Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Jan. 20, 2025
“Regardless of who you supported last November, the appropriate stance for everyone at the start of an administration is to be willing to support the new president whenever possible and to oppose them when necessary.”
The point about democracy is that sometimes the candidate and the party you backed are going to win, and sometimes they’re going to lose. And the beginning of wisdom about democracy is that victory for your choice will not mean the start of a golden age and defeat won’t be the end of the world.
That’s something that a lot of Americans—and Israelis—have forgotten about in recent years. So great has been the hatred for both President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the part of their political opponents that many of them have resorted to the sort of existential arguments that are incompatible with a functioning democracy.
Both men have their flaws, and their actions and positions on issues can, of course, be debated. Neither, however, is seeking to establish a dictatorship. On the contrary, it is their opponents who have spent much of the past few years claiming to protect and defend democracy while employing lawfare tactics seeking to take out their main foe in a decidedly undemocratic way.
In Trump’s case, his first term was not so much opposed as it was “resisted” by Democrats, who never reconciled themselves with the results of the 2016 election. That was manifested by mass demonstrations protesting his taking office in January 2017. It was also hindered by the way that his political opponents, as well as much of the nation’s security establishment and mainstream media, enabled a hoax/conspiracy theory about him colluding with the Russians to steal the 2016 election. That bad behavior was matched by the bad grace with which Trump and many of his supporters refused to accept the results in 2020—something that culminated in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. …SOURCE