Getting the Job Done

And fixing what’s broken

Gov. Wes Moore at the re-opening of the Fort McHenry Channel

Something extraordinary happened in Baltimore recently, and nobody seems to give a damn.

Do you remember that sinking feeling you had back in March when you watched the video of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse after that unfathomably enormous container ship lost power and crashed into a support column? How many lives were lost? Would you ever feel safe enough to drive over a bridge again? 

The experts told us the channel could be closed for years while the wreckage was cleaned up. The worries about the impact of the supply chain disruption would have on the local, national, and even global economies were real and urgent.

And then something else spectacular and horrible happened—perhaps the defining characteristic of the Donald Trump era of American politics—and we all moved on to the next mind-blowing, energy-sapping news story.

It turns out not all of us moved on, though.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore didn’t move on. Union workers didn’t move on. And President Joe Biden didn’t move on. 

No, they did the work, and 11 weeks after the bridge fell, the channel has been reopened and yet another unfixable mess has been fixed—by Democrats.  

“I’ve been waiting to say this every day for the last 11 weeks, Maryland: the Fort McHenry Channel is fully cleared, and the Port of Baltimore is reopened for business,” Gov. Wes Moore said at a waterside news conference.

It was a major success story—good government in action, the kind of thing Democrats excel at and Republicans deride. Democrats and union labor (another thing Republicans undermine at every turn) teamed up to do the impossible for the good of Americans and the global economy. 

How boring of them. Or at least the corporate media seems to think this stunning and consequential accomplishment isn’t interesting enough to report on. But we know better.

There have been at least two other high-profile disasters like this since Biden took office—the I-95 collapsing in Philadelphia and the I-10 in Los Angeles. In all three instances, experts feared the worst and long delays were expected. 

In all three instances, Democratic leadership and union labor pulled together and did everything in their power to fix what was broken. 

Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania and his team reopened I-95 in 12 days. In L.A., Gov. Gavin Newsome, Mayor Karen Bass and their crews reopened I-10 in a little more than a week.

And those aren’t even the biggest disasters Democrats have had to clean up in the last few years.

If bridge collapses and burning highways came in human form, that human would be named Donald Trump. It’s very difficult to articulate, let alone wrap our minds around, the wreckage this one person has left in his wake, and it’s taken the Biden administration and its allies every bit of the last three years to clean up the mess. 

I think we really need to figure out—and explain—why so many people suffer from amnesia when it comes to the horrors committed by the Trump administration, especially from March 2020 to January 2021, but when Pres. Biden came into office, thousands of Americans were dying every day, ten million people were out of work, and American democracy was hanging by a thread. I don’t know that any incoming president in modern times has been dealt a worse hand, but while Donald spread the Big Lie, stole classified documents, and continued to fan the flames lit during the insurrection he incited, Biden went to work. Now, our economy is one of the strongest in the world, and we have largely returned to a normal that was far from guaranteed.  

As for the mess Donald’s horde left at the U.S. Capitol Democrats on January 6th, Democrats cleaned that up, too. 

The choice before the American people keeps getting clearer: We can choose someone who is expert at destroying things—like businesses, institutions, and political parties—or we can choose someone who’s good at re-building them—like the economy, America’s reputation abroad, and the idea that the government is meant to work for the people.

Every day, Biden reminds us that he’s running for president so he can finish the job he started while continuing to promote the ideals that make America a country worth fighting for.

Every day, Donald reminds us that he’s running for president so he can stay out of prison and seek revenge against his political enemies. That’s it. There is no higher purpose; there’s not even basic human decency.

If he wins again, Donald will make any disasters that occur on his watch worse, like the time he told Californians they needed to rake their forests floors to fight fires;  or the time he withheld life-saving medical equipment from New Yorkers because their governor didn’t kiss his ass sufficiently; or the time he used his sharpie to redraw a hurricane map because he’d made a mistake about which states were going to be affected by the storm and he chose to put people’s lives in danger rather than admit he was wrong.

It seems too obvious to have to say, but there are tens of millions of Americans who still need to hear it—let’s stick with the guy who’s been fixing what’s broken instead of the guy who broke everything in the first place. If we don’t, we aren’t going to get another chance to clean up Donald’s next mess.