Donna Brazile

This week, even as the new Biden-Harris administration continues to tackle the urgent crises of the pandemic and the economic travails, the U. S. Senate is taking time to attend to the equally pressing matter of trying former President Donald J. Trump of the United States on a charge of incitement to insurrection. Firstly, no one should ever be allowed to commit the egregious and deadly acts that the former president stands correctly accused of committing, namely of purposefully gathering and inciting a mob with the expressed purpose of upending an election, subverting democracy, and threatening members of Congress and his own vice president. We need to let those future generations know that there were people who insisted on planting a marker here and now that what occurred on January 6th and in the days leading up to it was morally reprehensible and utterly at odds with the democratic principles this nation holds dear. If Trump fails to be convicted because the U. S. Senate says that a president can’t be impeached after they leave office, it sets a precedent for future despots: nothing you do in your final few weeks is punishable by anybody in any way.

Here are seven reforms that would safeguard our democracy: ►We call for the updating of the Electoral Count Act so that members of Congress from both parties are dissuaded in the future from attempting to consider competing slates of electors by invoking this 1887 law. ►Congress should establish a more regular stream of funding for elections via the Election Assistance Commission so states and localities do not need to rely on private philanthropy and corporations for election costs in the future. ►We further urge Congress to review the Ethics in Government Act as well as the Hatch Act to ensure the appropriate application of their provisions to a president’s political activities as well as those of federal or presidentially appointed employees on behalf of the president. The Republican Party and Democratic Party — as well as parties like the Green Party, Libertarian Party and Constitution Party — should refuse to financially support candidates who lie about the integrity of an election or our electoral system.

The U. S. capital had to plead for help from the National Guard to defend itself against the deadly Jan. 6 attack by white nationalists and other racist, extremist groups invited here by former President Donald Trump and his ardent defenders. Amazingly, there are still millions of people who feel the Capitol protesters were rightly aggrieved, their violence justified by Trump’s lie of a supposed stolen election, even though 60 court rulings by 90 judges — many of whom Trump appointed — found the claims were without merit. Instead, African Americans led a “revolt without violence,” as Dr. Martin Luther King called it in a March 1960 interview with U. S. News & World Report about budding protests and sit-ins in the South. Instead, as he said in that 1960 interview, “I have advised all along that we follow a path of nonviolence, because, if we ever succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of the long and desolate night of bitterness — and our aim is not to defeat or to humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.

Because despite the fact that the Democratic Party now controls the White House, the Senate, and the House, the Republican Party also has an essential role to play in rebuilding itself and reuniting our country. But President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris cannot fully and effectively serve and protect everyone in our nation if the Republican Party does not finally and unequivocally reject Trump’s lies and division. Republican leaders have an obligation to heal their party and help heal our nation by extinguishing the flames of hatred for fellow Americans that Trump lit. Republican leaders at the federal, state and local levels must finally accept Trump’s election defeat and move on to the critical work of bringing our country back from the brink of insurrection and ushering us into an era of post-pandemic hope and unity.