It's the eve of the mid-term election and I sit here believing the democrats are going to lose both house of congress. Such a prospect ordinarily wouldn't bother me too much as I know from experience that the cycle of elections swaps out parties quite consistently. But this election seems to forebode real troubles ahead. Among the Republicans seeking office are loyal Trumpists who stoutly defend his lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him. If elected, these men and women could undermine the integrity of the 2024 presidential election by refusing to certify the electoral vote count scheduled for November 5, 2025. As Bill Maher and others have repeated, whether Trump wins or loses the 2024 presidential election, he will not concede and he will most certainly call on those election deniers he helped elect to reject electors from battleground states he needs to claim victory. Who can say what will follow when/if the "nays" cascade through the halls of congress?
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In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:
"On entering the House of Representatives of Washington one is struck by the vulgar demeanor of that great assembly. The eye frequently does not discover a man of celebrity with it walls. Its members are almost all obscure individuals whose names present no associations to the mind: they mostly village lawyers, men in trade, or even persons belonging to the lower classes of society. In a country in which education is very general, it is said that the representatives of the people do not always know how to write correctly."
How prescient Tocqueville was when one thinks of Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert. His view of the Senate was considerably more flattering:
"Scarcely an individual is to be perceived in it who does not recall the idea of an active and illustrious career: the Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose language would at all times do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debated of Europe."
No doubt Tocqueville exaggerated the qualities of the Senate. What would he have thought of Senator Preston Brooks beating Senator Charles Sumner with his cane? While the current Senate races have remained peaceful, though hardly polite, the assaults perpetrated against the English Language by Hershel Walker seem hardly less violent than his collisions with those NFL linebackers. Like Tom Buchanan, Walker reached "an acute limited excellence" no where except on the football field. It would be best for the country if he rested on those accomplishments
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