New study finds one-third of Congress is now iffy on democracy

If your doctor diagnoses you with cancer, and then in the next breath tells you it’s nothing to worry about because eventually the cancer will get tired of making new cells and decide to leave on its own, you should probably get a new doctor. Because if Donald Trump is elected president again, that doctor will be appointed head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and he’ll no longer have time for you anyway.

But—also!—cancer is bad, and expecting it to leave on its own is perhaps the most fatuous thing one can do as a human, apart from making a guy who thinks Hitler did “a lot of good things” president—again.

And yet here we are. Three and a half years removed from President Joe Biden’s victory in a free and fair election, and our country and Congress are riddled with cancer. And there’s a nonzero chance the patient—the world’s preeminent democracy—will die. 

That’s by no means a foregone conclusion, of course, but as with actual cancer, the patient is getting sicker by the day, and lots of people who know better are just standing around watching it happen. Shockingly, these people now include roughly one-third of our Congress.