Triumph and Tragedy

This was the title of Winston Churchill’s final volume in his monumental history of World War II. It could also be title of a history of the U.S. 2020 elections. The Democrats succeeded, albeit by the narrowest of margins, in gaining control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, but their victory has been ruthlessly undermined on the federal level by Republican obstructionism and on the state level, where Republicans control key legislatures and governorships, by passage of measures aimed at converting our country’s form of governance from a Constitutional democracy to one-party authoritarian rule.

Republicans could be thwarted, and American democracy sustained for many more years, were it not for Democratic senators Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, who have declared themselves unwilling to vote to abolish or suspend an archaic anti-democratic rule in the U.S. Senate, the filibuster, in order to assert federal authority to protect and preserve the electoral process in federal elections.