Eleven senators didn’t even bother to cast a vote on a commission to investigate a violent attack on their own workplace.
Three times in the past year, American democracy has been tested. Once, and most consequentially, it emerged victorious. The subsequent two tests have not turned out as well, and that is a bleak omen for whenever the next test arrives. The first test came after last fall’s election, when more Americans voted for the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, than for any other presidential candidate in history. Biden won the Electoral College by a wide margin, too—306–232, the same tally that Trump had called a “landslide” when it carried him to victory in 2016. Despite this clear result, Trump refused to accept the outcome. He and his allies insisted that he was the rightful winner and did their best to overturn the election, filing spurious lawsuits in courts across the country and pressuring local elections officials to come up with ways to either find more votes for him or disqualify valid votes for Biden. If not for the stubborn refusal of a few Republican officials in Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona, the push might have worked. This was the first test of democracy, and it passed. When it became clear that his postelection effort was going nowhere, Trump tried two new venues: First, he mounted a public campaign to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into forsaking his constitutional responsibility to certify the election on January 6, and second, he summoned a crowd of supporters to Washington for a boisterous rally. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he warned them, and told them to “peacefully and patriotically” march to the Capitol, claiming (falsely) that he would march with them. Some in the crowd then launched a violent coup attempt, storming the Capitol.
