Those in Favor of Sedition, Raise Your Right Hand
Written by Carter Welch
In my last piece, “Can the Foundation Hold?”, I asked on the eve of the November 3 election whether the United States would face the music and elect former Vice President Biden. Then I questioned whether simple administration change would suffice—and if the country would properly withstand antidemocratic attacks and attempts to undermine American precedent and values. The former is undeniably true—President-elect Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes and leads in the popular vote by 4.5%, which is the largest margin since former President Barack Obama’s 2008 victory. Uncertainty and unease plague the latter. Not only is the composition of the Senate undetermined, but endless and increasingly grotesque onslaughts on the election process by Donald Trump and a fettered Republican Party create an atmosphere of immense polarization and deadlock. Government personnel and state officials openly ridicule other states for their electoral processes and for the simple fact that their voters supported Joe Biden.
Texas, chillingly, sued four states who supported Joe Biden—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and even Georgia.
Texas, chillingly, sued four states who supported Joe Biden—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and even Georgia. The lawsuit stemmed from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s partisan grievances with these states administering different voting procedures. Seventeen Republican-led states supported the lawsuit. The suit was constitutional hogwash and a catastrophic attempt to abolish federalism. It faced no shot of success in the Supreme Court, and on December 11, seven justices dismissed the lawsuit in a terse opinion on grounds of standing. Justices Alito and Thomas said they would hear the suit but would dismiss it on grounds of merit—demonstrating how laughable they interpreted it. But the very existence of the lawsuit, and its widespread support from partisan players despite its direct attack on supposed Republican ideological values, represents a threatening precedent for future American elections.
The Electoral College vote concluded on December 14 without faithless electors, violence, or gridlock. The count was 306-232—just as state certifications asserted. Consequently, many Republican senators dropped their narrative of “letting the process run its course” and recognized Joe Biden as the president-elect. The Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, concurred, and received a concerning amount of praise from news outlets and moderate politicians. There’s a glaring problem in celebrating McConnell’s acknowledgment of reality: the outcome of the election was evident on November 7 when all major news outlets called the election for Joe Biden. Rather than condoning him for maliciously supporting an aggrieved president’s rejection of truth, McConnell should have been denounced by all sides for the past month.
Graphic by Abby Smith
But the 2020 general election long ago concluded, and Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021.
As the judicial system remains sturdy and eviscerates constitutionally incoherent lawsuits, it’s apparent that the United States weathered the storm of the Republican Party’s loathing for democracy. For the year of 2020, that is. Sure, the president likely will never concede. Several senators and more than a hundred congresspeople officially supported an effort to nullify tens of millions of votes. But the 2020 general election long ago concluded, and Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021. The trajectory of America’s attitude toward democracy, however, implies we may no longer be a republic by the end of the decade.
Since its inception, the United States’ record on voting rights merits a scathing review. Voter disenfranchisement has plagued the nation—from landowning, wealthy, and white males being the sole voters in the 1700’s to voter ID requirements and the organization of all of Louisville into one precinct in 2020—and it seems the Republican Party will welcome further voting restrictions. Texas Republicans have already written legislation attempting the following: a ban on the mailing of absentee ballot applications, the broadening of voter fraud definitions to a nonsensical level, and the blocking of drive-through voting. There’s every reason to believe other state GOPs will follow—especially as Republican voters rush to “cancel” officials, like Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, who push back against lying fantasies of voter fraud. In fact, party figures who shy away from the culture of deceit confront an angry president’s fury, or worse, calls for their imprisonment, as President Trump signaled in a retweet targeted at Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia on December 15. The president called for the jailing of his political supporter, yet we’re supposed to trust that the United States is not spiraling toward authoritarianism?
With such unchecked allegations of fraud and fantastical arguments—namely Trump’s claims that because he received 74.2 million votes, Biden couldn’t have surpassed that mark—how could this simply be a blip? As the Republican Party tears toward embracing democracy only if they are the victors, it looks apparent that empty, partisan wails of fraud could mar every election in the near future. The United States stares into an abyss of uncertainty, constitutional crises, the very fact that Americans occupy disparate realities dependent on their political beliefs, and crushing inequality. The current variables are alarm bells warning of a deeply fragmented, unstable nation on a path to disunion. Unless a political party and a vast sector of Americans face the music and course-correct, America will slither toward a devastating collapse. We will have split the serpent, and inevitably, someday, we will ask how it all fell apart. This is how.
With foreboding,
Carter Welch
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