On Monday, I sent an email to my two adult children following President Biden’s decision on Sunday to give up his candidacy for a second term. This is what I said in that email.

“Regardless of whether people think Joe Biden should or should not have stepped aside, and the very hard, messy events of the last three weeks that led to his decision on Sunday, and regardless of the criticisms and oft-voiced despair I have shared with you about the United States and our inability to make meaningful progress on so many issues – and you have listened patiently to my feelings – I also passionately believe in and deeply appreciate the process that has just happened.

In most of the rest of the world, meaning in the countries where most of the people of this world live, this same process would have been, at the very least, violent and incredibly dangerous, and more than likely impossible.

Let me elaborate.

In very few countries would there even have been a public, open electoral debate challenging a powerful, sitting ruler – we know what just happened in Russia. In very few countries would there have been the ability of journalists to fairly, in an unfettered and very public way, report on what happened in the presidential debate and on people’s varied reactions to it, let alone write numerous opinion pieces calling for the powerful ruler to step down. They would almost certainly have been beaten, jailed or killed. (The examples of this are numerous.)

In very few countries could citizens of that country contact their elected representatives and media outlets and speak their minds without a similar likelihood of being beaten, jailed or killed. Many more examples, in so many countries.

And in very few countries would politicians who have amassed great power and privilege like Sen. Chuck Schumer and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries or Nancy Pelosi, plus governors, plus other federal and state politicians, have dared to tell their president or prime minister to step aside, knowing that this would have at best ended their careers – and, as history and current events tell us, more likely ended their freedom or their lives.

What I just described are certainly the historical facts, as you so well know, of the countries that Mom’s parents and my family left: the Brazilian military dictatorship from 1964-1985 and Germany under Hitler.

And today, this situation is certainly true for the citizens of China, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Myanmar – to name just a few – plus all the other countries in Africa, Asia, South America and beyond where so many immigrants coming to Maine have fled from, escaping the dire consequences of having done one form or another of this type of outspoken dissent.

We have been incredibly fortunate, through sheer luck, to have lived our lives in a country with the ability to experience and be part of what just happened — this freedom, this democracy, this ability to criticize and question power.

Love to you both.”