Nov 29, 2020 2 min read

Democracy is dying a slow death. As the incumbent U.S. president Donald Trump battles in the courts to contest his Nov. 3 election loss, it feels like we are watching the slow-motion train wreck of our democracy. What took 240 years to build has been gradually dismantled over the past four years. Norms such as the peaceful transfer of power have been shattered. Governing one nation of united states has been replaced by a stark division of red vs. blue.

Trump launched his 2020 campaign the day after he was inaugurated in 2017. Since then he has hinted that he might never concede a defeat at the ballot box, and implied that only massive voter fraud could bring him a loss. After laying that groundwork, he’s now implementing court challenges to try to prove his predictions. Thus far, Trump’s crack legal team has won just one of 31 post-election cases they’ve filed. In the most contentious election prior to this, Gore vs. Bush in 2000, Al Gore yielded and stepped aside after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling stopped a Florida recount with Bush ahead by just 537 votes. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan by a combined 79,316 votes. In 1960, Richard Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy by 118,574 votes. All of these razor-thin losses had legitimate reasons for recounts and court challenges more so than Trump’s popular vote loss of more than 6 million votes. (You have to wonder why if Democrats were clever enough to manipulate that massive number of votes, they didn’t defeat Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, or even Susan Collins.) The difference in those close presidential races: Gore, Clinton, and even Nixon decided that the good of the country and the rule of democracy were worth more than any personal disappointment, and soon conceded the election. Only Trump would put his feelings and pre-established conspiracy theory ahead of the values of our 244-year-old republic.

What baffles me are the memes I see online that show Trump as a beleaguered defender of democracy, fighting off supposed “socialism.” When it comes time to actually defend our democracy, his actions instead erode it. No matter how much he hugs the flag and professes to love this country, Trump always seems to do what’s best for himself personally.

Claiming to champion what this country and its Constitution stand for sometimes requires self-sacrifice, Mr. Trump.

Bernard Quarrick

Uniontown