Michigan Meshugas

“In the end, it wasn’t a senator or a judge or a general who stood up to the leader of the free world. There was no dramatic, made-for-Hollywood collision of cosmic egos. Rather, the death knell of Trump’s presidency was sounded by a baby-faced lawyer, looking over his glasses on a grainy Zoom feed on a gloomy Monday afternoon, reading from a statement that reflected a courage and moral clarity that has gone AWOL from his party, pleading with the tens of thousands of people watching online to understand that some lines can never be uncrossed.” Joe Biden won Michigan by more than 154,000 votes. Pressuring those in charge not to certify that vote was a craven affront to democracy. But the pressure came, all the way from the top. Aaron Van Langevelde wasn’t having any of it. “Van Langevelde is a Republican. He works for Republicans in the Statehouse. He gives legal guidance to advance Republican causes and win Republican campaigns. As a Republican, his mandate for Monday’s hearing—handed down from the state party chair, the national party chair and the president himself—was straightforward.” Tim Alberta with a must-read in Politico Magazine: The Inside Story of Michigan’s Fake Voter Fraud Scandal. A political party was attempting to shred democracy to make its pathetic leader feel better. One person prevented it from happening. That’s too thin a margin for error.

+ Amy Davidson in The New Yorker: Trump and a Lesson in How Coups Fail.

+ Alexander Burns in the NYT: Trump Stress-Tested the Election System, and the Cracks Showed. (I really hope someone is keeping a record of all the participants in this sick charade. We should be able to keep a list, check it twice, and forever shun those who were naughty not nice.)