1. This is what keeps me up a night. But we have a chance to heal.
https://twitter.com/toddgitlin/status/1325446057577340936
2. Biden is a decent man. And he will strive to unite us.
3. Some on the left may not like this but. he needs to appoint moderate Republicans to his cabinet. And he needs to build a vital center.
4. He can use his basic decency, character, and of course public policy, to bring working class Democrats and more Latins back into the Democratic coalition.
5. And of course not have a Trump in the office of the president inflaming things alone will be a big step forward.
6. As a working class kid, I can tell you the thing working class people want is respect. Respect of them and their values. They cannot stand people talking down at them.
7. My mother used to say they just talk talk talk, her expression was they talk telephone numbers. Meaning pseudo- intellectual nonsense.
8. Biden has never fall into the trap, and will speak plainly to all Americans. That will help.
9. But even all those things taken together will not heal America. The problem is the structure of our political institutions.
10. The problem is the overinflated executive branch and the imperial presidency, which function to nationalize political issues and political conflict.
11. We have to take this down a whole bunch of notches.
12. That means using our federalist structure to shift power and issues away from the federal level and down to the local level.
13. Thank of federalism as a dial that can be dialed up as it has been over the past century, or dialed down as it needs to be now.
14. So one thing Biden can do especially if your face is a divider to Congress, his begin the hard work of building a bi-partisan coalition to shift power to the local level.
15. Any bail out could be a signal of how we can do this, empowering localities and regions to set their own terms of how they use the money.
16. The reality is Americans vote with their feet, and pick the places they want to live with values and structures that best fit them.
17. Study after study has shown that Americans are happy where they live, where do they live in cities, suburbs, or rural areas
18. Other studies show that when you take liberals and conservatives, even the most ultra-liberal the most ultra-conservative Americans, they share a broad consensus on most local issues.
19. The way out of the divide is to give people the respect and trust they need to live their lives on a local basis. And stop nationalizing political issues and political conflict
20. We will never be fully united, we differ too much on too many issues. But we can respect each other and coexist in the places where we live.
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