What Went Down During Joe Biden’s Inauguration

Somehow, summing up the transition from the Trump presidency to the Biden administration feels impossible. I keep coming back to the idea of Trump as both a symptom and accelerant, and thus Trumpism (and its white supremacy and antidemocratic values) predated Trump and will outlive him.

Biden and Harris are inheriting so many crises. IDK, maybe my main takeaway today is both a big deal and a pretty low bar: It’s something to be confident again that the executive branch will be focused on trying to address those crises.

Biden enters office at a time of deep national division. It will be difficult to govern without making at least a little bipartisan progress, barring substantial institutional changes such as the end of the filibuster, which seems unlikely. He took steps today to lay out a welcoming approach, but it remains to be seen whether or not we have hit the valley’s floor, or if there are further depths for our country to slide to because of its many struggles and divides.

This was in so many ways an unusual Inauguration Day because of the pandemic, and yet it was also refreshingly usual in its familiarity. It is also of course a historic moment as the first Black, first Asian and first woman vice president was sworn into office. In these ways it was a very apt beginning to 2021: uncertain, a bit different, a bit hopeful, with lots of work ahead.