Here's what Joe Biden knows about burying the hatchet.
If you're going to do it right, you're going to need a horse.
Then a hatchet.
Then you will need the opponent who's been trading barbs and rude nicknames with you for the entire campaign.
This is how elections have ended in Delaware for centuries. Two days after the election is Return Day, when everyone heads to Georgetown, Del., for a party. Winners and losers ride together in horse-drawn carriages and everyone meets to cover a hatchet in soil and sand collected from the four corners of Sussex County.
Best to do it right after the election. The state is only three counties long. You and your opponent won't be able to avoid each other forever.
"It really provides a moderating, a civilizing effect on the tone of the debate," U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., told the Wilmington News Journal at Return Day a few years ago. "Because you know from Day One, when you file to run for whatever office it may be — treasurer, congressman, governor, senator — you know you're going to be in Georgetown, maybe riding in the carriage with your opponent and your opponent's family. And I think it tends to tone down, to temper, the nature of the debate."
America was still counting the votes for President-elect Biden on Return Day 2020, last week. But the tradition continued, with pandemic precautions. No parade, no big crowds, but the leadership of the state Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Independent parties masked up and joined together to bury the hatchet in its decorative wooden box.
