People are tired of the coronavirus and the recession. The media says they want a return to normal. I hope that's not true, because normal was not so good. Normal was great for the rich and the corporations, but it was not so good for the bottom 90% of the population. That bottom 90% struggled to live with stagnant wages, rising prices, and decreasing opportunity.
We need to do better than normal. We need to make the country better for all its citizens.
Here is just part of an excellent op-ed from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on "returning to normal":
Boring, reassuring, normal – these are Biden’s great strengths. But he needs to be careful. They could also be his great weaknesses.
That’s because any return to “normal” would be disastrous for America.
Normal led to Trump. Normal led to the coronavirus.
Normal is four decades of stagnant wages and widening inequality when almost all economic gains went to the top. Normal is forty years of shredded safety nets, and the most expensive but least adequate healthcare system in the modern world.
Normal is also growing corruption of politics by big money – an economic system rigged by and for the wealthy.
Normal is worsening police brutality.
Normal is climate change now verging on catastrophe.
Normal is a GOP that for years has been actively suppressing minority votes and embracing white supremacists. Normal is a Democratic Party that for years has been abandoning the working class.
Given the road we were on, Trump and Covid were not aberrations. They were inevitabilities. The moment we are now in – with Trump virtually gone, Biden assembling his cabinet, and most of the nation starting to feel a bit of relief – is a temporary reprieve.
If the underlying trends don’t change, after Biden we could have Trumps as far as the eye can see. And health and environmental crises that make the coronavirus another step toward Armageddon.
Hence the paradox. America wants to return to a reassuring normal, but Biden can’t allow it. Complacency would be deadly. He has to both calm the waters and stir the pot.
It’s a mistake to see this challenge as placating the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. It’s about dealing with problems that have worsened for decades and if left unattended much longer will be enormously destructive.
So the central question: In an exhausted and divided America that desperately wants a return to normal, can Biden find the energy and political will for bold changes that are imperative?
