The National Mall in Washington, Nov. 7.
Photo:
J. David Ake/Associated Press
The man who told black voters that if Mitt Romney (Mitt Romney!) won the presidency in 2012, he would “put y’all back in chains” now wants us to believe that a Republican victory in Tuesday’s midterms will end American democracy as we know it.
Perhaps, to be fair,
is like the boy who cried wolf. That he fabricated a threat last time doesn’t necessarily invalidate his warning now. Or perhaps he’s more like the Trojan priestess Cassandra, endowed with prophetic wisdom but tragically fated by the gods never to be believed.
Or perhaps he’s just a desperate and shameless political hack, not for the first time in his life wildly spinning yarns designed to scare people with lurid predictions so that they will vote to extend his own political career and further the ideological aims of his own Democratic Party.
I can’t decide. You choose.
To question the sincerity of the president’s rhetoric—and that of his party—is not to dismiss the challenge posed by the various noisome currents of antidemocratic sentiment and behavior running through our politics like the effluence of overflowing sewers. Refusal to accept election results, acquiescence in political violence, advocating extra-legal ways to advance a cause are all poisoning the waters that nourish democratic life. And it’s true there are plenty of Republicans for whom these are now routine political activities.
But America’s democracy is guaranteed and protected by a constitution of extraordinary genius, complexity and durability. To suggest it is one set of midterm elections away from extinction is ludicrous hyperbole. It’s a long and tortuous way from a House Republican candidate telling voters he thinks
won the election in 2020 to the dismantling of a 230-year-old order and its replacement with autocratic…
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