There is every reason to worry about how Joe Biden will use his power. There were also reasons to worry about every othe

To be clear: I don’t hate Joe Biden. He does nothing to inspire the visceral anger and fear I felt toward his predecessor. He’s the generic, semi-competent white man I wound up with after my hopes for several better Democratic candidates fell through. For most of the Democrats and left-leaning voters I know, Joe Biden is just that: the last available option, the human safety school. He’s the nice-enough boy you go to the dance with when your true love asks someone else.

My 2019 self would never have gone anywhere near that freezing patio. But this year, I anticipated a late-fall and winter spent outside. So, I purchased appropriate seasonal outerwear — a secondhand “barn coat” made of heavy canvas and wool, ostensibly for milking cows during the early morning hours that I’m still in bed — to replace the jean-jacket-and-windbreaker combo that would typically tide me over from sweater weather to parka season.

It’s easy to think you’re above this sort of thing. Yet the messianic fervor with which many left-leaning voters embraced Obama, or Bernie Sanders, was no more grounded in reality. It has become customary, especially on social media, to turn elections into fandom wars, to treat preferred candidates like sports teams or pop stars (the #KHive, Kamala Harris’ dedicated fan base, is explicitly modeled on Beyoncé’s #Beyhive) and descend upon unbelievers with stannish fervor. This has made the electoral discourse a site of more or less constant harassment and abuse; though the atmosphere of apocalyptic conflict led to high turnout in the Trump years, over time, undecided voters are likely to tune out of the conversation if staying in it means getting death threats. A democracy doesn’t function when people don’t feel safe making their choice. For those who have gotten sucked in—and, again, I include myself—the atmosphere instills a kind of combat-based tunnel vision: We can be so determined to protect “our” candidates from bad-faith criticism that we dismiss even legitimate concerns.

This is all for the good. Public affection for Biden, if it existed, would only shield him from the scrutiny and criticism he continues to deserve. He’s a president who believes that “abortion is always wrong,” taking office just in time to preside over the likely fall of Roe v. Wade; a president who prizes moderation and stability in a time when only drastic action will resolve climate change; a president who believes in bipartisanship and consensus building at a time when the Republican Party has drifted toward fascism and grown suspicious of democracy. Biden seems incurious about the leftward drift among the party’s younger voters. His rumored cabinet picks range from the merely uninspiring (Janet Yellen) to the actively atrocious (Rahm Emanuel, who covered up a murder). His vision is, specifically, an America in which “nothing will fundamentally change”; his job was to depose Trump, which he did, but without Trump in the picture, it’s easier to notice that “nothing changing” also means “nothing getting better.”

It’s a minor thing, this coat. But it represents a meaningful, if subtle, shift in thinking. I can’t control the change in season, or the fact that “outside” is the only place I can safely be around any other person who isn’t my partner. But I can dress for the weather. I can expand my definition of “a nice day.” I can adapt. And I have. It’s not an earth-shattering manifestation of growth, but it is real.

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Racism, we’ve become depressingly familiar with a very specific kind of racist: the elected official who thinks that their bigotry is too clever to keep it to themselves, and insists on posting wild racist jokes on social media. One of those elected officials was a town council member who was forced to resign this summer in Moncks Corner, South Carolina; last week we learned that a Black woman, Latorie Lloyd Walker, had been elected to fill his seat. The social media joke that cost dude his job was a Facebook image of Hillary Clinton in blackface with a caption that read “Dear Joe, I’m still available” — a reference to Biden’s choice of Sen. Kamala Harris as his VP nominee. But if you’re wondering why we still haven’t identified the racist council member by name, it’s because we’ve been savoring that specific detail. Dude’s name, and we swear to you we’re not making this up, is Chadwick Sweatman. Chadwick Sweatman. That shit is Busta Rhymes on a posse cut; if you don’t save it for the end, then you’re doing it wrong. That name, once again? CHADWICK SWEATMAN. Wakaren forever! (The Post and Courier)

Attempts to make Joe Biden into some kind of national father figure or likable pal are misguided and completely beside the point. The single biggest benefit of the Biden presidency is that voters aren’t expected to care about the guy. He isn’t a savior or an imaginary friend or a father figure; he’s just someone we elected to do a job.

Framing candidates as perfect or superhuman might help them win elections, but it hurts them in the long run. In the case of Barack Obama, many of his supporters turned on him the moment it became clear he could not reverse decades of political polarization or centuries of American racism just by getting elected. The virulent anger Obama currently inspires on some parts of the left is, yes, grounded in policy — drone wars, deportations — but it’s also grounded in the expectation that he could single-handedly fix every problem caused by George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency or force a Republican Congress to pass single-payer health care by sheer force of will. We built Obama up to be Superman, then yelled at him for not being able to fly.

Look, if Kirsten Gillibrand or Elizabeth Warren had won the nomination, I’d be peppering my social media feeds with praise and photos and trivia about their dogs. If and when AOC runs, I expect to be insufferable on her behalf. Yet there’s something deeply toxic about turning every presidency into a cult of personality. Donald Trump was a personality cult and almost nothing but; he was elevated to a position he clearly wasn’t fit for simply because he was a celebrity, and for his supporters, his loud, bullying bigotry felt like vicarious release. Even as the country collapsed into a flaming, disease-ridden heap around him, Trump kept throwing rallies, relishing the chance to perform for his audience. And his audience kept showing up.

There have been attempts to polish Biden’s persona. There was the “cool Uncle Joe” Onion caricature during the Obama years, though that was mostly a reflection of the shimmer coming off Obama himself. More recently, he’s been painted as a font of tender sentiment: the mourner-in-chief, endowed with “beautiful” empathy, someone whose “superpower [is] his ability to comfort and listen and connect with people,” the nurturing daddy we always needed, etc. This is all standard campaign stuff, intended to forge emotional connection with the brand. It is also all bullshit; someone with superhuman empathy would not believe abortion to be wrong, would not have railroaded Anita Hill, and would not sneak up behind a female colleague at a work event and kiss her without permission, as Joe Biden is said to have done.

Joe Biden sometimes seemed to be the only serious presidential candidate without a fandom at his back, and his victory is, at least, an opportunity to get some peace and quiet. We can stop treating the president like a friend or a fashion choice and focus on how well he does his job. I didn’t vote for a daddy or a demigod. I voted for the guy who can sign his name to the executive order relieving my family’s student debt. If Joe Biden does that, I don’t need to like him, and if he doesn’t, I don’t really care how nice he is. I don’t expect this presidency, or any other, to single-handedly resolve problems centuries in the making, nor do I believe any politician when he says that “he alone can fix” what ails us. I just want someone who does more good than harm with the power they’re given, and if that balance tips in the other direction, I want them gone.

There is every reason to worry about how Joe Biden will use his power. There were also reasons to worry about every other candidate on the ballot. Elections are the beginning of the work, not the end, and with Biden, the need to hold him accountable doesn’t come as a surprise. It’s a bigger blessing than you’d think. For once, we can stop thinking about whether we like the president and start thinking about whether his decisions are good for us. We can stop caring about Joe Biden and start caring about ourselves.

Presidents, more than most politicians, run on mystique and emotional connection. There are plenty of dull and competent senators out there — Joe Biden was one of them for