“It may be too much to hope that Biden,” Michelle Goldberg wrote, “could equal the achievements of Roosevelt or Johnson. But should he become president, he will, like both of them, inherit a country deep in crisis, where once inconceivable political interventions suddenly appear possible. We can’t know whether he will rise to the opportunity — only that presidencies are shaped by far more than the ideology of the person who achieves the office.” How true!

And yet, the go to position of too many people is to evaluate Biden statically and disconnected from the flow and flux of everyday life, the exigencies of interlocking crises, and the larger political shifts crisscrossing and shaping our politics and culture. Neither Biden nor any politician for that matter live a hermetic existence. They reflect and absorb the wider environment in different and contradictory ways.

Polls so far suggest the most people are for a prudent, not reckless approach to opening up the economy and country. Thus, we shouldn’t give the handful of protest actions demanding an end to social distancing last week undue significance. Let’s see if they continue and, more to the point, grow in size and scope.

The best way to cut the grown from underneath this thoroughly reactionary movement is to press Congress to pass a series of stimulus packages that forcefully address the financial needs of states, cities, and tens of millions of Americans who are social distancing, not to mention provide the necessary resources to combat the virus.

Beware when GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell says, as he did yesterday, “We ought … to begin to think about the implications to the country’s future with this level of national debt.” In effect, he is saying that the growth of the national debt is about to become the rationale, or should I say cudgel, used by Senate Republicans to block future appropriations to address the deepening crisis conditions across the country as a result of the pandemic and a collapsing economy. Austerity is once again on the Republican agenda!

“Talk about a dream
Try to make it real
You wake up in the night
With a fear so real
You spend your life waiting
For a moment that just don’t come
Well, don’t waste your time waiting

This sound about right. According to the NYT Maggie Haberman, the so called “protest rallies” against the stay at home orders of a handful of governors “have been relatively small and scattershot, organized by conservative-leaning groups with some organic attendance. It remains to be seen if they will be durable.”