Schmich: Let’s give thanks for poll workers, Stacey Abrams, fact-checkers — and the weather

Hey, fellow Joe Biden supporters. Let’s pause for a moment to be glad.

It’s true that this election wasn’t what some Biden voters dreamed of. It wasn’t a landslide. It wasn’t a full-throated repudiation of a corrupt and cruel president. It wasn’t an election that transported us from hell to paradise in the time it takes to say, “Joe.”

But there has been a lot in the past few days to be glad and grateful for. So before there’s a collective return to Eeyore mode — an attitude that flourished last week among some Biden supporters, even when the count tilted in his favor — let’s give thanks where it’s due.

Thanks to the Americans who voted in record-breaking numbers, the majority of them for Biden. They voted by mail. They walked their ballot to a drop-off box. Many stood in long lines, in searing sun and steady rain, to exercise their right and duty.

Thanks especially to the ones who wore their pandemic masks without resistance or complaint.

Thanks to the poll workers who made the polling places run more smoothly. They dealt with voters who didn’t want to wear masks, who couldn’t figure out their pens. They were people like the woman I saw outside Lincoln Park High School in Chicago the evening before Election Day, when the line was two hours long. Wearing a Chicago flag mask, a poll worker badge and a Chicago Bears jersey, she walked up and down the line with a raised fist, calling over and over in her best Bears’ fan voice, “Hang in there!” and “We’re so happy that you’re here!”

Thanks to all the volunteers who wrote postcards, made phone calls, sent texts and, in many cases, traveled to distant places to get out the vote.

A special shoutout to Stacey Abrams of Georgia, who helped lead a multiracial coalition that fought voter suppression in her traditionally conservative state.

Thank you to the Republicans who voted across the party line because they knew that a vote for this Republican was not in the best interest of the country. Their choice took vision, humility and guts.

Thanks to Mitt Romney and a few other Republicans lawmakers who, as the votes were being counted publicly, pushed back against the president’s lies about voter fraud.

Thanks to the fact-checkers, who could hardly keep up with the lies and distortions that raced around social media and came out of the president’s mouth. Daniel Dale at CNN gets a special commendation.

As for the pollsters? Well. It will be easier to thank them when they’re closer to right.

Thanks to Joe Biden’s former rivals who put aside their hurt feelings to fight for him. Among them was Pete Buttigieg, who has always erred on the side of intelligent optimism, as he did when he said on Election Day: “If we get it right, this decade could go down in history as the era when America finally lives up to our founding promise. That is why we are doing this work.”

Thanks to the journalists who worked long days and nights to help us understand what the heck was going on.

Thanks to my friends — and yours — the people who helped keep us sane by sharing Netflix recommendations, book recommendations, good conversation or good jokes as we waited for the count to be done. Friendships help us remember that while politics shapes the world, the world is more than politics.

And Stephen Colbert. Thank him for crying on the air as he talked about how the president faced the nation and lied about the election being stolen. We needed a good cry.

Thank you to anyone who tried to explain the Electoral College and why we’re still reliant on such an outdated institution.

Thanks to Joe Biden for staying classy through the long vote-counting wait, for behaving the way a president should. Thanks to his smart, energetic running mate Kamala Harris, who has helped expand the vision of what a vice president looks like, and for doing it in sensible shoes.

Let’s give thanks, too, for what the election revealed about the state of the country. We may not like everything we’ve seen, but you can’t fix what you don’t see. We emerge from last week a little wiser, if not much calmer.

And thanks to the weather gods, who all week gave much of the country blue skies and warm air and autumn leaves, proving, once again, that no matter what else is going on, it’s always better with trees.

Mary Schmich is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.