Singed by Donald Trump’s and Republicans’ efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the Washington Post Editorial Board this morning urges the nascent Biden administration to assign a high-level commission the task of developing recommendations for overhauling our democracy:
The nation needs a top-to-bottom review of how it conducts elections, counts votes and assures the public of the democracy’s health, so that it resists those who want to restrict voting, trash legitimate ballots and leverage positions of trust to upend valid results.
The Post already has a short list for the commission to consider: abolish the electoral college (or assign electoral votes proportionally), institute universal voter registration, make Election Day a holiday, expand mail-in voting, improve ballot security, make voting mandatory, etc.
Changes like these, the Post believes, are necessary to prevent a more competent autocrat than Trump from stealing a future election. The commission’s guiding star would be “to prevent fraud and promote voter confidence,” including reforms to prevent partisan officials from rejecting election results.
Perhaps they are naive. They are missing the forest and most assuredly missing the point.
Not that their suggestions are bad ones. But improving democracy will not change the attitudes of those who have demonstrated they no use for it. Have we not seen enough bad-faith arguments in the last couple of decades to recognize them by now?
“If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy,” former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote in January 2018.
“A realignment of America’s two major parties is under way,” Jeremy D. Rosner, former Special Adviser to President Clinton and senior staff member National Security Council, wrote in December that year. “To put it simply, we are headed for an era in which America may well have a Democratic Party and an Anti-democratic Party.”
Both predictions have come to pass.
As others observed before me, Republicans do not want to govern, they want to rule. The first rule once was, heads they win, tails you lose. Now it is heads they win, tails “Nice constitutional republic ya got there….”
“So what’s a plutocrat to do?” asked Paul Krugman at a time before openly rejecting democracy was de rigueur for Republicans. Since they could not come straight out and say only the wealthy should have the franchise, they resort to propaganda about voter fraud, etc. More democracy, better democracy is the last thing they want.
The latest wrinkle in our Trumpist saga is the effort among elected Republicans to raise objections to the decision of voters on January 6 when the U.S House and Senate meet to accept electoral vote certifications from the states. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas proposes a special commission charged with yet another examination of electoral college votes from “disputed states.”
Edward B. Foley has a clearer-eyed view of what is afoot than his Washington Post colleagues:
… the fact that a dozen senators and senators-elect, along with apparently more than 100 House members, want to disrupt congressional ratification of the electoral college result is one more horrendous sign of the severity of the disease afflicting the United States’ democratic system.
Anti-democrats do not want a more perfect democratic republic. They want the answer they want. They want to rule or else. Like a former client, like Donald Trump, he of the bottomless cup of lawsuits, they will keep raising objections to the will of the people, they will wear down opponents until they get the answer they want. If they lose, they try to will get even, Donald Trump-style. No presidential commission will remediate that.