First order of business is to remove Mitch McConnell as a force of control in the US Senate. He is equally as toxic for the American people as Donald Trump has been in the White House. The Georgia voters must give Joe Biden a chance to repair the damage done by the Trump White House and the McConnell Senate. It will take a herculean effort. The McConnell heritage is a wasteland featuring obstruction of progressive needs and at the same time providing a nursery for corporate coddling.

Trump’s influence must be removed as well. With 74 million voting for the disaster called Trump and sizable votes to re-elect Republicans at multiple levels, there is reason to re-examine the Democratic message.

With Trump granting pardons that represent desperate acts of self-preservation of himself and his extended crime family, New York prosecutors have the solemn task of taking the Trump crime family out of a planned pursuit of sabotaging progressive efforts of the Biden administration. He too is a threat to Biden’s effort to make lives of the majority better.

There is also the matter of so many voters being vulnerable to the poison that the right-wing media spews, led by Fox News, and that Trump has spread with his control of the national forum. The vulnerabilities of so many voters are real and must be addressed, not with insults and derision, but with real policies that deal with their tribulations. Fox News thrives when its audience suffers continued oppression and uses derisive attacks by Democrats to stoke more polarization.

I love Joy Reid’s intelligence and passion on MSNBC, but she is wrong to put the election results down too “a great amount of racism and anti-blackness,” which tends to transfer Trump’s proven racism to them. Charles Blow of the NY Times did the same, citing “strength of the white patriarchy.”

The idea of 74 million voting for a vile, incompetent racist is a little overwhelming, especially when it was reasonable projections estimated that he is responsible for 100s of thousands of deaths. But regarding his supporters, we must look at the evidence as well. Remember many Obama voters as well as Bernie supporters switched to Trump.

Trump lost to Joe Biden by about 7 million votes in 2020 but received around 11 million more votes than he garnered in 2016. How is it possible that he received one-fourth of the non-white vote in 2020, and achieved an increase in the percentage of the votes of black women from 4% to 8%? Both statistics seem unbelievable.

Trump voters are certainly swayed by a cruel, patently dishonest, fear-mongering right-wing media, one which cements feelings of anger and fear into a unified political identity that spitefully votes against the target that Fox News willfully paints. Generally, that target is liberals, a term with no real meaning as presented through Fox News, where it only carries emotion.

But most of these voters have grossly unfulfilled social and economic needs, needs which neither political party has provided. Democrats offer wishful thinking, including a preachy political correctness, coupled with somewhat general economic promises; the Republicans, relentless obstruction of any social and economic needs for the less privileged.

And in the background, you have crony capitalists pitching all the goods and services many of the Fox News viewers can’t afford. But deep in the shadows, corporate leaders pull the strings of control.

Meanwhile, American voters show their interest in social democratic issues. Exit polls after the election show a 72% favorability for public health plans. In Florida, 60% of citizens voted for increases in a minimum wage that tops our at $15 an hour. Colorado voted for paid leave for childbirth and family emergencies. During a pandemic, eighty-two percent of Republicans cite the economy as their main concern.

It seems that under all that demonization of Trump supporters, including sweeping generalizations of being united in racism, or being swept into idiotic conspiracy theories, or becoming cult members, there are real needs being unmet.  What is frustrating for most of us, but with less damage for the middle class than the working class, is the continual redistribution of wealth and income to the very rich.

Probably the biggest felt betrayal happened on Obama’s watch when the perpetrators of the economic collapse, many bailed out by the government, ran away with the retirement savings of many of the less privileged, many of which lost their jobs. Add to that, the insult of corporate executives granting themselves bonuses with taxpayer money. Even realignment after the recession favored the rich, many guilty as sin but never charged due to their privileged economic positions thought vital to recovery.

Even before this economic debacle, the working classes suffered from low wages, job loss, unemployment, inadequate health care, unaffordable housing and poor working conditions for two generations. This insult, economic collapse, added to prior injuries, helped to empower the Tea Party movement, which the privileged Koch brothers financed, seeing that marshalling this anger among mainly the working class, helped send the blame elsewhere, that is, away from their shared guilt.

Thus, big corporate money directed the growing social unrest, polarization, economic hardship, fostered disregard for the common good, including lack of public health into a blame game of liberals, unions, Democrats and intellectuals – all their own opponents. Recipients of corporate campaign support, Republicans were obliging in the propaganda campaign.

Trump became the perfect vehicle, riding a populist wave that debunked an establishment that many voters had good reason to mistrust, and corporate chieftains had the money and insfrastructure to feed the wave of distrust and anger. Trump gave them a sect-like following, the means to pack the courts, many court appointments that Mitch had already stifled during the Obama years.

Unless Democrats get busy fulfilling the pent-up needs of middle class and working Americans, the large pool of Trump supporters will not be swayed to Joe Biden’s side and remain in the limbo of angst and anger, used by right-wing media. Of course, this help will never come while McConnell controls the Senate.

Obama was leery about using his executive powers during his two terms. He was cautious and convinced that compromise was possible, especially during a critical period of near economic collapse. At every turn, Obama got rope-a-doped by McConnell and Republicans.

Biden needs to be more progressive and more determined than Obama was. The road to winning over Trump supporters must be a steadfast march toward the democratic socialism that Bernie Sanders always preached as a candidate. The American people are ready for an economic security that the corporate chieftains have scuttled through their Republican agents for  two generations now. Remember, it was and is the corporate rich who financed relentless efforts to strip millions of Obamacare and pack the courts with justices who will do their bidding.

That is why we must give Joe Biden a chance to repair massive Trump damage and provide all of us a fair and secure social and economic order, one which protects us against health care disaster, provides family needs, and an economic security we all deserve as American citizens. Then opportunities for better lives will follow.