Nearly four years ago, I suspended my regularly scheduled Beards for New Years annual beard growth in favor of a protest beard.Yesterday, I shaved it off for the clean start I’ve been waiting for. To be honest, I didn’t think It would go this long. I thought for sure he’d be done sooner. We’ve lived with it for too much time, the idea that someone so completely odious could win. The clean start isn’t nearly as clean as I’d like.

Nearly 250k dead, wasted. And more to come.

The Senate narrowly still possibly up for grabs but far from conclusive.

The results should have been a tsunami of refutation. It’s a testament to the strength of it that it was still decisive even through all of the various kinds of voter suppression put into place, the closing of polling places, the purging of rolls, the stripping of voting rights from felons, the mail slowdowns.

With the calling of the election, support for this administration seems to have crumpled overnight like the empty facade some have seen it for all along. I wonder if we could have taken the wind out of the sails earlier, but I’m relieved the rats are finally fleeing the sinking ship. There’s reckoning to be done, but for now, just a sigh of relief, another day tomorrow, and remorse for those we were too late to help.

Of course there are challenges ahead, but it still feels like a new day.