The past four years have shown that Donald Trump was not a competent president. He handled the Coronavirus crisis terribly, preferring advancing his buddies and his agenda over listening to the science and public health recommendations. While certainly belief and values have an important role in decision-making, science and facts matter. That’s something we’ve learned to be true over the past four years.

I even thought about voting for Trump in 2016 – I’m a Democrat – but I didn’t really have warm and fuzzy feelings about the Hillary Clinton. I grew up in 1990s, and it seemed like from the Crime bill to Welfare reform to Internet Regulation to Financial Deregulation to gun control and reactionary policies after the Oklahoma City bombing – there wasn’t much positive to say about the Bill Clinton years. Maybe those measures were the brainchild of Republican Congress, but hardly a progressive record or anything worth voting for in those years.

In contrast to Clinton, I’d figured Trump be good on the second amendment and limiting the role of government in our lives. I knew Trump was an obnoxious and racist, but he could be tolerated, because I was sure one that political silly season was over, Trump would grow into the job and be a serious executive. A native New Yorker, I figured Trump would understand the needs of the state and city, and at least be serious in his dealing with urban areas and public transportation as he served in White House. Nothing could be further from the truth – he remained the Tweeter and Chief, a rich white trash son-of-a-bitch in the White House.

While I never seriously considered voting for him as a Republican, I figured a single vote on the Conservative line would be a great way to give the system a middle finger, and maybe shake up the system. Ultimately though, I ended up voting for Jill Stein on the Green line. Maybe I just wanted plausible deniability if he was ultimately to go on to become President, I knew a vote for Stein wouldn’t ever count for anything but wouldn’t be a vote for a Clinton, a personality that reminded me of everything that was wrong in my childhood. But certainly Jill Stein was just as loony as Trump, but I knew at least she wouldn’t be elected into office and it was a great protest vote.

Four years, when your an adult, really isn’t that long of a time span. It seems like only yesterday I was watching on Google to see when the President of United States would flip from Obama to Trump. I remember hearing the warnings from my liberal friends that Donald Trump’s election to the White House would be a disaster, but I kind of rolled my eyes as my conservative friends kind of thought he would be good. I figured he was worth a try, and change was good. I drowned out the noise for three years, chocking most of presidency up to politically silliness.

I think my mind was changed over summer was I was standing out, waiting for the bus with my mask downtown, after 5 months working remotely and avoiding the downtown. The smashed windows and paint dumped on the road, the road signs vandalized with BLM and black power painted all of them. The warm mugginess of wearing a mask in summer heat, abandoned and shuttered businesses during the pandemic. People’s fear and social distancing. So much of the world I once knew had changed.

While I don’t think it’s entirely fair to blame President Trump on the pandemic, he certainly wasn’t the guiding hand our country needed. When the nation needed leadership, it got tweeting and gossip. Important public concerns – like climate change and healthcare – were entirely ignored. The racial problems in the cities were allowed to boil out of control, the world which had been getting better – maybe slowly took a big step backwards.

So I’m ready for Biden …