This time a year ago, I was standing in the ruins of ancient Carthage just outside the city of Tunis thinking about how civilizations begin and end. Tunisia had just held an election in the hope of becoming a modern democracy of the sort exemplified for two centuries and more by America.
Tunisia is still struggling (it’s just acquired a new prime minister after the last one departed under a conflict of interest cloud), but today, worry about American political culture is crowding out altruistic concern for the plight of overseas peoples who have never had democracy and the rule of law.
Both Republicans and Democrats are talking up the possibility, even probability, that November’s presidential election will be contested, and both sides are recruiting heavy-hitting legal teams to fight the issue to the death. The election result may not be known for weeks after voters go to the polls, largely because most Democrats say they’ll vote by mail and party officials are trying by hook and crook to bend or break the rules in Joe Biden’s favor, even if it means extending election “day” and the vote count until the crack of doom.
Even those, such as the New York Times, who are joined at the hip to the Democratic Party once recognized — it’s a matter of simple logic — and also argued that mail voting was prone to fraud. But that was when more Republicans than Democrats voted that way. When your principles are circumstantial, flip-flops are easy, as the Left also demonstrated when it suddenly came out against the Electoral College after George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000.
Democrats keep warning on vaporous evidence that President Trump will refuse to leave the White House if he loses, but it is Democrats who have refused fully to accept defeat in every presidential election they’ve lost since 1968, most notoriously, of course, in 2016.
Anyone would think democratic Democrats had a long-term future in government if they win, rather than becoming shark bait for the undemocratic Left once they achieve power. It brings to mind a line from Hilary Mantel’s magnificent novel of the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety, in which a young radical smiles as aristocrats denigrate the status quo. “It is an education,” he said, “to watch people mine the ground under their own feet.”
One of those doing the mining is Nancy Pelosi, who’s unique unpopularity is the subject of our cover story this week. Jay Cost writes that she would erode the popularity of a President Biden if there should be one, and drag down the party in 2021 and beyond.
We excerpt Ilya Shapiro’s new book, specifically a chapter on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as she, surely, nears the end of her tenure on the bench, and examine what her legacy is for the Left’s judicial philosophy.
Peter Tonguette celebrates service comedies, and David Freddoso argues that we should continue to celebrate Columbus Day. Graham Hillard sees in the new Boys State documentary reason to believe that the kids are all right.
