On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the House and Senate’s formal count of the electoral vote following the November 2020 presidential election. The country is starkly divided about the significance of this riot, the events that precipitated it, and subsequent activities over the past year, viewing the developments through disparate partisan lenses.
For Democrats the attack was an insurrection, an attempt to overturn the results of an election that Joe Biden clearly won. For a large fraction of Republicans, the clash was a patriotic revolt to bar the Democratic candidate from the White House after voting fraud and election irregularities prevented the rightful winner, who sought reelection, from remaining in office.
When asked in a CBS News Poll, "Regardless of who you wanted to win, do you consider Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election - that is, that Biden was the choice of more voters, with more legally-cast votes, in enough states to be elected - or not?" A 96% majority of Democrats answered affirmatively, while only 27% of Republicans agreed. (See Question 25 from the survey results.)
Another poll, by the Washington Post-University of Maryland (December 17-19, 2021) offered a similar either/or question and found similar differences by party. "Regardless of whom you supported in the 2020 election, do you think Joe Biden's election as president was legitimate, or was he not legitimately elected?" While 94% of Democrats agreed that Biden was legitimately elected, only 39% of Republicans did. (See question 7 from the crosstabs).
The evidence is overwhelming: the election was free and fair. There is no credible basis to support charges of voting fraud, irregularities in counting, or other conspiracy theories that would justify the conclusion that Trump won the election. The senior official in the Department of Homeland Security concluded, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history." There is more than ample corroboration for this view. Even Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr concurred in rejecting charges of voter fraud: "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election."
Millions of Republican voters refuse to accept President Biden's legitimacy. By itself, a misconception or delusion would not pose a threat to democracy. But the Big Lie, that Trump won and Biden lost, shores up a movement brought on, and advanced to this day, by the leadership of the Republican Party, the most popular FNC talking heads, the activities of GOP legislators and officials across the country, and Donald Trump's continuing campaign to discredit the outcome of the election that he lost.
The Republican Party, since the Gingrich era a quarter century ago, has become increasingly aggressive in attacking democratic norms, the guardrails that protect our democracy and have allowed it to flourish. Vicious attacks on Democrats have -- by design -- sowed fear, anger, and hostility among Republican voters; for the party faithful, the view of Democrats as enemies, rather than as their American neighbors, has justified actions that undermine the possibility of democratic governance. When ones opponents are not regarded as equals (viewed perhaps as traitors or perhaps as simply not real Americans), scorched earth tactics and winning at all costs become more important than preserving our democratic heritage.
The truth could not sustain the demonization of Americans who oppose the political agenda of the GOP, so the leadership of the Republican Party came to rely on misinformation, misdirection, fabrications, and conspiracy theories (as seen nightly on Fox News Channel). By 2022, the Big Lie had become an essential tenet of the Republican Party. It serves as a rationale for all manner of antidemocratic activities, as we saw in 2021, including steps that make it feasible for Republicans, where they control state government, to overturn future elections when their party loses.
Our democracy is in peril.
These issues are the focus of this blog.
-- Posted January 5, 2022.
[Photograph by the Architect of the Capitol.]