Thank you, Joe.

President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

This time four years ago I, and most of you who follow this column, were none too happy. We were coming to grips with the realization that Joe Biden had likely just eked out a squeaker of a victory against President Donald Trump in an election that was clouded by COVID-induced voting irregularities.

Though he ran as a “moderate,” I and many like me were convinced – and as it turns out rightly so – that Joe Biden would implement a far-left agenda.

Oh, boy.

But what we couldn’t imagine at the time, given that the smoke hadn’t started clearing, was that Biden’s election might eventually come to be seen as a blessing.

So it was in the days after the election. But by March 25, 2021, just eight and a half weeks after Biden took the oath of office, I, among others, was singing a slightly different tune. Here’s a portion of that week’s column that bore the headline, “The Biden Presidency Will Be Costly – To Democrats.”

All of the perfectly legitimate criticisms of Trump notwithstanding, on his watch wages rose, unemployment fell, order was restored on the border and prosperity flourished. For many traditional Democratic voters – notably blacks and Hispanics – it was their first-ever taste of prosperity.

None of that will be soon forgotten – particularly as Biden policies of higher taxes, open borders and increased regulation take hold and provide a jarring comparison.

Which means that whatever Democrats attain during a Biden presidency in the near term, they will pay for dearly over time.”

That bill came due last week. Thanks to Biden’s victory in 2020, and the administration that ensued, millions of American voters got to see and experience what far-left governance looks and feels like. And they sent a message last week that they aren’t having it.

Nobody sane wants a country with a wide-open border over which a flood of poor, uneducated, social services consuming third world immigrants pours in. Nobody sane wants the concomitant crime, drug trafficking and inevitable importation of incipient terrorism.

Nobody sane thinks that boys who “identify” as girls should compete against actual girls in varsity athletics (after changing clothes in the girl’s locker room).

Nobody sane thinks that men can have babies or that adolescent boys need tampons in their school restrooms.

Ordinary Americans weren’t much impressed when wealthy, liberal, coastal elites condescendingly told them that they are just too unsophisticated to understand the wonders of Bidenomics. That’s a hard sell to people who are having trouble paying for food, gas, and rent.

Put simply, the Biden administration was a real-world clinic in the failures of leftism. So, with a fresh understanding, the heartland of America rejected the radical leftism that hijacked the once semi-sane Democratic Party and chose a Trump 2.0 presidency instead.

If the history of Ronald Reagan’s similar defeat of Jimmy Carter in 1980 is any guide, the demographic and political realignments that put Donald Trump back in office will prove durable.

We have Joe Biden’s 2020 victory to thank for that.