The defeat of Donald Trump is welcome news. But as we turn our attention to a Joe Biden administration, it is important to underscore how little has actually changed, and how much damage has been done — by the Trump administration, and by the virus it tried to wish away.

Dramatic policy shifts (aside from having actual scientists take the lead on COVID response) seem unlikely unless the Democrats sweep the Senate runoffs in Georgia. Centrist Democrats are tacking hard right on the shaky premise that calls for Medicare for All and policing reform flattened the anticipated “blue wave.” And in statehouses, that wave proved less than a ripple: Republicans now control both legislatures in thirty states and have a “trifecta” stranglehold (claiming the governor’s office, too) in twenty-three of those.

All this will make it harder to address one of the starkest failures of the government’s response to the COVID-19 economic crisis: the sustained neglect of state and local finances. State and local governments are directly responsible for providing essential services, including education and public health. And they are an important source of (mostly) good jobs, employing almost 20 million people — or about one in eight workers — when the virus struck.