‘Who can deny what we saw?’
To the Editor:
I agree with the writer of “ Democrats need to learn a lesson” in the July 17 issue, when he says that, during the June 27 presidential debate with Trump, President Biden looked “diminished cognitively … Who can deny what we saw?”
The quiet competence and steadiness Biden has shown since 2020 in leading the nation out of the worst of the Pandemic is something I have been very thankful for, as well as for his passing legislation to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure, and for his bolstering Ukraine’s defense against Putin’s murderous aggression. But after seeing him debate in June, I wrote Democratic leaders to say that I did not think he had the mental stamina to stand up to the pressures of the office for another four years and should step aside.
But I also will not “deny what we saw” on Jan. 6, 2021. That’s when thousands showed up in Washington after then-president Donald Trump, having whipped them up for weeks with lies about a “rigged” election, tweeted: “Be there. Will be wild!” Conservative Republican Liz Cheney hit the nail on the head: “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack.” On that day, we saw Donald Trump trying to overturn a legitimate election and refusing for hours to call off his attacking mob. He betrayed his oath of office and our democracy. Who can deny what we saw—Donald Trump, “diminished patriotically.”
I also agree with the letter writer when he tells Democrats that if they lose in November, “take your lumps, learn to lose gracefully.” If it is a free and fair election, like the one in 2020, if Trump does not shamelessly lean on numerous election officials again, like he leaned on Brad Raffensberger of Georgia to “find” him votes, if there are not slates of fake electors set up in key states to undermine the legitimate ones, and if, in 2024, one court after another dismisses Democratic suits challenging the election’s validity — I too hope that Democrats will take their lumps. Our country cannot exist as a democracy if the losing party rejects a clear-cut defeat.
But it is billionaire rich indeed to hear the writer lecture Democrats to “learn to lose gracefully,” when his candidate, after losing in 2020, showed the opposite of “grace.” Never have I seen or heard a louder, more graceless loser than Donald Trump was then — and who by his words and actions still is that, a graceless loser.
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To quote Liz Cheney again about this year’s presidential election: “We can survive bad policies [in her view, those of a Democratic president]. We cannot survive torching the Constitution.” That would be Donald Trump.
Burt Kornegay
Cullowhee
