Biden promised to return normalcy. It’s a tall order

Lee Drutman also quoted in the Boston Globe about Biden’s promise for a return to normalcy.

The divisions within the Republican Party, and the rest of the country, laid bare by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and the violent siege on the Capitol, point to a serious crisis for democracy, said Lee Drutman, a political scientist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.

“It’s very hard to walk back to anything resembling normal when we’ve just been through an election in which one party has perpetuated a myth that the election was stolen,” Drutman said.

And it’s a challenge that Biden has limited ability to solve. He said it would help for Congress to pass legislation overhauling voting access, congressional gerrymandering, and campaign finance to bolster democracy — a bill that Democratic leaders in both chambers have said is a priority. Biden also can work to elevate the center-right of the Republican Party, Drutman said.