Enemies
of Democracy
Remember. Their. Names.
DECEMBER
9, 2020 5:03 AM
Three days before
Christmas in 2001, Richard Reid took off from Paris on a flight to Miami. He
did not intend on arriving. Instead, he attempted to
ignite explosives packed into one of his shoes to destroy the plane,
killing everyone aboard for the cause of violent jihad.
He did not succeed.
Other passengers noticed his odd behavior—most notably lighting numerous
matches while wires were dangling from his pant leg. He was subdued; the flight
landed safely.
The plot had failed. But
that did not mean that the system which let him get onto a plane with
explosives “worked.”
This is the exact
position America’s democratic system finds itself in as the Trump era comes to
a close. Like Richard Reid, Donald Trump is a cartoon figure and his attempt to
overturn a free and fair election is nearly comical in its stupidity.
A wise observer would
view the Trump experience as a near-catastrophe which became a wake-up call for
just how vulnerable our democracy is.
Instead, we have a
conservative establishment which—when it isn’t outright advancing Trump’s
attempt to overturn the election, or averting its eyes—says
that the fact that Donald Trump will (probably) leave office on January 20 is
proof that the system worked and there’s no reason for concern.
Consider Holman Jenkins
who, in a Wall
Street Journal op-ed, claims that “U.S. democracy is a
faith machine that continues to reward your faith.”
Allow yourself to relax a bit, and enjoy the
latest chapter of the Trump show, which will continue to enrich us with ironies
and absurdities and insights to light our way in coming decades as we decode
the wild and wonderful experiment known as America.
It would be hard to come
up with a clearer statement of elite, late republic decadence than “enjoy the
latest chapter of the Trump show.” Why burden yourself with the moral
responsibilities of citizenship when you can be like Blanche DuBois and depend
on the kindness of strangers performing their civic duties?
In a staff
editorial, National Review musters the courage to at
least call Trump’s
attempt to overturn the election what it is:
Trump’s most reprehensible tactic has been to
attempt, somewhat shamefacedly, to get local Republican officials to block the
certification of votes and state legislatures to appoint Trump electors in
clear violation of the public will. This has gone nowhere, thanks to the
honesty and sense of duty of most of the Republicans involved, but it’s a
profoundly undemocratic move that we hope no losing presidential candidate ever
even thinks of again.
There is dark
vindication for Trump’s principled critics across the political landscape in
these words. But consider that it took a president promoting election fraud
conspiracy theories targeting his own party—thereby jeopardizing Republican
control of the Senate—to get there.
And what remedy do
the National Review editors propose? How would they keep this
from happening again? All they can muster is to “hope [that] no losing
presidential candidate ever even thinks of [it] again.”
Hope is not a plan.
A healthy republic ought
to have a strong, even a visceral response to those who would endanger its
future. And it should remember the treacherous who conspire against it.
The phrase “enemy of
democracy” has a sinister bearing. Saying it aloud may elicit a frisson of
discomfort. That sort of language is for grubby radicals, not for us educated
citizens of a consolidated and modern republic.
But how else to describe
those who would use raw political power in Republican-controlled legislatures
to overturn a national election? Public officials swear an oath to
“defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and
domestic.” It is a mandate that responsible citizens should take seriously.
No one should try to
hide behind the legalistic argument that such an outcome might be technically
constitutional. Every dictator claims his hold on power is constitutional.
Vladimir Putin controls Russia behind a veneer of
constitutionality. Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt for 30
years under a constitutional state of emergency.
There is nothing magical
about the U.S. Constitution. Unmoored from our founding principles, it can
become an instrument of tyranny. For parts of our history—specifically for
Americans of color—it was.
It is important,
therefore, to keep score on who, exactly, democracy’s enemies are.
Our list should start
with Donald Trump himself.
We’ve become numb to his
relentless claims that the 2020 election was “RIGGED.” Yet it’s important to
remember that there is nothing new about his conspiratorial and toxic rhetoric.
Trump complained about
fixed Republican and Democratic primaries
in 2016, and attributed his popular vote defeat in the general election
to widespread fraud.
And even before that. On Election Day 2012, Trump previewed the same voting
machine conspiracy theory his supporters use now.
Later that night, after
the networks announced that Barack Obama had been re-elected, Trump tweeted:
And now in the aftermath
of his clear defeat in 2020, the lame duck president openly lobbies state
legislators to use their authority to designate slates of pro-Trump electors.
He promotes conspiracy theories about manipulated voting
machines, organized fraud
concentrated in a few majority black cities, and supposed
statistical proofs that he actually won. He fires a senior
civil servant for publicly debunking his allegations.
Donald Trump is an enemy of democracy. Full stop.
In this, he has been
aided and abetted by several lawyers, who have explicitly advocated that
Republican legislators overturn the will of the people. Before her formal
separation from the legal team, Sidney Powell told Lou Dobbs
that “the entire election, frankly, in all the swing states
should be overturned. And the legislatures should make sure that the electors
are selected for Trump.”
Rudy Giuliani encouraged pressure, even intimidation,
against state legislators in Michigan to ignore the certified popular vote and
award the state’s electors to Donald Trump. “Sometimes it even requires being
threatened,” he said.
Jenna Ellis similarly argued that
Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania could throw out the results in favor of
Donald Trump: “You the legislature, without judicial oversight, can direct and
take back that power.”
Donald Trump’s lawyers
are enemies of democracy.
Elected Republicans have
also lent their support to this scheme to overturn the election.
Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama tweeted that “Congress
should reject any Georgia submission of 16 electoral college votes for Joe
Biden.” Brooks also announced his
intention to formally challenge the results in Congress because
“this election was stolen by the socialists” and “it’s the United States
Congress that is the final judge and jury of whether to accept or reject
Electoral College submissions by states.”
Pennsylvania state
senator Doug Mastriano introduced a
resolution to “exercise our obligation and authority to appoint
delegates to the Electoral College.”
When that failed, 60
members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly requested that their congressional delegation “object,
and vote to sustain such objection, to the Electoral
College votes received from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Twenty-eight members and
members-elect of the Arizona legislature called for decertifying Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
On Twitter, Congressman
Paul Gosar commented approvingly “this is 28 bitch slaps to [Arizona
Governor] Doug Ducey and 28 calls for justice.”
These elected
Republicans are enemies of democracy.
Far-right conservative
activists have been similarly explicit about their intention to reverse the
election outcome through extra-legal means.
The Claremont
Institute’s Matthew Peterson tweeted that “Republicans
in the disputed states now need to tell their state legislators to resolve the
problem by choosing their own electors for Trump, which is a fully
constitutional option that would lead to a rightful Trump victory.”
Former Trump aide Seb
Gorka has demanded a “political solution” to the election, arguing that “no
GOP statehouse must certify this election which is clearly fraudulent and
cannot send any electors to DC . . . And if nobody gets 270, that’s the beauty
of the Founding Fathers, we get a contingent election and it goes to the House
of Representatives.”
Michael Anton, who served as National Security Council
spokesman under Trump, “urged GOP
officials in close states to expose shenanigans and, if necessary, refuse to
seat Biden electors.”
The Federalist’s Margot
Cleveland, in an article headlined “State Legislatures Must Investigate
Fraud And Choose Electors Accordingly,” observed that “the
Constitution does not provide for the appointment of elector by popular vote”
and that “following an investigation of [election fraud] concerns, the state
legislatures should vote to directly appoint electors as they see fit . . .
Then when those legislators are up for reelection, we will have a feel for the
true will of the people.”
This is but a small
sample of the anti-democratic agitation endemic on the pro-Trump right. These
men and women have declared themselves enemies of democracy.
Most disturbing are
pleas from disgraced former
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, retired
General Tom McInerney, and Georgia
lawyer Lin Wood for Trump to invoke martial law,
suspend both the U.S. Constitution and habeas corpus, and order the military to
administer another election. These men have advanced beyond “enemy of
democracy” status, and entered the realm of outright sedition.
It’s difficult to
imagine that the American public would react peacefully to a declaration of
martial law, and maybe that’s the point. On November 21, an emotional Trump
supporter called in to Rush Limbaugh to say “I love my
president… I would die for my president.”
While you might find the
caller’s words dismaying or disturbing, Michael Flynn celebrated “this
man’s passionate plea, not of fear but of strength & commitment to his
faith, family & our country.”
How the hell did we get
here?
Part of the answer is
that the American right has failed to advance a conservative agenda that
appeals to majorities, and has instead chosen to focus on mobilizing its
largely white, increasingly rural political base with appeals to grievance and
resentment. This retreat from even attempting to secure a popular majority in
favor of using the
geographic leverage created by the Electoral College has
resulted in a growing suspicion of majoritarianism itself.
Republican Senator Mike
Lee of Utah was blunt in his criticism:
While it’s true that
illiberal or “rank” democracy can lead to “tyranny of the majority,” it’s also
true that democratic processes—tempered by liberal and countermajoritarian
institutions—are still the best way for a republic to discern the common good.
It’s a short step from denigrating democracy to replacing “We the People” with
a magisterium.
Another part of the
answer is that our politics have been corrupted by a celebration of a “will to
power” that is heedless of basic principles. There will always be hypocrites,
but at least the hypocrite wishes to be seen as virtuous. Some Americans have
gone from trying to conceal their vices to wearing them as badges of honor.
Using raw political
power to overturn a democratic election is the ultimate triumph of political
vice, and a logical consequence of win-at-all-costs “wartime conservatism.”
We also don’t get here
without the assent of the vast majority of elected Republicans and their
conservative enablers. These putative leaders have given fuel to the
president’s antidemocratic effort by either refusing to acknowledge Joe Biden
as president-elect or promoting the baseless claim that fraud changed the
outcome of the election.
We aren’t just talking
about the usual lunatic fringe.
The senior House
Republican, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, suggested that Donald
Trump could only have lost re-election because of widespread fraud, telling Fox News “what’s
very interesting here and shows more of the fraud: Not one Republican incumbent
lost. . . . How would President Trump lose in an atmosphere like that?”
Wisconsin Senator Ron
Johnson criticized
Attorney General Bill Barr for concluding that the election
outcome was unaffected by widespread fraud.
Kentucky Senator Rand
Paul tweeted a “just
asking questions” link to a statistical analysis supposedly
indicating that only fraud could explain “data dumps” favoring Joe Biden’s
election victory.
These Republican leaders
may not be full-fledged enemies of democracy, but by giving aid and comfort to
those who seek to overturn the result, they’re no friends of the republic
either.
It’s also worth taking a
moment to make clear that there is no modern precedent for overturning a
clearly decided American election. The much whatabouted
“Hamilton Electors” effort in 2016 was a naïve appeal to
individual conscience, not an attempt to forcibly replace Trump-committed
electors altogether. And either way, it was not endorsed or promoted by the
losing candidate.
Yes, Senator Barbara
Boxer and Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones objected to
seating George W. Bush-pledged electors from the state of Ohio in
the 2004 election, but as Rep. Jones
explained, “this objection does not have at its root the hope or
even the hint of overturning the victory of the president; but it is a
necessary, timely, and appropriate opportunity to review and remedy the most
precious process in our democracy.”
Consider also the impact
of a defeated party advocating the use of political force to overturn a clearly
decided election on the body politic.
If no political price is
paid by the president and his cadres, what then? There is moral hazard for a
republic that imposes no meaningful consequence on those who would destroy it
from within.
Even if the president
fails to overturn his election defeat, the mere attempt presents a Rubicon-like
test for our republic. A line has been crossed, and it is important that those
who wish for the nation to long endure push back.
The saboteurs who have
struck at the heart of our democracy should be considered politically—if not
morally—irredeemable. They should be pariahs, marked forever, as if they had
sworn allegiance to an adversarial regime.
A republic that respects
itself should remember where people stood in this moment, and keep those who
would threaten it far from the instruments of political power.
We must never forget.
Christian Vanderbrouk served eight years in the
George W. Bush administration, and later managed global affairs and government
relations at the New York Stock Exchange. He can also be found on Twitter
at @urbanachievr.