We've only had a real democracy for 55 years. The vast history of our country has been minority rule & the violent and corrupt suppression of democracy. The idea, then, that our country will automatically withstand this assault on democracy is either naive or willfully ignorant.

The historic norm in this country has been the denial of the vote to Black Americans, to Native people, to Latinos, to women. What we are witnessing here is the danger of the embrace of American mythology versus historical fact by people whose job is to know better.

How easily we dismiss that until 1965, the vast majority of white Americans were fine with the fact that more than 1 of 10 Americans, people in an entire section of the country, were violently denied democracy and the franchise. I was born a decade after the VRA. A decade.

Even if Trump ultimately fails in seeking to overturn the election, which he likely will, we can't gloss over that he is the worst manifestation of a concerted effort to roll back democracy leading to gutting of the Voting Rights Act & the wave of voter suppression that followed.

Data shows the biggest determinant of how long someone will wait to vote is whether or not they are Black. The closing of polling places in Black and Latino areas. Gerrymandering. Voter ID. All of these efforts were the "polite" erosion of democracy that we've accepted.

You can't be shocked by Trump and yet have accepted the glaring anti-democracy policies of the last decade. Well, let me rephrase, it is a luxury to be shocked by Trump, and what very well may happen is Trump will fail, but the effort to erode democracy will succeed.