January 6, 2025, The Day Democracy Waved Its White Flag High

How to go down without a fight.

Vice President Kamala Harris presided over her own election loss on January 6, 2025. She joins a not-so-distinguished club that includes former Vice Presidents Mike Pence, Al Gore, Dan Quayle, and Walter Mondale. If you extend elite member status to incumbent vice presidents who were at the top of the losing ticket, it’s down to Gore and Harris. And the first woman vice president is the first to lose to a convicted felon who’d previously tried to overthrow the duly elected government. It’s a rather bleak Guinness entry.

Still, Harris went through with what The New York Times described as an “awkward task,” as if she had to ask her neighbor in February when they planned to remove their Christmas lights. She didn’t organize or lead a coup to block Trump from office. Though, it’s not clear that “coup” would have been the correct term. There were no legitimate grounds to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory. Trump’s delusional claims of election fraud were all imaginary, like his love for Donald Jr. However, while the Supreme Court might’ve ignored the plain language in the 14th Amendment, Trump did in fact swear an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” when he lost the 2020 election. That should’ve disqualified him from holding office again or even appearing on another ballot. The notion that we should’ve “defeated Trump at the ballot box” ignores the unpleasant reality that wannabe dictators and just straight-up criminals are often politically popular. A desperate nation would elect Lex Luthor if he offered everyone flying cars or reduced grocery prices — though Luthor would actually deliver on the flying cars.

Trump's walk back on lowering prices is a media failure

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Harris conceded her election loss with grace and avowed patriotism, which Trump never attempted. In return, Republicans have offered her only public disrespect. They didn’t even make a concerted effort to pronounce her name correctly during the lame duck. That’s like a bigot’s version of a gold watch.

It took just 30 minutes to turn over American democracy to someone currently out on bail pending sentencing for his election interference case. Congress spent 36 minutes certifying non-convicted felon Barack Obama’s victory in 2009. (I imagine Republicans scoured the Constitution for any misplaced commas in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments they could possibly exploit.) The 2021 record of 14 hours and 48 minutes will likely stand until at least the next time a Democrat wins the presidency.

The press described Trump’s election certification as “uneventful,” perhaps due to the prominent absence of Grey’s Anatomy season finale-style drama. It’s true that this January 6 lacked the visible turmoil of January 6, 2021. A mob didn’t storm the Capitol. Congressional employees didn’t hide in their offices from violent thugs. However, democracy can still peacefully expire, while those in charge of defending it look away.

Democrats Who Surrender In Advance Are Bipartisan Accomplices

Was democracy at stake or not?

Democrats are very proud of their orderly surrender. Sen. Adam Schiff posted early on Monday, “Today, there will be no organized objection to the results of a free and fair election by the sitting President, no mob that marches on the Capitol at the incitement of the President. Today, there will be no officers maced by rioters or crushed in the doors of this hallowed institution, no offices desecrated or windows smashed by insurrectionists. Today, there will be an orderly certification of the electoral vote, paving the way for the peaceful transfer of power.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was the vice presidential nominee, echoed those sentiments on Monday evening:

Today, Congress certified the results of a free and fair election. Four years after an attempted insurrection, we must continue to protect and uphold our democratic ideals by ensuring that never happens again.

This is like pointing out that your business didn’t burn down in a freak accident after you paid the mob protection money.

Schiff boasted that he’d “invited Officer Daniel Hodges to witness the peaceful transfer of power that his heroism four years ago made possible. We must ensure the violence he endured never happens again. And that our democracy remains strong.”

Usually, it’s the supervillain who forces the seemingly defeated hero to witness their triumph. Schiff somehow thinks this is a proud moment for the country. It’s galling that he’d suggest that Hodges, who held the line against Trump’s mob, bears any responsibility for this utter submission to fascism.

Schiff did add, “We can, must, and will do our part to ensure that the same is true in every election, regardless of whether one’s preferred candidate wins or loses. We must ensure that our democratic republic survives four years from now, forty years from now, and forever.” But these are just words without any true will for action.

Sen. Cory Booker was even more vague: “Every day I have the privilege to walk through the Capitol, I carry the memory of what happened on January 6th, 2021 with me. Certifying the presidential election today is a stark reminder of the work that needs to be done to ensure justice and protect the freedoms of all Americans.”

President Joe Biden noted in an op-ed for The Washington Post that “four years ago, our democracy was put to the test — and prevailed,” which is like summarizing The Shining as “family moves into quiet ski lodge.” You’re skipping a key part of the story.

An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand.

And those forces now control all the levers of power in the federal government, after banishing everyone who spoke the truth. It’s admittedly tough for Biden to acknowledge the actual stakes without admitting that the entire raison d’être of his 2020 campaign has failed. The “soul” of this nation wasn’t restored. It’s now putrefied beyond recognition.

Remembering The Successful Right-Wing Insurrection Of 1876

Neither Biden nor House Democratic Leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Katherine Clark mentioned Donald Trump by name in their January 6 messages. It’s unclear if this is undue civility or outright cowardice, perhaps a little of both. It would seem politically wise to point out that the president-elect is a convicted felon who was indicted for attempting to violently overthrow the government. As Liz Cheney said during those fraught 14 hours and 48 minutes on January 6, 2021, Trump “summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack.” Every Democratic member of Congress should have given a speech objecting to Trump’s victory that simply listed every way he’s disqualified himself.

Sen. Brian Schatz posted on Sunday, “With zero enthusiasm but total clarity we are doing the appropriate thing, the patriotic thing, the constitutional thing. But that does not erase what many Republicans did four years ago. Just because we aren’t doing it back as retaliation doesn’t make the stain go away. Shame on them, forever.”

“Retaliation” is the wrong word. Harris didn’t lose to Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, or even JD Vance. It’s sick irony that Trump’s own coup attempt would somehow make Democrats more likely to stand back and stand by while a criminal insurrection reclaims power. Democrats put up more of a fight in 2001 and 2005.

Rep. Mark Pocan wrote, “January 6th, 2021 will go down in history as a day when rioters, tricked by a desperate, defeated President, failed to hijack our democracy. I saw it with my own eyes and it will stay with me forever.”

“Failed” is another questionable word choice. Pocan is from Wisconsin, a state Trump tried to steal in 2020. Four years later, he’d win the state outright with the highest percentage a Republican has received since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Monday was not a “peaceful transfer of power.” It was the conclusion of a slow-motion coup that began in 2020. Not enough attention, I fear, is placed on the many non-violent efforts to overturn the election both before and after Trump’s mob stormed the Capitol. Current House Speaker Mike Johnson was one of the architects of Trump’s coup. Democrats aren’t exactly selling kids on why they should follow Liz Cheney’s example and not the person who’s now second in line to the presidency.

Democrats insist that objecting to Trump’s corrupted victory is either morally wrong or ultimately meaningless, but this doesn’t make them look noble in comparison to MAGA. Quite the contrary: It makes it seem as if they grossly exaggerated the “existential threat” Trump posed, so maybe January 6 was merely a protest that went wrong, no worse than the ones in U.S. cities during the summer of 2020. Democrats enable Republican coupwashing through their own inaction.

January 6, 2021 will soon fade from historical memory, like Tulsa and Wilmington but it’s January 6, 2025 that history will record as the dark day when Democrats willingly preserved an illusion of democracy rather than engage with our bitter reality.