Both political parties are failing the nation. The Republicans have the seditious Trump who’s persuaded at least 60 percent of his followers that he won the election he lost in November. President-elect Joe Biden is presenting a restoration of the Obama elites who infuriated every Trumper and the millions of Democrats who are Bernie and Elizabeth Warren progressives.

Non-Trumpers live in bafflement and outrage at the anti-democracy anarchy of Republicans who claim that the president won re-election. These Trumpers loyally support a man who shows no loyalty to the nation or anyone else. The vast majority of Trump’s communication since the election is on voting fraud rather than on the 9/11 number of Americans dying everyday of COVID.

Voting fraud is why U.S. Attorney General William Barr lost Trump’s love. The AG said he could not find sufficient election irregularities to overturn November’s results. Plus he didn’t disclose tax investigations on Biden’s son before the election. He gets the boot, a big kick in the rump.

Barr is now replaced in the love by Republican state attorneys general. They took a specious legal case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case undermines the federalism that forms a foundation of this nation. The court tossed the case so now those newly appointed “Trump” justices are on the president’s bad boy/girl list. The Republican Party head in Texas, however, has moved up in Trump’s feeling-the-love column. The Texan wants Texas to secede. Are we in Fort Sumter mode now? Should we expect cannon balls soon? Any deep state intelligence on where the attack will occur?

Then there’s U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and his Senate leadership who’ve put the kibosh on COVID aide for millions of hunger-threatened, unemployed Americans who may be pushed onto the streets without some financial help. McConnell’s obstruction derives from rules of the Senate, not from some idealistic constitutional imperative.

These very same Republican leaders support Trump’s violation of rules and conventions that undergird our democracy and good government, such as a smooth transition from one presidential administration who’s time’s up to the next administration who won election fair and square.

No wonder non-Trumpers live in fear that Georgians will vote for two Republicans who put their personal stock trading accounts ahead of their senatorial responsibilities and tolerate and probably support Trump’s sedition. Republicans have moved on from Lincoln’s values of voting rights, equality and justice, economic growth through investment, and good government supporting democracy.

It’s time to say whoa, what the hell! Republicans have jumped the shark.

Meanwhile, Biden slipped into the presidency between Trump’s over-55 white supporters and Bernie’s millennials and gen Z’s. He won with progressives’ backs to the wall over Trump. Nevertheless, Bernie’s supporters surely hoped they’d get something better than Obama’s former Secretary of State John Kerry on climate change, Obama’s former national defense counsel Susan Rice on domestic policy, WestExec advisers and Obama deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken as secretary of state, recently retired Gen. Lloyd Austin at Defense, and former Obama Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for a return term.

Does Biden not understand that these are the very same people voters rejected in 2016? Is this the best he can do? Really? Now, Biden will have both sides of both parties snarling mad.

Here’s a list of the catastrophes on Biden’s plate, some of which were unresolved by Obama’s administration: COVID, climate change, a tanked economy, high unemployment, too much student debt, environmental degradation and deregulation, Iran and Israel and Palestine and Turkey and Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO chaos, Russian subversion, North Korea, and among the most important, millions of children without at least one year of education due to COVID.

To take on this level of challenge, the nation needs a Franklin Roosevelt visionary. What have the Democrats produced? An Obama reprise. These Biden buddies do cautious, tepid, unimaginative, and slow when the nation needs rapid course correction.

Before the transition it was possible to imagine that Biden, with nothing to lose at his age, would embrace this fiery moment. Instead, the president-elect has taken a pass on Roosevelt’s inspired leadership MO of empowering democracy to push through catastrophe. The nation, with both political parties, is left with paucity.