The election is behind us at long last

Everyone knows that I normally wouldn't write about anything even remotely political, but this has been one cuckoopants crazy year in so many ways. Election years are long and tough, and 2020 was one of the toughest. The COVID-19 pandumbic certainly didn't help things, either. Normally by now (five days after the election), we would know all of the results and proceed with our celebrating or sulking.

However, COVID-19 changed things this time around. In order to help slow the spread of the virus, our normal voting method was changed so that we could fill out our ballots at home and mail them in or deposit them into special locked containers that were set out at several locations in each community.

Ballots returned by mail normally take longer to count, so we don't have our final results as of yet. At the time of writing this post, however, Joe Biden has been declared the unofficial winner of the race for U.S. President, having clinched more electoral votes than Donald Trump with only a few states to declare one way or another.

There are a couple of noteworthy things about this election. Biden, at age 78, is the oldest person to be elected as President of the United States. He chose 56-year-old, former California Attorney General and U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Having won the election, this makes Harris the first woman to serve in the office of Vice President, as well as being a woman of color. (Harris has roots in Africa, Southeast Asia and India.) Should Biden have to step down for health or other reasons, that would put Harris into the top spot, making her the first female U.S. President. Some people "in the know" claim that this is a real likelihood. A few have even said that Biden has planned for such an occurrence all along. But we'll see.

Perhaps we've turned a corner here. For the last four years we've seemed to be at war with...ourselves. I can't remember a time when we've been so divided as a country. Maybe now things can settle down and we can get back to normal.