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People hold a Biden sign outside of their car to celebrate Joe Biden’s win as they drive down Forbes Avenue near the intersection of Shady Avenue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday.
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Tony Norman: A moment of joy in the midst of a pandemic

Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette

Tony Norman: A moment of joy in the midst of a pandemic

On CNN, political analyst Van Jones was weeping. Between sobs of relief, he struggled to explain to his fellow panelists what President-elect Joe Biden’s victory meant to him as a Black man, a father and a citizen attempting to free himself from Donald Trump’s American carnage on parade.

CNN had just joined the Associated Press and other news organizations in finally calling what had been a mathematical certainty since Mr. Biden took the lead in Pennsylvania thanks to tranches of mail-in ballots in Philadelphia and an expected deluge of blue ballots from Allegheny County that would seal Mr. Trump’s fate as a one-term president.

It had been a Lucy-and-the-football kind of week, with Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump dueling for razor-thin margins across a fistful of states endowed by circumstance with disproportionate electoral significance.

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There was even a point on Tuesday night when the ghost of 2016 loomed and it appeared whatever deal Mr. Trump had struck with Mephistopheles on some dark night on Fifth Avenue in 2015 was still in effect.

Demonstrators march Wednesday in Philadelphia to urge that all votes be counted, following Tuesday's election.
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Like many who watched in mounting terror as the long-predicted anti-Trump landslide failed to materialize, I wondered if we’d ever be free of the American Gotterdammerung that began with a slur against Mexicans before reaching its apotheosis with nearly 240,000 of our fellow Americans dead from COVID-19 because of the Trump administration’s ineptitude.

But there we were on a late Saturday morning listening intently as the networks and cable news made it unanimous — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had been elected president and vice president of the United States. Time stopped for a few seconds to allow the weight of those words to sink in. At that moment, we all wondered how something could feel both anticlimactic and long overdue. The strangeness of the circumstances, including the pent-up emotions that attended what was arguably the most important election of our lifetime, contributed to the expressions of coast-to-coast joy that followed.

Instead of exhibiting the wariness zoo animals display when a cage door is inexplicably left open, Americans burst into the street within seconds of the announcement, as if to beat back any chance of a Trumpian clawback. Car horns beeped approval. Intersections were suddenly jammed with citizens screaming their delight. People standing on their more socially distanced front porches waved and danced and lost their minds banging on pots and pans. It was a moment of celebration that transcended the chauvinism of a championship a sports franchise would bring home.

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After driving out of my relatively sleepy neighborhood to survey the local mood, the first sign that it was going to be a bonkers afternoon was the thickness of the crowds on the sidewalks of Regent Square. It was standing-room only outside of D’s and the Map Room. Masked and unmasked liberals and conservatives luxuriated in the beautiful weather and bonhomie as bumper-to-bumper traffic on Braddock Avenue inched along. Car-horn blowing was incessant. People screamed their approval from cars and pickup trucks like it was the end of World War II.

At the intersection of Forbes and Braddock, a traditional spot for anti-war protests in past years, all four corners were occupied by folks holding up Biden/​Harris signs urging drivers to honk, which they did with gusto. These were many of the same folks who attended “Black Lives Matter” protests and became politically active during the pandemic. They were of all ages, including a few who are probably a lot older than either Mr. Trump or President-elect Biden.

In Squirrel Hill, the jubilation at the intersections threatened to spill over into general pandemonium but stopped short. The most dramatic — and funniest — showcase of enthusiasm was at the Forbes and Murray intersection where some of the oldest four-way traffic lights in the city are located.

When the lights turned red, traffic in all directions stopped, which left a huge space for the world’s most considerate flash mobs to fill until the lights turned green again. There were Irish jigs, uncoordinated dancing, afternoon shoppers temporarily possessed by an anarchic spirit, neighborhood kids doing what kids do and ordinary citizens drunk on the possibilities of four years of relatively boring presidential normality. It was a bittersweet contrast to scenes at that same intersection two years earlier when people gathered to mourn the loss of 11 lives at the Tree of Life synagogue. On the East End where it is not unusual to stumble upon “Bernie 2020” signs on lawns, people were crying real tears of relief.

A group of murals encouraging Philadelphians to vote, called To The Polls, are displayed in Love Park during early voting at City Hall on  October 7, 2020, in Philadelphia.
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Like most of America, I tuned in to watch the victory speeches of the Democratic winners. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who was called out for her public shows of enthusiasm two weeks ago by school marmish Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, took the stage as Mary J. Blige’s “Work That” announced her arrival. The White House is in for a style makeover of epic proportions.

Watching Ms. Harris, I was instantly reminded why all those civil rights marches, boycotts and vigils for voting rights in the 1950s and 1960s mattered — they got us to this moment of unadulterated joy on a stage in Wilmington, Del. Ms. Harris is a woman whose very complex American existence was the result of a personal intersection of various American immigrant identities. Her Jamaican father and South Asian Indian mother met as graduate students at a civil rights demonstration. They had no idea their union would give birth to America’s future.

We know Mr. Biden is not going to be anything near perfect. Every president inevitably disappoints. He’s the compromise candidate in the fractious Democratic coalition, but a man of honor, conviction and proven governing skills. Unlike Mr. Trump, his first instinct will not be chaos or self-aggrandizement. Terrorizing Americans is not on his agenda. He won’t be whining on social media about his “enemies.” He’ll read his briefing books and not be a stooge of Vladimir Putin or pal around with Kim Jong Un. Mr. Biden is going to be boring, drama-free and refreshingly competent. Our blood pressure won’t escalate whenever he opens his mouth.

I’m looking forward to ignoring Mr. Trump after the inauguration. After that, he’ll just be another loud mouth on Twitter or Fox News ranting about the conspiracy of the week. He’ll still have a huge social media following of nuts, bots and curious journalists, but his insanity will no longer set the national agenda. Until the various indictments are handed down in New York and his hotels and golf courses are foreclosed upon because of failure to pay his outstanding half billion in debt — money he can’t borrow from legitimate banks — he will never be newsworthy again.

Someone asked me what I would write about now that Mr. Trump has been branded a loser and faces exile and disgrace. My goodness, what a stupid question! The world is a lot bigger than Donald Trump. America is moving on. We’ll all move on to less dangerous entertainment.

Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631. Twitter @Tony_NormanPG.

First Published: November 10, 2020, 5:00 a.m.

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People hold a Biden sign outside of their car to celebrate Joe Biden’s win as they drive down Forbes Avenue near the intersection of Shady Avenue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
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