Biden promises a return to normalcy. Is America ready to go there? [San Francisco Chronicle]
Jan. 20 Many Americans will exhale at 9 a.m Wednesday, relieved to have survived the Donald Trump presidency. Four years of chaos and lies and the presidential encouragement of America’s most malevolent elements will end when Joe Biden takes the oath of office.
But is America ready for what Biden promised: a return to normalcy?
“That’s the big question: Can we return to normal after the Trump presidency?” said Elaine Kamarck, author of “Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again.”
“Everybody wants a return to some kind of normalcy, but given all the stuff that Trump got away with, people are wondering if that’s possible,” said Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Community members and activists gathered in San Diego to show support for the young immigrants known as, “Dreamers” after the president announced the end of the program.
An event at UC San Diego this week highlighted the economic impact of young undocumented immigrants on the United States economy, their individual stories, and what institutions and States can do to protect them as they face an uncertain future after President Trump ended the program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego hosted the event, “Challenges for Dreamers in Trump’s America,” on Monday, Dec. 4, which consisted of presentations by immigration experts and DACA recipients themselves.
The last time Democrats had both chambers of Congress and the White House, Barack Obama had overcome the odds and had been elected the first Black president.
When Congressman Peter DeFazio recalls those two years of Democratic Party control, he says Obama made a mistake in economic recovery after listening “to that jerk Larry Summers” when pushing for the Troubled Assets Relief Package (TARP) legislation during the Great Recession, which resulted tax cuts too small to notice and minimal job creation.
Summers was President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, and during Obama’s first year served as the director of the National Economic Council.