Transition and Democracy

The Sore Loser-in-Chief has delayed a peaceful transition of power for over three weeks and though he’s finally allowed some of the transition to move forward he and his minions are still actively the incompetently attempting to overturn the election results. Over six million more Americans voted for Biden than the squatter in the White House, that’s more than twice the margin that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by and still 28% of Republicans think the election was stolen. The “dear leader” continues to spread his anti-democratic message, that small “d” democratic meaning the concept not the party. Even Republican Secretaries of State and Governors have taken exception to his claims of voter fraud.

Trump’s attacks on domestic democratic processes mirror those of Hitler according to Burt Neuborne, one of the nation’s foremost civil liberties lawyers. In his book When at Times the Mob Is Swayed: A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic Neuborne notes “Hitler attacked the legitimacy of democracy itself, purging the voting rolls, challenging the integrity of the electoral process, and questioning the ability of democratic government to solve Germany’s problems.” “Trump has also attacked the democratic process, declining to agree to be bound by the outcome of the 2016 or 2020 elections when he thought he might lose, supporting the massive purge of the voting rolls allegedly designed to avoid (nonexistent) fraud, championing measures that make it harder to vote, tolerating—if not fomenting—massive Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, encouraging mob violence at rallies, darkly hinting at violence if Democrats hold power, and constantly casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections unless he wins.”

In addition to the damage the “Sore Loser” is doing to our democratic institutions by his failure to accept losing the election by the biggest margin for a sitting president since 1932, the delays he is causing in the transition endanger both national security and the lives of many Americans. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage causing hospitalizations and deaths to rise for the third time this year. Millions Americans have lost their jobs and many small businesses have closed permanently. Lines at food bank distribution centers continue to lengthen and more children go hungry every day. Delays in passing information to the next president’s team puts the entire country at risk as the new administration will be less well prepared to take the reins of government than they should be.

On the positive side Joe Biden has made it very clear that he takes climate change seriously and says his taking an administration-wide approach so that every agency will be expected to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As climate change is the existential threat to human civilization that our children and grand-children will be force to live with I’m grateful that we’ll finally have a president who is willing to take action. Unfortunately none of the measures he has proposed go far enough to actually reduce the threat. It’s going to take action from all of us to convince him and our congressman to do what’s needed and not just give lip service to addressing the crisis. There is no time left to act.

In January and Biden’s inauguration I’m looking forward to Donald Trump returning to something he’s good at, perhaps as a contestant on the USA Network’s reality show “The Biggest Loser”.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 2, 2020