Resolution and Action in the New Year
Please stand shoulder to shoulder with all in the pro-democracy alliance.
In the election year that begins tomorrow, two alliances will contest the very future of democracy in America.
Massed on one side are the forces of MAGA, supported by cynical opportunists of many stripes. On the other is an alliance of the both decent and sensible – people like you and me, of every political leaning and none at all – striving to defend democracy under our constitutional republic.
It is essential that members of the pro-democracy alliance understand that this struggle transcends rivalries between what were traditionally understood as left and right, liberal and conservative. One early marker of this transcendence, among many before and since, is the October 2021 “Open Letter in Defense of Democracy,” published simultaneously in The Bulwark and in the New Republic. The authors (apart from the dozens of co-signers) are Jeffrey C. Isaac, William Kristol, and the late Todd Gitlin. Below is the text:
We are writers, academics, and political activists who have long disagreed about many things.
Some of us are Democrats and others Republicans. Some identify with the left, some with the right, and some with neither. We have disagreed in the past, and we hope to be able to disagree, productively, for years to come. Because we believe in the pluralism that is at the heart of democracy.
But right now we agree on a fundamental point: We need to join together to defend liberal democracy.
Because liberal democracy itself is in serious danger. Liberal democracy depends on free and fair elections, respect for the rights of others, the rule of law, a commitment to truth and tolerance in our public discourse. All of these are now in serious danger.
The primary source of this danger is one of our two major national parties, the Republican Party, which remains under the sway of Donald Trump and Trumpist authoritarianism. Unimpeded by Trump’s defeat in 2020 and unfazed by the January 6 insurrection, Trump and his supporters actively work to exploit anxieties and prejudices, to promote reckless hostility to the truth and to Americans who disagree with them, and to discredit the very practice of free and fair elections in which winners and losers respect the peaceful transfer of power.
So we, who have differed on so much in the past—and who continue to differ on much today—have come together to say:
We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to change state election laws to limit voter participation.
We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to empower state legislatures to override duly appointed election officials and interfere with the proper certification of election results, thereby substituting their own political preferences for those expressed by citizens at the polls.
We vigorously oppose the relentless and unending promotion of unprofessional and phony “election audits” that waste public money, jeopardize public electoral data and voting machines, and generate paranoia about the legitimacy of elections.
We urge the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass effective, national legislation to protect the vote and our elections, and if necessary to override the Senate filibuster rule.
And we urge all responsible citizens who care about democracy—public officials, journalists, educators, activists, ordinary citizens—to make the defense of democracy an urgent priority now.
Now is the time for leaders in all walks of life—for citizens of all political backgrounds and persuasions—to come to the aid of the Republic.
Another marker of this transcendence was the leadership that now-former Republican U.S. Representative Liz Cheney displayed as co-chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Cheney was the third-ranking member of the House Republican leadership until her conference removed her from her position for having stoutly stood up for our democracy. In August 2022, notwithstanding her sterling traditional conservative record, Republican primary voters in Wyoming ended her Congressional career in retaliation for having led efforts to hold the 45th president accountable.
In the prologue to the book she released this month, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, Cheney lays out our moment and the stakes:
THIS IS THE STORY OF the moment when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize. It is the story of the most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office, and of the many steps he took to subvert our Constitution.
Since 1797, when George Washington voluntarily handed the power of the presidency to John Adams, every American president had fulfilled his solemn obligation to guarantee the peaceful transfer of power—until Donald Trump. When Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he attempted to overturn the results in order to seize power illegally and remain in office. When the violent mob he had mobilized laid siege to our Capitol, he watched the attack on television and refused for more than three hours to tell the rioters to leave. Donald Trump’s actions violated the law and the oath he swore to the Constitution.
Our founders built safeguards into our system of government to preserve our democratic process. But those safeguards require that men and women of goodwill—Americans elected to positions of public trust—put their duty to the Constitution above their party and above their loyalty to any one man. When our nation was tested after the presidential election of 2020, an alarming number of elected Republicans in Congress failed to do their duty. This is the story of how that happened, and why. It is a story that every American deserves to know.
The end of this story hasn’t yet been written. The threat continues. The outcome now is in the hands of the American people and our system of justice. The methods Donald Trump is using to undermine our democracy are not unique to him. I saw authoritarian leaders use many of these same tactics in Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and across the Middle East when I was working for the US State Department. History is full of similar examples in countries around the world, but never in the United States—until now.
Like other aspiring autocrats, Donald Trump cannot succeed alone. He depends upon enablers and collaborators. Every American should understand what his enablers in Congress and in the leadership of the Republican Party were willing to do to help Trump seize power in the months after he lost the 2020 presidential election—and what they continue to do to this day. So strong is the lure of power that men and women who had once seemed reasonable and responsible were suddenly willing to violate their oath to the Constitution out of political expediency and loyalty to Donald Trump.
In the aftermath of January 6, one senior Republican congressman—who knew the danger Trump posed but would not speak out because he feared the political consequences—said to me: “Surviving is all that matters, Liz.” It was a sad moment. Elected officials who believe their own political survival is more important than anything else threaten the survival of our republic, no matter what they tell themselves to justify their cowardice.
At the height of the Cold War in 1983, Ronald Reagan addressed the nation from the Oval Office. He said this about our duty to defend freedom:
It is up to us in our time to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.
The threat we face today is different but no less perilous. Our duty remains the same. It is up to each one of us to take seriously our obligation to safeguard the miracle of American freedom. We must abide by our duty to the Constitution, and demand that our political leaders do the same. Politicians who minimize the threat, repeat the lies, or enable the liar are not fit for office. Most importantly, we cannot make the grave mistake of returning Donald Trump—the man who caused January 6—to the White House, or to any position of public trust, ever again.
Please, this New Year’s Eve, resolve to act upon “our duty to the Constitution” that Liz Cheney put forth in that final paragraph. Make common cause with all true patriots, of all political leanings and none at all, to thwart MAGA and its enablers and collaborators in their democracy-destroying enterprise.
May the New Year indeed end a happy one.