Author: Colin Koopman

By COLIN KOOPMAN It is hard to believe that we may well be living in the last month of American democracy.  Staggering as the very possibility seems, here we are. The Republican Party’s nominee for the office of the President has explicitly, and repeatedly, refused to commit to the peaceful transfer of power. He continues to heap paranoid doubts on the validity of the electoral process.  Yet he insists on playing the very game whose rules he claims are rigged, fraudulent, phony.  If one of the two major candidates for President will not recognize the validity of the electoral process, how can the government he would lead as President expect to be recognized by those whom he would claim to govern?  How could such a government convince its voters that it really is democratic, that is, of the people? When things approach their breaking point in American politics, we like to think that the Constitution will be there waiting for us at the end of it to hold things together. Imagine that Trump loses the electoral college and popular vote to Biden in a few weeks (as polls suggest is likely), but then contests his loss in the courts and directs his supporters to contest it on the streets (as seems almost certain).  Imagine next that a losing Trump is able to mobilize a few state legislatures to swap out their electors,...