The Weekly Sift

The Electoral College has voted and a few Republicans are finally beginning to acknowledge the election that we had six weeks ago. Trump’s attempts to deny and subvert that election are getting wilder but less credible. Congress is not going to reject the vote of Electoral College. The military is not going to take over swing states and run a new election. One way or another, Joe Biden will be president at 12:01 p.m. on January 20.

This moment in history has me flashing back to the early days of the Obama administration, and hoping that Biden has learned the appropriate lesson: As much as he wants to unify the country — and as much as that’s what America needs — he can’t do it by attempting to placate Republican leaders’ bad-faith opposition. If they have actual policy goals, compromise is possible. But if they just want Biden to fail, as they wanted Obama to fail, negotiating with them is pointless.

That will be the gist of this week’s featured post “Beware of Bad Faith”, which should be out around 10 EST.

The weekly summary covers the contrast between the ever-worsening pandemic and the glimmers of hope as one vaccine rolls out and another gets approved, the sweeping Russian hack of our computer systems and the Russian hack in the Oval Office who refuses to recognize it, the ongoing Biden transition and the resistance it faces, and a few other things. I’m aiming to get that out around noon.