Joe Biden denounces Trump's clown coup as "an unprecedented assault on our democracy"

I was glad to see that President-elect Biden yesterday came out to emphasize how anti-democratic the Trump clown coup really has been, and didn't try to present that message in the form of some saccharine “bipartisan” pablum. (And only a small amount of corniness.)

Biden speaks after Electoral College certification results PBS NewsHour 12/15/2020:

Instead he called it "unconscionable," "stunning," an "abuse of power" that relied on "baseless claims," and named it a direct threat to democracy in the US. Specifically, "an unprecedented assault on our democracy". Biden makes a straightforward defense here of democracy and the rule of law. And he called out the seditious Texas-led attempt to throw out 20 million votes in other states in order to "hand the Presidency to a candidate who lost the Electoral College, lost the popular vote, and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they were trying to reverse. It's a position so extreme, we've never seen it before, a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law, and refused to honor our Constitution."

For literal accuracy, he maybe should have said "so extreme that we haven't seen it since 1861". But Abraham Lincoln's winning vote total in 1860 was 1.7 million - the total number of votes he won, not the margin of victory - so the Confederate secessionists were trying to wipe out 18 million or so fewer votes than the Texas lawsuit this year attempted.

I'm also happy to see that Biden emphasized what a LOSER Donald Trump is.

So for future reference, it's clear that as of now, the incoming President recognizes that the real existing Republican Party of 2020 is not a party that respects democracy and the rule of law, much less one that respects precedents set over decades or centuries that they decide are inconvenient at any given moment. That doesn't mean he can't get some Republicans in Congress to support some of his bills. It *does* mean that as of mid-December 2020, he recognizes that the Republican Party and its main leaders are operating in deeply bad faith, rather than seeing themselves as some kind of "loyal opposition." They see themselves as a Confederate opposition.

The most distinguishing feature of the American political scene right now is not "division" or "partisanship". It's asymmetric partisan polarization. And there no reason to believe that will suddenly change in the next four years.

I'm under no illusion that anything so petty as "facts" make any difference inside the QAnon/Newsmax/OANN bubble, where even FOX News is now considered part of the "deep state". But facts do matter in the real world.

When anyone in such a prominent position describes an event like the Trump clown coup in blunt terms like this, it's worth noticing. Because we don't see things like this nearly often enough.