In July 1945, just weeks after leading Great Britain to final victory over the Nazis, Prime Minister Winston Churchill found himself booted out of office by an electorate that didn’t merely reject his bid to stay in power but did so overwhelmingly. Any notion that Churchill’s historic achievements since taking command five years earlier would win him the election proved wildly wrong.
With reason to be bitter, Churchill nevertheless understood that when the people speak, what they say must be respected. It may have been ruefulness about his defeat that led to his famous observation in the House of Commons two years later: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all others.”
Joe Biden likewise has reason to be frustrated. Last week’s electoral blowout of Kamala Harris was an unequivocal rejection of his administration by an angry electorate that had been effectively persuaded that what was an objectively successful presidency had been an unsuccessful one. Inheriting an economy in tatters courtesy of a pandemic spectacularly mismanaged, and even dismissed, by his predecessor, Biden guided the economy back to robust health, with job and growth numbers to prove it.
He cobbled together improbable bipartisan legislative investment packages for infrastructure and energy even while bringing the country back from the brink. These are investments that will serve our country well for decades to come, even when we and those who follow us fail to give Biden credit, or are forever in the dark about the fact that it is him to whom credit is due. The inflation spike that consumed years two and three of his administration did him in; that he didn’t cause it and couldn’t have prevented it mattered little to not at all to voters who felt its effects day after day.
These were the three main knocks against Biden: he was old, it showed, and his surviving son had a severe addiction problem and a bad case of hubris. Donald Trump, unrivaled at this sort of thing, relentlessly called Biden “Crooked Joe,” which should have been a hoot and a half coming from someone adjudged to have committed rape by one court and 34 separate felonies by another.
But hoot and a half, hoot and three-quarters, it doesn’t matter. Donald Trump was elected fair and square, and by a landslide. In a democracy, that’s what matters most. We’re going to be talking a lot about democracy over the next four years, because it is very much on the line. Blowout or not, the no-doubter of an election creates plenty of doubts, on all sides.
There are doubts about just how much Americans really care about the Judeo-Christian values we say we care about, including telling the truth, rejecting cruelty and spurning bullies. Given the president-elect’s calls for arresting his political opponents and domestic critics, his claim that as president he can do whatever he wants and his call for “terminating” the Constitution, there are doubts about just how much Americans actually care about democracy.
But there are plenty of doubts on the other side as well. A Democratic Party held hostage by those who exult in the slaughter of innocents by genocidal murderers, who are defended and even rhapsodized by faculty and students at elite universities, deserve these questions from American voters, and they got them: Are they crazy? Is this the America we want? No wonder so many Americans answer the first question “Yes” and the second one “No.”
Democrats who bemoan the evaporation of once fundamental American values by Donald Trump enthusiasts ought to ask themselves: What does it say about “values” when college presidents, asked to answer questions in Congress about whether exhortations for the genocide of Jews is acceptable on their campus, cannot answer, or won’t? And why is it only Republicans who seem interested in this?
The weather always seems to turn gray after the first week in November, and this year it isn’t only the weather. The election results are quite clear. How we fare from here on really isn’t.
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