EVERYTHING ELSE CAN WAIT

When, in 2014, I finished my book ‘NEITHER HERE NOR THERE, A First-Generation Immigrant in Search of American Exceptionalism’*, I was still in limbo about America’s destiny. It was not clear to me that the political system, as it had developed over the lifetime of the republic, had the capacity to deal effectively with the intractable problems that had surfaced and accumulated after the end of the cold war. I concluded that our system does not seem to be functioning as designed in the absence of a clear and present danger from the outside. I saw a problem in the two-party system, where two parties at constant loggerheads cancelled each other out and I saw the need of the creation of a centrist third party as a possible way out of the impasse. Like a ‘white knight’ or a catalyst for breaking the logjam. At the time, it seemed that our democracy was malfunctioning, not delivering results for the people, but the unassailability of the democratic principle was not in question.

That was before the Republican Party was hijacked by Donald Trump.

Now we know better, and it is time to face the harsh reality. Democracy itself is being challenged and it is seriously imperiled, not just in Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, but in the cradle of contemporary democracy, the United States of America. American democracy is imperiled not by foreign powers, but by one of its political parties seeking power beyond the boundaries of its popular support. What once was the Grand Old Party is no more. It has morphed into an anti-democratic, populist movement bent on taking control of public governance of the United States of America regardless of the outcome of elections.

It did not come across as particularly surprising or alarming that Donald Trump, after the closing of the polls in November of last year, declared himself the winner in defiance of what the polling results were showing. Very few people seemed to believe him and he had, already long before the election, declared that only election fraud could deny him a victory at the voting booth. And in court case after court case, claims of voter fraud were refuted. Without exception. More than sixty times. It looked for a while that the Republican Party would move on from an ill-fated experiment and a loser who had cost them control of the White House and the Senate. Election officials, Republicans and Democrats alike, in battle ground States of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania held their ground in defending the fairness of their elections and the accuracy of their vote count, in many cases after multiple audits and recounts. The result of the election was certified in each of the States and the members of the Electoral College were appointed accordingly. Under these circumstances, certification of the Electoral College vote by Congress in joint session should have been a routine matter as it had been before in all Presidential elections.

Not this time. On January 6, 2021, an angry mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, disrupting the counting of the Electoral Votes by the Congress and Trump supporters in Congress objected to the Electoral Vote counts in Arizona and Pennsylvania, causing the chambers to split and debate the objections. When order at the Capitol had been restored, both chambers voted to turn down the objections and certify the Electoral College vote, but 8 Republican Senators and 139 House Members supported at least one objection.

A constitutional crisis was averted this time, but the next time we may not be that lucky, because the weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and ambiguities of the Presidential transition process had surfaced for everyone to see. And Republican operatives at the State and Federal level are acting to exploit these flaws at the next opportunity.

What worries me most about this scenario is the apparent denial among democrats, independents and the few conventional republicans who have not fallen for the Trump spell, that we are facing an imminent threat to democracy itself. I detect only a handful of political commentators who warn us of the seriousness of the threat our democracy is facing. Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brooking Institute and a member on the Counsel for Foreign Relations is one of them. In a September 23 article in the Washington Post he warned that we are already in a Constitutional crisis. Kagan writes: “The fact that Trump failed to overturn the 2020 election has reassured many that the American system remains secure, though it easily could have gone the other way – if Biden had not been safely ahead in all four states where the vote was close; if Trump had been more competent and more in control of the decision-makers in his administration, Congress and the states.”

Distress signals have also been given in recent books by Anne Applebaum (Twilight of Democracy), Fiona Hill (There is nothing for you here), Bob Woodward and Robert Costa (Peril) and in a well-publicized YouTube video by Bill Maher. But public sense of alarm is disturbingly missing. Even among politicians, although Republicans Christine Todd Whitman and Miles Taylor have come out publicly in a guest essay in the New York Times to exhort fellow ‘rational’ Republicans to “form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year – including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats.” They write: “We cannot tolerate Republican leaders – in 2022 or in the presidential election in 2024 – refusing to accept the results of elections or undermining the certification of those results should they lose.” Republican congressmen Lizz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are resisting the Trump takeover of the GOP, and the insurrection movement, by their high-profile membership in the January 6 Select Committee of the House of Representatives. The next elections are not a routine choice between left or right, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. They will be about preserving or abandoning our constitutional democracy.

What can and must be done to stave off the looming constitutional crisis?

·        The Trump Republicans must be thoroughly defeated at the voting booth in 2022 and 2024.

·        To that end, Democrats and Independents must put up impeccably qualified candidates for elected office at the State and Federal level and push for a high voter turnout.

·        Democrats should stop quarreling internally and pass legislation, this year, to protect voting rights, to revamp our infrastructure, and to implement Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ plan.

·        The Biden Administration needs to get the COVID-19 pandemic under complete control.

EVERYTHING ELSE CAN WAIT.

*The book is available @ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692209778