Welcome to Talking Feds.

A round table that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests

for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day.

I'm Harry Littman.

Bells rang out around the country in the world from Boston to Mumbai and Philadelphia to Paris,

where the mayor tweeted,

Welcome Back America.

After two long days when the networks held back even though the math looked

indominable, a cache of votes from Pennsylvania brought a cascade of announcements from five

networks in two minutes, making it official that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the next

president and vice president of the United States. The victory vindicated Biden's consistent

strategy of rebuilding the blue wall of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that Trump had breached

in 2016 and doing so with a campaign that stayed calm and steady from post to post.

The recognition of Trump's loss, even more than Biden's victory, hit home with a quality far

more dramatic than a typical presidential election. There was an exultant feel like the end of a foreign

occupation with people suddenly realizing that they are no longer under a tyrant's yoke.

As a reveler in Boston put it, we've been holding our breath for four years.

There seemed a gittiness just in the sense of a return to normalcy.

From the grotesque faux-Trump family to the real Biden family, from the lying and viciousness of

the third rate bully, still proclaiming he'd won the election.

To the everyday decency of the next president and the familiar sense of America that he embodies.

Addressing the nation's Saturday evening from Wilmington, Delaware, both Biden and Harris

...