and it wasn ’ t Washington , or Philadelphia , where thousands of people were out in the streets in happy throngs .
But if the setting was a little sterile , it also had the effect of drawing the eye toward the people onstage .
Harris spoke of Biden and what will soon be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loves with abandon , ” she said , mentioning his wife , Jill Biden , his son Hunter , his daughter Ashley , and his deceased son Beau .
“ What a testament it is to Joe ’ s character that he had the audacity to break one of the most substantial barriers that exist in our country and select a woman as Vice-President.
” The cars honked ; the confetti was readied ; Springsteen boomed through the speakers .
The President-elect , masked , took the stage at a trot .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of demonization in America begin to end—here and now.
” There was a lot of talk about eras in Wilmington on Saturday night—of endings and beginnings .
Joe Biden is an old man .
There ’ s no getting around it , despite his soft suits and his tan face and his bright teeth and his intent , vital wife—despite all the attentive wrapping .
He turns seventy-eight this month , nearly a third as old as the United States .
For a while , he fought his age , trying to appear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the end he embraced it .
Biden might have been partnered with Harris , but he was ringed by his contemporaries .
One plea for Biden ’ s election , published in the New York Times , was written by the seventy-six-year-old novelist Marilynne Robinson , who argued that the country is less an idea than a family .
( “ We are asked to see one another in the light of a singular inalienable worth that would make a family of us if we let it.
” ) One of Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the World Series was voiced by the seventy-six-year-old actor Sam Elliott .
( “ No Democratic rivers , no Republican mountains , just this great land and all that is possible on it with a fresh start.
” ) The Biden campaign ’ s theme was unity ; its method was to emphasize the country ’ s people , particularly its elders .
The victory video his campaign released on Saturday morning , once the networks had called the race , had no images of Biden but instead featured Americans around the country—a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a field hand—carrying a picture frame , all set to Ray Charles singing “ America the Beautiful.
” Much of Biden ’ s speech was drawn directly from the slogans of his campaign : the promise to “ restore the soul ” of the country , the call to “ give each other a chance ” and to stop seeing fellow-Americans as enemies .
The new element , or the heightened one , at least , was faith .
In part , this meant religious faith—Biden read a hymn , which he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the families of the two hundred and thirty thousand Americans lost to COVID-19 , and quoted from Ecclesiastes : “ The Bible tells us to everything there is a season : a time to build , a time to reap , a time to sow , and a time to heal .
This is the time to heal in America.
” But Biden seemed to feel a secular faith even more strongly , in the country ’ s continued potential .
He spoke of a renewed faith that tomorrow will “ bring a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden seems likely to take office amid a fair amount of skepticism about what he might accomplish .
As disastrous as Donald Trump ’ s Presidency has been , seventy million Americans still voted for his reëlection .
Mitch McConnell may well still hold the Senate , and the rift between the Democrats ’ left and center wings seems likely to reëmerge with new intensity once Biden takes office .
What plan does he have for surmounting the defining national divisions ?
The answer , on Saturday night at least , for all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less and more than a plan : it was Biden ’ s belief that American unity and greatness are still with us , in some latent way .
Biden said , “ The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to coöperate with one another is not some mysterious force beyond our control .
It ’ s a decision .
It ’ s a choice we make.
” Political types will say that it ’ s common for the American people to replace a President with his opposite .
But some of this work is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from himself anything reminiscent of his adversary .
Trump found his final political form as the opposite of Obama .
The Biden who spoke in Wilmington on Saturday night is not the only one to appear on political stages in his career , and it may not be the final version .
But it is the version that is most opposite of Trump : a diligent rule-follower , with his black pandemic mask .
A gentle and humble figure .
A person who acknowledges that he is near the end .
A man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ RTÉ closed its Saturday-evening news program by acknowledging Biden , “ a proud Irish-American and admirer of the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney , ” and then playing a recording ( in fact , a digital ad ) of the President-elect reading Heaney ’ s poem “ The Cure of Troy.
” Biden may not be a writer , like Barack Obama , but he is a good reader , with a heavy , phlegmy voice ; he extracts feeling from words .
Biden read , “ Believe in miracles / And cures and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : / The utter self revealing / Double-take of feeling .
/ If there ’ s fire on the mountain / Or lightning and storm / And a god speaks from the sky / That means someone is hearing / The outcry and the birth-cry / Of new life at its term.
” New life at its term : in Biden ’ s voice , Heaney ’ s optimism sounded like it belonged to America all along .
Read More About the 2020 Election • Trump has survived impeachment , twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ luck may well end now that Joe Biden will be the next President .
• What happens if Trump fights the election results ?
• Here is what you can do if Trump stages a coup .
• For the G.O.P.
, the future may look like Florida , which is becoming less white but not much less conservative .
Can Republicans become a multiracial working-class party ?
• Sign up for our daily newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

It made sense to begin with Kamala Harris. The joyful celebrations across the country through the day had been in Joe Biden’s name but in the spirit that Harris had been appointed to the ticket to embody: of young people in cities, of many different races, who had a feeling for the future. Harris, who will soon become the first woman, first Black person, and first South Asian person to hold the office of Vice-President, took the stage on Saturday night wearing a white suit, perhaps a nod to Hillary Clinton but also to the legacy of the suffragettes. She quoted the late congressman and civil-rights hero John Lewis, who wrote, shortly before his death, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” Harris said that what Lewis had meant “was that America’s democracy is not guaranteed. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it, to guard it and never take it for granted. And protecting our democracy takes struggle. It takes sacrifice. But there is joy in it.”
Watch Joe Biden’s first speech as President-elect of the United States.
There was joy in Harris. She smiled wide and let her shoulders heave to breathe in the atmosphere. She was speaking before some few hundred people and their cars in a waterfront lot in Delaware—it wasn’t Grant Park, and it wasn’t Washington, or Philadelphia, where thousands of people were out in the streets in happy throngs. But if the setting was a little sterile, it also had the effect of drawing the eye toward the people onstage. Harris spoke of Biden and what will soon be the First Family intimately. He “loves with abandon,” she said, mentioning his wife, Jill Biden, his son Hunter, his daughter Ashley, and his deceased son Beau. “What a testament it is to Joe’s character that he had the audacity to break one of the most substantial barriers that exist in our country and select a woman as Vice-President.” The cars honked; the confetti was readied; Springsteen boomed through the speakers. The President-elect, masked, took the stage at a trot. He said, “Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end—here and now.”
There was a lot of talk about eras in Wilmington on Saturday night—of endings and beginnings. Joe Biden is an old man. There’s no getting around it, despite his soft suits and his tan face and his bright teeth and his intent, vital wife—despite all the attentive wrapping. He turns seventy-eight this month, nearly a third as old as the United States. For a while, he fought his age, trying to appear more youthful than his opponent, but in the end he embraced it. Biden might have been partnered with Harris, but he was ringed by his contemporaries. One plea for Biden’s election, published in the New York Times, was written by the seventy-six-year-old novelist Marilynne Robinson, who argued that the country is less an idea than a family. (“We are asked to see one another in the light of a singular inalienable worth that would make a family of us if we let it.”) One of Biden’s campaign commercials that ran during the World Series was voiced by the seventy-six-year-old actor Sam Elliott. (“No Democratic rivers, no Republican mountains, just this great land and all that is possible on it with a fresh start.”) The Biden campaign’s theme was unity; its method was to emphasize the country’s people, particularly its elders. The victory video his campaign released on Saturday morning, once the networks had called the race, had no images of Biden but instead featured Americans around the country—a transit worker, two young surfers, a field hand—carrying a picture frame, all set to Ray Charles singing “America the Beautiful.”
Much of Biden’s speech was drawn directly from the slogans of his campaign: the promise to “restore the soul” of the country, the call to “give each other a chance” and to stop seeing fellow-Americans as enemies. The new element, or the heightened one, at least, was faith. In part, this meant religious faith—Biden read a hymn, which he said he hoped might give some comfort to the families of the two hundred and thirty thousand Americans lost to COVID-19, and quoted from Ecclesiastes: “The Bible tells us to everything there is a season: a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow, and a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.”
But Biden seemed to feel a secular faith even more strongly, in the country’s continued potential. He spoke of a renewed faith that tomorrow will “bring a better day.” At the moment, Biden seems likely to take office amid a fair amount of skepticism about what he might accomplish. As disastrous as Donald Trump’s Presidency has been, seventy million Americans still voted for his reëlection. Mitch McConnell may well still hold the Senate, and the rift between the Democrats’ left and center wings seems likely to reëmerge with new intensity once Biden takes office. What plan does he have for surmounting the defining national divisions? The answer, on Saturday night at least, for all the talk of science, was both less and more than a plan: it was Biden’s belief that American unity and greatness are still with us, in some latent way. Biden said, “The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to coöperate with one another is not some mysterious force beyond our control. It’s a decision. It’s a choice we make.”
Political types will say that it’s common for the American people to replace a President with his opposite. But some of this work is done by the successor, who prunes from himself anything reminiscent of his adversary. Trump found his final political form as the opposite of Obama. The Biden who spoke in Wilmington on Saturday night is not the only one to appear on political stages in his career, and it may not be the final version. But it is the version that is most opposite of Trump: a diligent rule-follower, with his black pandemic mask. A gentle and humble figure. A person who acknowledges that he is near the end. A man of the Book.
The Irish broadcaster RTÉ closed its Saturday-evening news program by acknowledging Biden, “a proud Irish-American and admirer of the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney,” and then playing a recording (in fact, a digital ad) of the President-elect reading Heaney’s poem “The Cure of Troy.” Biden may not be a writer, like Barack Obama, but he is a good reader, with a heavy, phlegmy voice; he extracts feeling from words. Biden read, “Believe in miracles / And cures and healing wells. / Call miracle self-healing: / The utter self revealing / Double-take of feeling. / If there’s fire on the mountain / Or lightning and storm / And a god speaks from the sky / That means someone is hearing / The outcry and the birth-cry / Of new life at its term.” New life at its term: in Biden’s voice, Heaney’s optimism sounded like it belonged to America all along.
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-11-08--Outside the White House, the Site of Anti-Trump Protests Hosts a Celebration

Lucha Bright , a member of a group called Refuse Fascism , addressed people through a P.A .
system .
“ This is a new phase in the struggle !
” Bright told the crowd .
She had gathered a small audience together , and one of the activists who accompanied her urged them to raise their arms in the air and wave “ bye-bye ” to Trump .
“ The celebration is righteous—we should be celebrating , ” Bright told me .
“ But Trump is also saying he won .
And he ’ s also got fascist thugs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment , Trump was at one of his golf courses , where he ’ d gone for a morning round . )
Up the block , Michelle Healy , a longtime organizer for the Service Employees International Union , was part of a group of people wearing S.E.I.U .
purple .
She ’ d been out on these streets a number of times in the past few years , she said .
She pointed to the spot where she ’ d stood during a protest against the Trump Administration ’ s policy of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Trump created this idea that there is , like , a violent left , ” she said .
“ My experience is that it has been moms , dads , grandparents , kids.
” She looked around .
“ It ’ s all Americans here.
” Nearby , in the shade of a building , a young man named Rahim—he declined to give his last name—stood with his arms crossed .
“ People just show up for a celebration , but they weren ’ t here two weeks ago , when we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rahim said .
“ It ’ s really weird to hear a bunch of white folks yell , ‘ Whose streets ?
Our streets !
’ on Black Lives Matter Plaza because Biden won the election.
” Rahim , who is twenty , said he had been helping to organize protests since May , when George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis .
He ’ d just voted in a Presidential election for the first time .
“ It was cool to vote , but it just sucks that I had to pick between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ I just hope people focus on the bigger picture that there ’ s still work to be done .
Like , just because Biden won the White House does not mean that everything is all happy and dandy.
” A few feet away , a middle-aged woman named Ingrid Vaca was resting for a moment on a bench .
Vaca , who was born in Bolivia and lives in Virginia , has two children in the DACA program , and has been involved in organizing for immigrant rights for years .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ today , ” she said .
“ Since Tuesday , I couldn ’ t sleep .
My stomach was tight , thinking , and waiting .
Three days ago , when they said that in Pennsylvania Trump was winning—you know , I started to cry again to God because I ’ m scared a lot .
He wanted to deport everybody.
” She was holding a homemade sign that read “ Here to stay , ” and she had one mask layered on top of another .
That Biden has pledged to protect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , because it would help her kids .
“ I came to this country for a dream , ” she said .
“ I think some of my dream , today , is going to be real.
” In McPherson Square , in the shadow of the Department of Veterans Affairs , a band was playing in the bed of a truck , and CNN was being projected onto a giant screen .
Someone had blown up an inflatable Trump with rodent teeth .
Deniz Houston , an American-flag fanny pack worn like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ standing around with her friends , smiling .
“ It feels like we won the World Cup for the first time and defeated Fascism in the same day , ” Houston , who is twenty-six , said .
“ I understand that this feeling might be limited to very select parts of America .
But I ’ m confident that Joe Biden , unlike Trump , is going to try and do what he thinks is best for everyone.
” Her father had voted for Trump , twice .
“ I tried really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just fell victim to fake news and the people who surround him , ” she said .
I asked if she ’ d talked to her father after the race was called .
She said that less than an hour after the news broke , “ He texted me , ‘ Don ’ t forget to bring your hair dryer when you visit tomorrow .
’ ”

Lucha Bright, a member of a group called Refuse Fascism, addressed people through a P.A. system. “This is a new phase in the struggle!” Bright told the crowd. She had gathered a small audience together, and one of the activists who accompanied her urged them to raise their arms in the air and wave “bye-bye” to Trump. “The celebration is righteous—we should be celebrating,” Bright told me. “But Trump is also saying he won. And he’s also got fascist thugs in the streets.” (At that moment, Trump was at one of his golf courses, where he’d gone for a morning round.)
Up the block, Michelle Healy, a longtime organizer for the Service Employees International Union, was part of a group of people wearing S.E.I.U. purple. She’d been out on these streets a number of times in the past few years, she said. She pointed to the spot where she’d stood during a protest against the Trump Administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the border. “Trump created this idea that there is, like, a violent left,” she said. “My experience is that it has been moms, dads, grandparents, kids.” She looked around. “It’s all Americans here.”
Nearby, in the shade of a building, a young man named Rahim—he declined to give his last name—stood with his arms crossed. “People just show up for a celebration, but they weren’t here two weeks ago, when we was protesting for our rights,” Rahim said. “It’s really weird to hear a bunch of white folks yell, ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’ on Black Lives Matter Plaza because Biden won the election.” Rahim, who is twenty, said he had been helping to organize protests since May, when George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. He’d just voted in a Presidential election for the first time. “It was cool to vote, but it just sucks that I had to pick between two shitty candidates,” he said. “I just hope people focus on the bigger picture that there’s still work to be done. Like, just because Biden won the White House does not mean that everything is all happy and dandy.”
“I just hope people focus on the bigger picture that there’s still work to be done,” Rahim, twenty, said.
A few feet away, a middle-aged woman named Ingrid Vaca was resting for a moment on a bench. Vaca, who was born in Bolivia and lives in Virginia, has two children in the DACA program, and has been involved in organizing for immigrant rights for years. “I breathe, like, democracy today,” she said. “Since Tuesday, I couldn’t sleep. My stomach was tight, thinking, and waiting. Three days ago, when they said that in Pennsylvania Trump was winning—you know, I started to cry again to God because I’m scared a lot. He wanted to deport everybody.” She was holding a homemade sign that read “Here to stay,” and she had one mask layered on top of another. That Biden has pledged to protect the DACA program meant everything to her, because it would help her kids. “I came to this country for a dream,” she said. “I think some of my dream, today, is going to be real.”
In McPherson Square, in the shadow of the Department of Veterans Affairs, a band was playing in the bed of a truck, and CNN was being projected onto a giant screen. Someone had blown up an inflatable Trump with rodent teeth. Deniz Houston, an American-flag fanny pack worn like a sash across her chest, was standing around with her friends, smiling. “It feels like we won the World Cup for the first time and defeated Fascism in the same day,” Houston, who is twenty-six, said. “I understand that this feeling might be limited to very select parts of America. But I’m confident that Joe Biden, unlike Trump, is going to try and do what he thinks is best for everyone.” Her father had voted for Trump, twice. “I tried really hard to persuade him, but he just fell victim to fake news and the people who surround him,” she said. I asked if she’d talked to her father after the race was called. She said that less than an hour after the news broke, “He texted me, ‘Don’t forget to bring your hair dryer when you visit tomorrow.’ ”


newyorker--2020-11-08--Kamala Harris Makes History

Kamala Harris Makes History

Saturday night , in the centennial year of women winning the right to vote , Kamala Harris took the stage in Wilmington , Delaware , as the Vice-President-elect .
The first woman—does it need to be said ?
—to be elected to the White House , she was wearing a sleek pants suit , suffragette white .
Pearl earrings .
A radiant smile .
She was there as the first welcome harbinger of the post-Trump era , the return to sanity , the sensible resolution to a years-long mad-king play .
But Harris had a message that was greater even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ am thinking about .
.
.
the generations of women , Black women , ” she said , pausing while the crowd whooped .
“ Asian , white , Latina , Native American women , who throughout our nation ’ s history have paved the way for this moment tonight .
Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all—including the Black women who are often , too often , overlooked , but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy.
” She went on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she said , “ had the audacity to break one of the most substantial barriers that exists in our country and select a woman as his Vice-President.
” History was made .
The memes and TikToks flew : Harris striding , in heels ; Harris descending onto the tarmac ; Harris as Wonder Woman .
One mom-spirational slogan in particular unleashed a stream of heart-eye emojis in group texts throughout the land : “ Make sure to wear shoes , ladies .
There ’ s glass everywhere.
” Julia Louis-Dreyfus tweeted , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no longer a fictional character.
” So : exit the fembots of Trump ’ s White House , with their long blond blowouts , cloned from an atom of Ivanka ’ s tinted contact lens .
Enter Harris , the woman from San Francisco ’ s East Bay , who campaigned in Converse , who dances along to Cardi B .
In her speech , she invoked her late mother , Shyamala Gopalan Harris , a cancer researcher who came to California from Southern India at the age of nineteen , calling her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presence here today.
” ( Her father , Donald Harris , who was born in Jamaica , is an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford ; he and Shyamala divorced when Kamala was young , and she was primarily raised by her mother . )
Joining Harris on the stage were her husband , Doug Emhoff , whom she married in 2014 , and his two children from a previous marriage ; her sister Maya ; her niece , Meena , whom she helped to raise ; and Meena ’ s young children @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writing about Harris for a Profile in the magazine , Meena told me that , growing up , “ it was me , my grandma , my mom , and my aunt .
I often joke that the opening scene of ‘ Wonder Woman ’ the movie was what it was like to grow up in my house .
It was female-centric , strong female-centric , with a huge emphasis on social justice and public service early on.
” Harris is fifty-six , a political meteor .
Less than twenty years ago , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ district attorney of San Francisco .
She was the first woman and the first person of color to occupy that role .
In 2010 , she became the first woman and the first person of color to be elected attorney general in California .
In 2016 , she was elected to the United States Senate—the second Black woman and the first South Asian woman to serve .
“ People told her before she became A.G. , ‘ There ’ s no way you ’ re going to win this race , they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ” Debbie Mesloh , a close friend and former adviser , told me recently .
“ She ’ s always had such hard elections , and such easy reëlections.
” In 2019 , Harris told me , “ I ’ ve always been involved with breaking barriers .
And breaking barriers can be a painful process .
I ’ m never going to complain about it , ’ cause it ’ s worth it in the end , it ’ s worth it in terms of what you can accomplish.
” Four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her Senate election , Harris wrote a victory speech that presumed a Hillary Clinton win .
She thought that she would be a soldier for the first female President of the United States .
Mesloh , who has been with Harris on every Election Night but this year ’ s , says that , as the returns rolled in , Harris was in shock .
“ She didn ’ t believe it at first , ” Mesloh told me .
“ Obviously , it started to become more and more clear that Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so distraught.
” According to Mesloh , the celebration party turned mournful .
“ First , she gathered the staff .
People were crying .
She decided to roll up her sleeves.
” In her memoir , Harris writes that she tore up her speech and wrote a new one , focussed on the task ahead .
“ Do we retreat or do we fight ?
” she asked then .
“ I say we fight .
And I intend to fight !
” A former prosecutor , she was a heavyweight on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a formidable adversary to Trump ’ s proxies .
After just two years in the Senate , she announced that she was running for President .
As a candidate for the Democratic nomination , Harris was , memorably , Biden ’ s adversary , and she bristled when people suggested that she would be good for the role she now occupies , that it might not be “ her time ” to be President .
But Biden has implied that he might be a one-term President by choice , someone who will draw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an attempt to unify and heal a divided country , and then pass the baton .
His selection of Harris as his Veep was tantamount to an anointment—she is going to be the Democratic Party .
Mesloh said , “ She ’ s going to bring a real solid sense of serious ideas around criminal-justice reform .
Racial justice .
Bread-and-butter economic issues .
No one ’ s ever sat in those rooms with that type of authority she has—biracial , a woman , raised by two immigrants , raised by a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President again in four years , it ’ ll be almost as an incumbent .
Her time , in many senses , begins now .
Surely , her responsibilities do : even now , Biden and Harris are assembling a coronavirus-response task force , showing more leadership while in the wings than the sitting President and his V.P .
have demonstrated .
And , because she is making history , her time will never end .
On Saturday , Harris concluded her remarks with a promise .
“ While I may be the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will not be the last , ” she said .
“ Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.
” Read More About the 2020 Election • Trump has survived impeachment , twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations , and thousands of lawsuits .
His luck may well end now that Joe Biden will be the next President .
• What happens if Trump fights the election results ?
• Here is what you can do if Trump stages a coup .
• For the G.O.P.
, the future may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less white but not much less conservative .
Can Republicans become a multiracial working-class party ?
• Sign up for our daily newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

Saturday night, in the centennial year of women winning the right to vote, Kamala Harris took the stage in Wilmington, Delaware, as the Vice-President-elect. The first woman—does it need to be said?—to be elected to the White House, she was wearing a sleek pants suit, suffragette white. Pearl earrings. A radiant smile. She was there as the first welcome harbinger of the post-Trump era, the return to sanity, the sensible resolution to a years-long mad-king play. But Harris had a message that was greater even than this remarkable moment. “I am thinking about . . . the generations of women, Black women,” she said, pausing while the crowd whooped. “Asian, white, Latina, Native American women, who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight. Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all—including the Black women who are often, too often, overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy.” She went on to praise President-elect Joe Biden, who, she said, “had the audacity to break one of the most substantial barriers that exists in our country and select a woman as his Vice-President.”
History was made. The memes and TikToks flew: Harris striding, in heels; Harris descending onto the tarmac; Harris as Wonder Woman. One mom-spirational slogan in particular unleashed a stream of heart-eye emojis in group texts throughout the land: “Make sure to wear shoes, ladies. There’s glass everywhere.” Julia Louis-Dreyfus tweeted, “ ‘Madam Vice President’ is no longer a fictional character.”
So: exit the fembots of Trump’s White House, with their long blond blowouts, cloned from an atom of Ivanka’s tinted contact lens. Enter Harris, the woman from San Francisco’s East Bay, who campaigned in Converse, who dances along to Cardi B. In her speech, she invoked her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a cancer researcher who came to California from Southern India at the age of nineteen, calling her “the woman most responsible for my presence here today.” (Her father, Donald Harris, who was born in Jamaica, is an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford; he and Shyamala divorced when Kamala was young, and she was primarily raised by her mother.) Joining Harris on the stage were her husband, Doug Emhoff, whom she married in 2014, and his two children from a previous marriage; her sister Maya; her niece, Meena, whom she helped to raise; and Meena’s young children. In 2019, when I was writing about Harris for a Profile in the magazine, Meena told me that, growing up, “it was me, my grandma, my mom, and my aunt. I often joke that the opening scene of ‘Wonder Woman’ the movie was what it was like to grow up in my house. It was female-centric, strong female-centric, with a huge emphasis on social justice and public service early on.”
Harris is fifty-six, a political meteor. Less than twenty years ago, she won her first election, as district attorney of San Francisco. She was the first woman and the first person of color to occupy that role. In 2010, she became the first woman and the first person of color to be elected attorney general in California. In 2016, she was elected to the United States Senate—the second Black woman and the first South Asian woman to serve. “People told her before she became A.G., ‘There’s no way you’re going to win this race, they’re not ready for a woman,’ ” Debbie Mesloh, a close friend and former adviser, told me recently. “She’s always had such hard elections, and such easy reëlections.” In 2019, Harris told me, “I’ve always been involved with breaking barriers. And breaking barriers can be a painful process. I’m never going to complain about it, ’cause it’s worth it in the end, it’s worth it in terms of what you can accomplish.”
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden address the nation after winning the 2020 election.
Four years ago, on the night of her Senate election, Harris wrote a victory speech that presumed a Hillary Clinton win. She thought that she would be a soldier for the first female President of the United States. Mesloh, who has been with Harris on every Election Night but this year’s, says that, as the returns rolled in, Harris was in shock. “She didn’t believe it at first,” Mesloh told me. “Obviously, it started to become more and more clear that Trump was going to win. She was so distraught.” According to Mesloh, the celebration party turned mournful. “First, she gathered the staff. People were crying. She decided to roll up her sleeves.” In her memoir, Harris writes that she tore up her speech and wrote a new one, focussed on the task ahead. “Do we retreat or do we fight?” she asked then. “I say we fight. And I intend to fight!” A former prosecutor, she was a heavyweight on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and a formidable adversary to Trump’s proxies. After just two years in the Senate, she announced that she was running for President.
As a candidate for the Democratic nomination, Harris was, memorably, Biden’s adversary, and she bristled when people suggested that she would be good for the role she now occupies, that it might not be “her time” to be President. But Biden has implied that he might be a one-term President by choice, someone who will draw upon his decades-long relationships on Capitol Hill in an attempt to unify and heal a divided country, and then pass the baton. His selection of Harris as his Veep was tantamount to an anointment—she is going to be the Democratic Party. Mesloh said, “She’s going to bring a real solid sense of serious ideas around criminal-justice reform. Racial justice. Bread-and-butter economic issues. No one’s ever sat in those rooms with that type of authority she has—biracial, a woman, raised by two immigrants, raised by a single mom.”
If Harris runs for President again in four years, it’ll be almost as an incumbent. Her time, in many senses, begins now. Surely, her responsibilities do: even now, Biden and Harris are assembling a coronavirus-response task force, showing more leadership while in the wings than the sitting President and his V.P. have demonstrated. And, because she is making history, her time will never end. On Saturday, Harris concluded her remarks with a promise. “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” she said. “Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-11-09--Voting Trump Out Is Not Enough

Voting Trump Out Is Not Enough

Today , in Philadelphia , where I live , there is not a single aspect of life that the pandemic has not upended , from work and school to housing and health care , pulling poor and working-class African-Americans , in particular , deeper into debt and despair .
The uncertainty of the moment , let alone the future , feeds fear , frustration , hopelessness , and dread .
In Philadelphia , shootings are on the rise , and the murder rate is growing .
With two months left in the year , there have been four hundred and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with just over three hundred and fifty for all of 2019 , which was already the highest number of killings in Philadelphia in more than a decade .
African-Americans make up eighty-five per cent of the city ’ s shooting victims .
Even before the pandemic , drug overdoses in Black Philadelphia were on the rise .
In the first three months of shelter-in-place orders , a hundred and forty-seven Black residents died by accidental drug overdose , forty-seven per cent of drug deaths in the city .
When , last month , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Walter Wallace , Jr. , in the streets of West Philadelphia , while he was in the midst of a mental-health crisis , the frustration of many Black Philadelphians spilled into the streets , just as it did last summer .
And now , like then , Pennsylvania ’ s governor mobilized the National Guard to corral demonstrators , to restore one kind of order while leaving palpable social disorder intact .
Trump stumbled on some truth when he said , “ Bad things happen in Philadelphia.
” The dark side of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country , as we cross the threshold of more than a hundred thousand daily diagnoses of coronavirus cases .
It is not a Trumpian slur to observe that many of the cities where Black suffering takes place are also governed by proud members of the Democratic Party .
Instead , it illuminates the depth of the bipartisan failure to address the tangled roots of racism , poverty , and inequality .
It can also help us understand why Trump captured more votes from Black men and women in this year ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Of course , the overwhelming majority of Black voters backed Biden , but the fact is that millions of African-Americans experience the daily failures of Democratic officials to respond to the poor conditions of their public schools , the lack of affordable housing , rampant police harassment and brutality , and usurious loans .
The answer to these legitimate grievances can ’ t simply be to say that they are Republican talking points .
During this pandemic , the toll of disease and death has been greatest on those who can least afford @ @ @ @ @ @ @ low-wage , minority workers .
Since May , as many as eight million people have been pushed into poverty , with Black families overrepresented among them .
Whereas white workers have recovered more than half the jobs they lost to the downturn , Black workers have recovered just over a third of them , leaving Black unemployment at more than twelve percent .
But the most provocative measure of the failure of our response to the pandemic can be found in the growth of hunger .
In June , around twenty-nine per cent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ food insecurity , ” meaning that they were either unable to get enough food to meet their nutritional needs or they were uncertain of where their next meal would come from .
They were hungry .
Where there is hunger , housing insecurity is not far behind .
Thousands of people have already been evicted during this crisis , and nearly one out of six renters have fallen behind on their rent .
Nearly one in four renters who live with children report that they are not up-to-date with the rent .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s unprecedented moratorium on evictions was too good to be true : the Trump Administration recently signalled to landlords that it would allow them to challenge the eligibility of tenants .
This leaves the viability of the C.D.C .
moratorium up to the discretion of individual judges , who may or may not honor it .
Local organizers and activists have tried to fill the gap created by federal neglect with relentless mutual-aid organizing , but it is hardly sufficient .
In Philadelphia , which , ignobly , has among the highest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city in the country , thousands stand on the cusp of eviction .
Twenty-two per cent of households in the city are severely cost-burdened , meaning that they are spending half or more of their income on housing costs , which is well above the national average .
Before this downturn , sixty-one per cent of households headed by Black women in Philadelphia were spending at least thirty per cent of their income on rent , compared with fifty-three per cent of households headed by white women and forty-four per cent of households @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and their children “ are most likely to be evicted , ” according to a 2020 report produced by researchers at PolicyLink , and Black residents in general are “ most likely to become homeless.
” Philadelphia ’ s moratorium on evictions has not been extended beyond its November deadline because landlord advocates and the Philadelphia City Council could not reach an agreement .
Instead , the courts have agreed to “ pause ” evictions until the new year , while still making exceptions for landlords who ask for an exemption .
Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ landlord class , which is poised and ready to evict .
As Paul Cohen , a lawyer for the Homeowners Association of Philadelphia said , “ As a society , we recognize you can ’ t steal food from the grocery store or clothes from a department store , so why is it O.K .
to steal the rent ?
” An estimated fifteen per cent of Pennsylvania renters will face eviction in January , when the C.D.C .
moratorium expires .
The disaster is being forestalled , but winter is coming .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is , what will he do in this fragile moment of popular radicalization and despair ?
It is true that Biden ’ s plans became more ambitious after the Democratic Party primaries , when he was to the right of most of his opponents , including Kamala Harris .
His campaign melded together a fractious coalition of Democrats , folding in those to his left in order to quiet his critics .
This was largely done through a “ unity task force , ” which brought together Bernie Sanders ’ s supporters with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a more than one-hundred-page document that was used to revise the Democratic Party platform .
Much of the platform now reads like a wish list for the liberal left , hardly reflecting the centrism that has defined Biden ’ s career .
It proposes “ a new social and economic contract with the American people—a contract that invests in the people and promotes shared prosperity , not one that benefits only big corporations and the wealthiest few.
” That contract describes housing as “ a right and not a privilege , ” and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ infusions to cities and states , and “ fundamental reforms ” to address “ structural and systemic racism ” and “ entrenched ” income inequality .
Winning the White House may have been the ultimate prize , but the uncertainty over control of the Senate and the Democrats ’ losses in the House have already imperiled the lofty plans of the unity caucus .
The pressure among Democrats to close ranks in order to defeat Trump and win the Senate had dissolved even before the final tally of votes was taken .
On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic House caucus last Thursday , moderate Democrats blamed the Democratic left for the loss of House seats .
“ We need to not ever use the word ‘ socialist ’ or ‘ socialism ’ again , ” Rep. Abigail Spanberger , of Virginia , said , according to the Washington Post .
“ If we are classifying Tuesday as a success .
.
.
we will get fucking torn apart in 2022.
” This is a conflict that can not so easily be muted , because the liberal left and moderate factions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different constituencies .
The Sanders faction—organized around Medicare for All , police reform , and the Green New Deal , among other progressive causes— can not be quietly stuffed in a box until the Party leadership calls on the left again to gin up the base and get out the vote .
They are fighting to transform the direction of the Party .
It is also no small thing that , during his campaign , Biden insisted on unity with Republicans regardless of the composition of Congress , underlining his intentions to work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against him as for those who voted for him .
In his victory speech on Saturday night , he said , “ To those who voted for President Trump , I understand your disappointment tonight .
I ’ ve lost a couple of elections myself .
But now , let ’ s give each other a chance.
” Cindy McCain , the wife of the late Senator John McCain , prominently defected from the Republican camp to endorse Biden .
According to McCain , Biden will not merely reach out to Republicans as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ I ’ ve had this very discussion with him and he ’ s absolutely going to not only work with Republicans but bring them into the Administration.
” Undoubtedly , no legislation will move through Congress next year without Republican input .
But that is hardly a cause for celebration ; instead it is a recipe for gridlock and small-scale proposals that make a mockery of the enormous suffering across the United States .
The insistence on unity between the two parties almost always comes at the expense of those whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden Administration incorporate the views of a Republican Party that has supported a white-supremacist President , voted for Trump ’ s plutocratic tax cuts , advocated for the separation of families at the border , and facilitated the heist of a Supreme Court seat in hopes of fulfilling the right ’ s fantasy of ending access to abortion and destroying any hint of government-backed health insurance ?
We were told that this Presidential race was the most consequential of our lifetimes , that it was a contest between democracy and budding fascism .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Trump ’ s authoritarian politics into his coalition ?
As the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said recently , “ We very rarely see the results of bipartisanship yielding in racial justice , yielding in economic justice for working families , yielding in improvements to health care .
.
.
Just because something is bipartisan doesn ’ t mean it ’ s good , or good for you.
” The biggest danger now is that the Democrats ’ s failure to decisively capture Congress will validate Biden ’ s strategy to emphasize moderate reforms @ @ @ @

Like tens of millions of Americans, I voted to end the miserable reign of Donald J. Trump, but we cannot perpetuate the election-year fiction that the deep and bewildering problems facing millions of people in this country will simply end with the Trump Administration. They are embedded in “the system,” in systemic racism, and the other social inequities that are the focus of continued activism and budding social movements. Viewing the solution to these problems as simply electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both underestimates the depth of the problems and trivializes the remedies necessary to undo the damage. That view may also confuse popular support for fundamental change, as evidenced by Trump’s one-term Presidency, with what the Democratic Party is willing or even able to deliver.
Today, in Philadelphia, where I live, there is not a single aspect of life that the pandemic has not upended, from work and school to housing and health care, pulling poor and working-class African-Americans, in particular, deeper into debt and despair. The uncertainty of the moment, let alone the future, feeds fear, frustration, hopelessness, and dread. In Philadelphia, shootings are on the rise, and the murder rate is growing. With two months left in the year, there have been four hundred and sixteen homicides in the city, compared with just over three hundred and fifty for all of 2019, which was already the highest number of killings in Philadelphia in more than a decade. African-Americans make up eighty-five per cent of the city’s shooting victims. Even before the pandemic, drug overdoses in Black Philadelphia were on the rise. In the first three months of shelter-in-place orders, a hundred and forty-seven Black residents died by accidental drug overdose, forty-seven per cent of drug deaths in the city. When, last month, police killed a twenty-seven-year-old Black man named Walter Wallace, Jr., in the streets of West Philadelphia, while he was in the midst of a mental-health crisis, the frustration of many Black Philadelphians spilled into the streets, just as it did last summer. And now, like then, Pennsylvania’s governor mobilized the National Guard to corral demonstrators, to restore one kind of order while leaving palpable social disorder intact. Trump stumbled on some truth when he said, “Bad things happen in Philadelphia.”
The dark side of the pandemic in Philadelphia exists in cities across the country, as we cross the threshold of more than a hundred thousand daily diagnoses of coronavirus cases. It is not a Trumpian slur to observe that many of the cities where Black suffering takes place are also governed by proud members of the Democratic Party. Instead, it illuminates the depth of the bipartisan failure to address the tangled roots of racism, poverty, and inequality. It can also help us understand why Trump captured more votes from Black men and women in this year’s election than he did in 2016. Of course, the overwhelming majority of Black voters backed Biden, but the fact is that millions of African-Americans experience the daily failures of Democratic officials to respond to the poor conditions of their public schools, the lack of affordable housing, rampant police harassment and brutality, and usurious loans. The answer to these legitimate grievances can’t simply be to say that they are Republican talking points.
During this pandemic, the toll of disease and death has been greatest on those who can least afford it. Job losses have overwhelmingly affected low-wage, minority workers. Since May, as many as eight million people have been pushed into poverty, with Black families overrepresented among them. Whereas white workers have recovered more than half the jobs they lost to the downturn, Black workers have recovered just over a third of them, leaving Black unemployment at more than twelve percent. But the most provocative measure of the failure of our response to the pandemic can be found in the growth of hunger. In June, around twenty-nine per cent of American households with children were experiencing “food insecurity,” meaning that they were either unable to get enough food to meet their nutritional needs or they were uncertain of where their next meal would come from. They were hungry.
Where there is hunger, housing insecurity is not far behind. Thousands of people have already been evicted during this crisis, and nearly one out of six renters have fallen behind on their rent. Nearly one in four renters who live with children report that they are not up-to-date with the rent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s unprecedented moratorium on evictions was too good to be true: the Trump Administration recently signalled to landlords that it would allow them to challenge the eligibility of tenants. This leaves the viability of the C.D.C. moratorium up to the discretion of individual judges, who may or may not honor it. Local organizers and activists have tried to fill the gap created by federal neglect with relentless mutual-aid organizing, but it is hardly sufficient.
In Philadelphia, which, ignobly, has among the highest proportion of poor residents of any big city in the country, thousands stand on the cusp of eviction. Twenty-two per cent of households in the city are severely cost-burdened, meaning that they are spending half or more of their income on housing costs, which is well above the national average. Before this downturn, sixty-one per cent of households headed by Black women in Philadelphia were spending at least thirty per cent of their income on rent, compared with fifty-three per cent of households headed by white women and forty-four per cent of households headed by white men. Black mothers and their children “are most likely to be evicted,” according to a 2020 report produced by researchers at PolicyLink, and Black residents in general are “most likely to become homeless.” Philadelphia’s moratorium on evictions has not been extended beyond its November deadline because landlord advocates and the Philadelphia City Council could not reach an agreement. Instead, the courts have agreed to “pause” evictions until the new year, while still making exceptions for landlords who ask for an exemption. Even this concession roused the ire of the landlord class, which is poised and ready to evict. As Paul Cohen, a lawyer for the Homeowners Association of Philadelphia said, “As a society, we recognize you can’t steal food from the grocery store or clothes from a department store, so why is it O.K. to steal the rent?” An estimated fifteen per cent of Pennsylvania renters will face eviction in January, when the C.D.C. moratorium expires. The disaster is being forestalled, but winter is coming.
Philadelphia served as an outpost for Joe Biden’s campaign, in part because of its proximity to his home in Delaware, but also because the Democratic Party loved the backdrop of the “cradle of American Democracy,” in contrast to the affront to it that pulses at the heart of the Trump Administration. Barack Obama delivered his speech for the Democratic National Convention, this past summer, at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution; more recently, he returned to Philadelphia to stump for Biden in the final weeks of the campaign. Biden made repeated trips to the city for town-hall meetings and to make public addresses. Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell were not only pointed backdrops to political attacks on Donald Trump; they were also poignant symbols of the country’s founding contradiction: freedom and democracy bound to racism and inequality.
The pressing question for the new President-elect is, what will he do in this fragile moment of popular radicalization and despair? It is true that Biden’s plans became more ambitious after the Democratic Party primaries, when he was to the right of most of his opponents, including Kamala Harris. His campaign melded together a fractious coalition of Democrats, folding in those to his left in order to quiet his critics. This was largely done through a “unity task force,” which brought together Bernie Sanders’s supporters with Biden’s campaign, and created a more than one-hundred-page document that was used to revise the Democratic Party platform. Much of the platform now reads like a wish list for the liberal left, hardly reflecting the centrism that has defined Biden’s career. It proposes “a new social and economic contract with the American people—a contract that invests in the people and promotes shared prosperity, not one that benefits only big corporations and the wealthiest few.” That contract describes housing as “a right and not a privilege,” and promises “good-paying jobs,” cash infusions to cities and states, and “fundamental reforms” to address “structural and systemic racism” and “entrenched” income inequality.
Winning the White House may have been the ultimate prize, but the uncertainty over control of the Senate and the Democrats’ losses in the House have already imperiled the lofty plans of the unity caucus. The pressure among Democrats to close ranks in order to defeat Trump and win the Senate had dissolved even before the final tally of votes was taken. On a conference call for members of the Democratic House caucus last Thursday, moderate Democrats blamed the Democratic left for the loss of House seats. “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ again,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger, of Virginia, said, according to the Washington Post. “If we are classifying Tuesday as a success . . . we will get fucking torn apart in 2022.” This is a conflict that cannot so easily be muted, because the liberal left and moderate factions of the party represent different demands and different constituencies. The Sanders faction—organized around Medicare for All, police reform, and the Green New Deal, among other progressive causes—cannot be quietly stuffed in a box until the Party leadership calls on the left again to gin up the base and get out the vote. They are fighting to transform the direction of the Party.
It is also no small thing that, during his campaign, Biden insisted on unity with Republicans regardless of the composition of Congress, underlining his intentions to work just as hard for those who voted against him as for those who voted for him. In his victory speech on Saturday night, he said, “To those who voted for President Trump, I understand your disappointment tonight. I’ve lost a couple of elections myself. But now, let’s give each other a chance.” Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Senator John McCain, prominently defected from the Republican camp to endorse Biden. According to McCain, Biden will not merely reach out to Republicans as a gesture toward unity. She said, “I’ve had this very discussion with him and he’s absolutely going to not only work with Republicans but bring them into the Administration.”
Undoubtedly, no legislation will move through Congress next year without Republican input. But that is hardly a cause for celebration; instead it is a recipe for gridlock and small-scale proposals that make a mockery of the enormous suffering across the United States. The insistence on unity between the two parties almost always comes at the expense of those whose needs are greatest. How would a Biden Administration incorporate the views of a Republican Party that has supported a white-supremacist President, voted for Trump’s plutocratic tax cuts, advocated for the separation of families at the border, and facilitated the heist of a Supreme Court seat in hopes of fulfilling the right’s fantasy of ending access to abortion and destroying any hint of government-backed health insurance? We were told that this Presidential race was the most consequential of our lifetimes, that it was a contest between democracy and budding fascism. Why would Biden welcome the foot soldiers of Trump’s authoritarian politics into his coalition? As the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said recently, “We very rarely see the results of bipartisanship yielding in racial justice, yielding in economic justice for working families, yielding in improvements to health care . . . Just because something is bipartisan doesn’t mean it’s good, or good for you.” The biggest danger now is that the Democrats’s failure to decisively capture Congress will validate Biden’s strategy to emphasize moderate reforms and prioritize compromise.