December 17, 2020

So How Is Democracy Doing These Days?

Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post via ZUMA

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I don’t remember who made this point a few days ago, but it’s worth repeating: Every Republican who yelled and screamed about Donald Trump being robbed was someone with no responsibility over election administration. Among those who did have responsibility for the counting of votes and the declaring of winners, every single one acted properly. That includes governors, secretaries of state, county clerks, registrars, election commissioners, judges (most of them, anyway), and the Supreme Court.

This is, needless to say, not a defense of the jackasses who kowtowed to Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh by going on Fox News every day to whip the Republican rank and file into a frenzy over a “stolen” election. They did real damage, and they deserve to be shunned. That said, even direct, personal pressure from Trump himself failed to move any of the Republican officials who actually had the power to aid his doomed cause.

I’m not entirely sure what lesson to take from this, but at the very least it suggests that democracy in the United States is a little stronger than we might be giving it credit for.

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