I’ve been thinking about the results of the election last week.  The fact that although Joe Biden won, there really wasn’t a so called blue wave.  The results were narrow, in the sense of 5 million out of around 145 million votes cast.  But it is a clear enough repudiation of DJT in that Biden won, while down ballot Democrats continued to struggle.  This means many split their vote.   It seems to me that people are saying they’ve had enough of Trumps divisiveness, we want political figures to work together, not simply fight.  Furthermore there is a rejection of a completely progressive agenda.  People want a blend.  If you take away the labels, such as socialism and progressiveness and focus on the issues, Americans are remarkably liberal.

Locally in Florida Trump won the majority of the vote because of favorable business regulations and taxes, but a minimum wage increase to 15 over a 5 year period was approved by 62%.  People see this as fair.  It was simply treated as an issue to consider, not a liberal issue as it could have been labeled.  Likewise Amendment 1 was clearly a very right wing initiative to  re-emphasize that you must be a citizen in FL to vote in FL by adding the word “only” … it was a do nothing (except excite rightwing voters) amendment, and it was rejected by voters.

Clearly normal stable leadership is desired.  The experimentation with divisiveness and anger conservatism was rejected.  Furthermore people want to see advancement on issues that make our lives better as well as the lives of our fellow citizens.  If we stop labeling and staking out intractable positions, maybe we can talk about problems, and find compromise solutions.

A beautiful example is healthcare… who in this country would say that we cannot afford for everyone to have healthcare?  I doubt anyone would say it’s not affordable.  Yet  45 million do not have health care insurance, and another 38 million lack adequate healthcare insurance.  Is that a result that we are proud of?  I doubt it.  But we should work to address this issue with ideas from all sides, not trenches, with a no-mans-land in between, from which we lob grenades, arguing over nationalized healthcare… do away with the labels and figure out what makes most sense.  The reason we have employer-based health care is because of an accident of World War 2,  there was a wage freeze mandated, and so providing benefits was the only way companies could differentiate in the competition for human resources, so we landed there.  Is that the best solution when there is an economic downturn?  I think not.

Sensible conversations about issues is needed.  Sensible problem-solving is what Americans voted for.  Sensible leadership is what we all desire.   Stop labeling each other!