You made it through another year If you have gone from cheering the arrival of the New Year to being thankful you survived the last, join the club. Yet many, including the proprietress here, have considered the unexpected accomplishments of the Biden administration this last year. Digby wrote on Friday that she did not see Dark Brandon coming: I think some of this success, paradoxically, is because Joe Biden is our oldest president, not in spite of that fact. There’s a certain YOLO quality to many people his age which he seems to have channeled into a willingness to take calculated risks that have largely paid off. Dark Brandon’s seen it all — he doesn’t scare easily. Biden reminds audiences, repeatedly and forcefully, “It’s never been a good bet to bet against America!” Even among progressive activists (including this one), Biden’s unabashed America boosterism is sometimes cringe-inducing. While glass-half-empty cynics, the nihilists, the MAGAs, the QAnon cultists, and the fascism-curious gnaw like Teredo worms at the nation’s pilings, Biden is still betting on America. Unashamedly fighting the shameless. As is often the case after Republican administrations in my lifetime, the incoming Democrat is charged with pulling the car out of the ditch. Biden has not just risen to the moment, he has embraced it, especially the foreign policy wreck left behind by Donald Trump. As Heather Cox Richardson observes, the world looked very different one year ago: It appeared that a global authoritarian movement was coalescing for an attack on liberal democracy…