During the summer of 2020, candidate Joe Biden was not the first choice of many liberals, or even the second or third choice. He was too old, too establishment, too moderate, too inarticulate or too gaffe-prone. He looked more like the Democratic Party’s past than its future.
But whether he was the only Democrat who could have beaten Donald Trump or not, he was the one who did. And for that everyone should be grateful. If our republic survives, history will regard the election of 2020 as the point of crisis that saved democracy in America and, perhaps, in the world.
I realize that more than 70 million citizens do not share this sentiment. At present, the price of admission into the good graces of one of our major political parties is the denial of the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency. To be a good Republican these days requires accepting the lie that drives the party’s leader: the 2020 election was a fraud and Donald Trump must be reinstated in 2024.
But most of the citizens who accept this lie have already stopped reading this column, if they ever began. A few of them may be swayed by the near-daily revelations of the Trump campaign’s treasonous efforts to overthrow the 2020 election. Recently, for example, we learned a lot more about a systematic attempt — coordinated by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani — to submit fraudulent electors in at least seven states in order to give Vice President Mike Pence enough cover to throw the election into doubt and provide, perhaps, a good outcome for Trump.
