They filed back into the House a little before midnight Eastern Time, the young pages bearing boxes of electoral vote certificates, Vice President Mike Pence and members of the Senate in their wake. It was a powerful scene of rebuke to the insurrectionists who, hours before, spurred on by a pathological president, had stormed the seat of our democracy.
January 6, 2021, has already been sealed and seared in our consciousness as one of the most surreal days in American history. The day began with news that Democrats would take control of the Senate, as the Rev. Raphael Warnock became the first Black man from the South elected to the Senate and Jon Ossoff, 33, became the youngest person to claim a Senate seat since Joe Biden won weeks before his 30th birthday in 1972. Together with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, their victories mean an end to the gridlock that has plagued Washington for many years.
The woman Warnock had narrowly defeated, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, began the day intending to object to the certification of electoral votes—that is, to continue upholding the conspiracy theories that the election was stolen, the same web of fiction that Trump continued to spin as he urged his shock troops to march down Pennsylvania Avenue from a White House rally on Wednesday. But the day’s events had compelled her to reconsider, she said, “and I cannot in good conscience reject these votes.”
Loeffler was joined by men who had been enabling Trump far longer than she had, including Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. In the end, all but a handful of Republican senators decided they’d had enough, and enough Republican House members joined their Democratic colleagues in voting to overrule the objections and certify that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the election.
I know that many people who share my progressive views want to blame everyone who voted for Trump for yesterday’s events. I don’t agree. But I do hope that after yesterday, everyone who has supported Trump can look into their hearts and see what most of the Republican senators and many Trump staffers were finally able to realize yesterday: that our nation has barely survived four years of this president and we will be better off when he is gone.
Thanks for reading Surely Joy. I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar.