Can an activist have druthers?

The Times queried a sample of individual voters:

... [what were] their hopes for the country — whatever the outcome of the election. What did they want for America?

This isn't the sort of thing I tend to think about. Experience and education have given me the opportunity to think more granularly about both policy directions that appear desirable to me and about the twisted trade-offs that advancing toward any of them might entail. So I write about that stuff.

But what would I hope for in a new presidency? I'll restrict myself to two:

• One: that the necessary popular mobilization that so many of us learned we must take part in during the Trump regime/GOPer remains alive in some form -- or in many forms. My greatest disappointment with the Obama presidency was that after the first Black man won the big job, he allowed all the energy which had been Organizing for America to be drained off into busy work, such as public service projects to mark the MLK holiday. It was pretty clear even before the inauguration that his crew didn't want the awakened tiger to stay around. And our hopes crashed along with the organized energy. I don't think we're as dependent on Biden for leadership in this as we were on Obama, though the money may dry up.

• Two: I hope to regain some feeling that this troubled land is once again in forward motion, is grappling with the inescapable requirements of our history and reality. You can't duck this stuff and live. The Trump regime felt as if a country limping toward a better, if imperfect, future had slammed into a wall. (There's that ur-Trumpian wall theme again.) The needs for forward motion are so many: for climate sustainability, for more racial justice, for a more equitable economy, for more gender equality, for more democracy, for less militarized empire. We aren't going to get to any of them (will, maybe, involuntarily, that last). But the country more or less works when we are trying.