Things I demand from my federal government in 2021:

1. Control of the pandemic. Use laws and spend money to bring us to the tread-water place we should have arrived at six months ago, had federal leadership with any care or competence existed.

   At the same time, set up and execute a federal plan to get those vaccines into every American arm, paired with a public information program, safely and efficiently.

   And then leave all that new infrastructure in place to prepare for future pandemics, and to minimize their impact. Global warming guarantees that global disease is part of our shared human future, now.

   But, in the shorter term: let us all breathe freely again by Christmas.

2. Accountability for sedition. From Trump himself, to cronies who sought to undo unfavorable election results, to the selfie-posting MAGA chuds in Wednesday’s horrifying photographs: let none who so flagrantly tried to steer American democracy into the rocks get away with it.

   Whether motivated by greed, cowardice, or mass delusion, those who broke laws for Trump’s sake during his presidency must be apprehended and tried fairly, and those who used their positions of power to merely skirt the law must instead pay an appropriate political price.

   Make every one into an example, relevant for generations to come.

3. Security of the election system. Whether by DC statehood, federal holidays for election days, or new laws mandating ballot access or forbidding gerrymandering: we must both repair the nation’s frayed and battered election system, and harden it against further tampering from anti-democratic forces both foreign and domestic.

   And, yes: one way to do that, in the shorter term, is to significantly expand the political power of the Democratic party, the sole viable and demonstrably pro-democracy political party in America at present. A broken situation that must change, but we must apply this patch until the poisoned but tenacious Republican party permanently loses its grip on power.

That’s it. Get those three things done, this year.

There’s so much else to work on, problems of worldwide importance that the United States must help solve. Our government is large, and our people are smart and versatile; I’m sure that we will in fact make progress on these problems as well.

But until we take care of the above three priorities, we leave the fence open for political regressives to waltz in and wreck all that progress just a few years down the road.

I intend to not repeat 2009 in 2021. While I might generally approve of the newly empowered party’s platform, I will absolutely not assume that its members will just do the right thing without the vigilant attention of their constituents.

With a new kind of grim hope, I look forward to trying this again.

Image credit: AP

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