This Monday, US democracy recovered an essential routine: recognizing the will of the polls. The Congress of the oldest and most stable democracy met yesterday in a joint session to certify the winner of the last presidential election, Donald Trump. It is a bureaucratic procedure, little more than a vocal recount. Until January 6, 2021, almost no one paid much attention to this legislative formality. Perhaps no one thought that what happened that day could happen, the violent assault on the Capitol, the seat of popular sovereignty, by a mob of Trump supporters. The objective was to disrupt the session, to subvert the democratic process. It was a tragic, chaotic, embarrassing day. There were several deaths and 140 officers injured. The protagonists of the assault broke doors, windows and furniture, the legislators had to seek refuge.
Yesterday there was none of that. Between strong security measures, with Washington taken over by snow and polar cold, the only violence was that which continues in the memory of Americans. It was the same setting, the marble of the Capitol. And some of the same protagonists, like the legislators who were here four years ago. The only essential difference: the losers, unlike Trump then, accepted defeat. Yesterday, this pillar of democracy reached its maximum expression due to the formal demands for the certification of the winner: the supervision of the joint session of Congress to certify the winner corresponded to the loser of the election, Democrat Kamala Harris.
The position of US vice president also includes that of president of the Senate, so Harris had to read the result of the recount. “Donald Trump, from the state of Florida, has received 312 votes,” he said about the number of voters obtained by the Republican candidate and president-elect. “Kamala Harris, from the state of California, has received 226 votes,” he continued referring to her in the third person. Afterward, Republicans and Democrats joined in a standing ovation to celebrate the end of the count.
Among those celebrating the return of normalcy to certification was the person who took Harris’ place four years ago, former Vice President Mike Pence. That day, Trump put him between a rock and a hard place, between fulfilling his constitutional duty to certify the result of the elections or turning him into the enemy of the ‘Trumpist’ bases. Pence chose the constitutional path and has been an outcast of the party ever since. Four years ago, some Trump supporters shouted ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ when they entered the Capitol.
Admirable
“The peaceful transfer of power is the pillar of our democracy,” Pence wrote on his X social network account. “I am glad that order and civility have returned to these historic proceedings,” added the former president, who congratulated Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, for his victory. But he included a special congratulations for Harris: “It is particularly admirable that Vice President Harris presided over the certification of a presidential election that she lost.”
Yesterday’s certification is also evidence that Trump’s account of what happened four years ago – he has described it as a “day of love” and has called those convicted for it “heroes” and “hostages” – has prevailed in a considerable part of the US. Or, at least, that it has not had enough weight in the vote, after an ineffective presidency of Democrat Joe Biden, unable to contain inflation and massive immigration of undocumented immigrants, with a party dominated in part by ideology identity and with several crises abroad.
Republican leaders, for the most part, prefer to look the other way about what happened four years ago. Many Democrats insisted yesterday that the episode cannot be forgotten. Rep. Jamie Raskin, who led the ‘impeachment’ or political trial against Trump for the assault on the Capitol and who was a member of the congressional commission that investigated his attempt to overturn the results, defended that yesterday was peaceful because the Democrats “do not have people that denies the results of the election in their ranks and because we try to behave as constitutional patriots.
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