The Democratic Truce Is Over

The jubilant mob celebrating in front of the White House on Saturday was impressive for its size but also for its heterogeneity—as though a wide sampling of Washington, D.C., residents had been dumped on Black Lives Matter Plaza to celebrate Joe Biden’s victory. There were crop-topped Code Pink protesters, dancing Black teenagers, and consultant types in their blue-checked dress shirts. Women in Lululemon leggings carried biden 2020 signs, parents carried babies, and grandmothers carried tiny, quivering dogs through the crowd.

But a sense of impermanence hung over the revelry, like the few moments of stillness before a summer storm. For Democrats, this election was an exercise in setting aside differences in support of a broader goal: ending the reign of Donald Trump. Now that this goal has been accomplished, the Democrats’ truce is over.

“As excited as I am that Trump is not going to be here anymore as president, I don’t think we should be getting comfortable,” a 37-year-old woman named Maria, who asked that I not use her last name for privacy reasons, told me at the White House rally. She carried a sign reading . “The strongest plank of [Biden’s] platform was ‘I’m not Trump,’ and that’s not going to be good enough for the next four years.”