January 6 committee hearings: the 2020 election as process

The January 6 committee hearings into Donald Trump's attempted coup continue to make me a fan of the chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson. His opening statement on Monday goes to the heart of what is at stake.

Chairman Thompson:  ... My colleagues and I don't want to spend time talking about ourselves during these hearings, but as someone who's run for office a few times, I can tell you: at the end of a campaign, it all comes down to the numbers. The numbers tell you the winner and the loser.

For the most part, the numbers don't lie.

But if something doesn't add up with the numbers, you go to court to get resolution. And that's the end of the line. We accept those results. That's what it means to respect the rule of law. That's what it means to seek elected office in our democracy.

Because those numbers aren't just numbers.

They are votes. They are your votes. They are the will and the voice of the people. And the very least we should expect from any person seeking a position of public trust is the acceptance of the will of the people—win or lose. ...

Watch here:

Thompson is doing what all of us who work in elections have to do, over and over again: helping both participants and citizens at large understand what all the fuss and drama is about. We grow up in this country absorbing that elections are somehow important, but without intentional education about our democratic government, it can all just seem a blur. To become empowered citizens, we need to know that votes matters and that often implies learning more about what these people in government do. What can a President do? How about a Senators? What powers do state governors wield -- and all those other officials, state and local? Democratic governance requires constant education to make people actors, something more than bemused spectators.

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This hearing was also a short course in what elections feel like to the people who work in them (as I long have). I recognized Fox data journalist Chris Stirewalt's obvious pride in his team; their early, and accurate, call that Biden would eventually win Arizona certainly told me that night that, whatever bumps came along in the count, Dems had pulled through. As a pure instance of electoral professionalism, Stirewalt's delight in his work was a joy to see. (By the way, Fox later fired him for getting it right.)

I could even recognize how Trump's sad sack campaign manager Bill Stepien described watching the election slip away as votes came in and he could see the campaign was not hitting its goals. I remember doing that as New Mexico gave its electors to George W. Bush by a mere 4000 votes in 2004. Not feeling sorry for Stepien though: he's managing the campaign of the Trump-endorsed GOPer trying to supplant Liz Cheney as Wyoming's one congresscritter.

More to come.