The Electoral College has cast its official votes for president, cementing Joe Biden as the president-elect of the United States. Democrats and Biden supporters are celebrating, while many Republicans and Trump supporters scorn the process. 

Let’s put aside who we supported or voted for in the presidential election (the distinction between those verbs is important). Let’s take a moment to take a step back and as independent thinkers look at the aftermath of the 2020 election as objective viewers.

This is an independent opinion. Have one of your own? Email it to sandiego@ivn.us

Bernie Sanders’ loss of the Democratic Party’s nomination for president prompted some voters to cry out, as they have in the past, for the creation of a new party. There is merit to this idea, given that repeated attempts to fashion the Democratic Party into a force for progressive change have failed.

"The Extra Point with Jeff Marston" is aired weekly on Mightier 1090am from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday. In this episode, Marston talks to King Holder, a former San Diego State defensive back and founder Procussion, LLC, about how he's helping NFL athletes. Plus, we hear a replay from Fred Pierce and Jim Harrick, SDSU graduates, about the Aztecs playing in Carson.

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Christina Tobin and Eli Beckerman join host T. J. O’Hara on Deconstructed to discuss presidential debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates (the “CPD”) has catered to establishment candidates for decades, denying the electorate of an exposure to legitimate alternative choices. As a result, we have often been given a choice between “the lesser of two evils.” Christina Tobin and Eli Beckerman and their two organizations are trying to change that.

In the five years before the pandemic, low-income Californians had begun to see substantial wage gains, chipping away at the income inequality gap between California’s haves and have-nots that has widened over the past 40 years. But the coronavirus pandemic is “likely stripping away many of these gains,” researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California found in a new report.

What is the biggest highlight of a presidential election? Is it the ideas or proposals presented by the candidates? Is it how the candidates appealed to the most voters possible by presenting thoughtful, comprehensive solutions to the nation’s biggest problems?

Unfortunately, it’s neither of those. Instead, the biggest highlight of any presidential election in modern history is the division between the dominant two parties -- the hyperbolic rhetoric both sides use in the zero-sum contest to get voters to hate the other side.