(Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
Well, another Election Day has come and gone, and while the voters in
North Carolina and across the nation have made their choices, the time for an even more important set of decisions will come very soon.
And that’s because the policy challenges that the candidates have debated so fiercely over the last several months must now be addressed. Come January, elected officials in Washington and Raleigh will need to grapple with dozens of huge, even existential issues.
The list includes:
* The climate change crisis that’s rapidly degrading our planet’s health and causing mass human migration on an unprecedented scale.
* The ongoing global assault on freedom and democracy in which authoritarian dictators and regimes are waging wars of aggression
and undermining human freedom.
* The rapid and unjust accumulation of wealth by a handful of global billionaires who possess more power and influence than entire nations.
The bottom line: Elections are of enormous importance, but the task of maintaining a working democracy is a 365-day-a-year job. Today, that work begins anew.
For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.