Madeleine May Kunin is a former Democratic governor of Vermont. She is the author of “Coming of Age, My Journey to the Eighties.”
We waited so long, then it happened so fast.
At 11:24 Saturday morning, on Nov. 7, CNN called the election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — five long days after the election.
It felt like someone had pulled a switch or swept aside a heavy curtain: The country was blazing in light. Clouds were swept away. Sunshine beamed everywhere. Joy jumped out in the streets. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly: once, twice, then three times. This was real. It was over.
The magic number was on the screen: 273 electoral votes! Wow.
Philadelphia did it, the city of brotherly love, where our country began to take shape.
Relief. I didn’t think I would feel so much relief. Or that it would feel so good. Horns were already tooting, people were dancing in the streets, wherever they found space. Nobody needed permission. They just let go.
I don’t think I knew how tortuous the last four years have been, until the air went out of the Trump balloon: “whoosh” in one instant, one pinprick.
My daughter said to me over the phone from New York City, “It’s wonderful to see so many people who are so happy.”
This was so much better than footage of Times Square on New Year’s Eve, which always seemed a little forced. This election exuberance was self-generated, an expression of genuine jubilation. Women, men, boys and girls jumping up and down as if they were crowded onto a trampoline.
Such a rare moment in our recent history. Savor it, I say to myself.
The speeches by President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris did not disappoint. Kamala Harris was cognizant of her place in history as the first woman and the first Black woman to be elected vice president. She knows that little girls, of every color and ethnicity, can now look up to her and say to themselves, “When I grow up, I want to be like Kamala.”
The daughter of immigrants has rekindled the flame that keeps the American dream alive. As my widowed mother said to me and my brother when we came to this country, “Anything is possible in America.”
And Biden’s speech told us what we desperately wanted to hear. There is no red America or blue America, “there is the United States of America.” He concluded his speech with a quote from the Bible — that there is a time for everything, including a time for healing.
I now have to wake up from my exuberance and face the tough reality facing Biden and Harris.
Sen. Mitch McConnell will be an obstructionist, President Donald Trump refuses to admit he lost, and thousands of American voters will continue to believe in Trump.
But nothing can take us away from the glorious revelation that the better angels of our nature are soaring overhead.
