America’s Peaceful Transition of Power Attempts a Comeback

Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

It’s safe to presume that this January 6, rioters won’t attack the U.S. Capitol building to prevent a joint session of Congress from certifying the winner of the presidential election. This time, Donald Trump won, so he and his allies won’t be holding a frenzied “stop the steal” rally nearby on the National Mall. Even though some large angry crowd isn’t assembling there today, the Capitol has been fortified to repel one, surrounded by big black perimeter fences, with security forces on the highest possible alert.

This time, members of Congress and their staff won’t have to flee and hide, their offices won’t be ransacked, and U.S. Capitol police officers won’t be swarmed and brutally beaten. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden aren’t trying to cling to power by any means necessary, and thanks to the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, the certification process itself is now stricter and the threshold to cause disruption higher than it was when Mike Pence refused to overturn the 2020 election outcome and became the target of Trump and his supporters’ desperate rage.

D.C. is still going to be a mess today, but that’s because of a big winter snowstorm, not a big political firestorm. The city famously grinds to a halt when any snow accumulates, and this storm is currently forecast to dump 6 to 12 inches of wintry mix on it. Schools and federal offices across the Capital Region are closed and roads and runways will be a mess, but Congress won’t be shutting down. In accordance with the Electoral Count Reform Act, after every presidential election, Congress must hold a joint session to certify the results starting January 6 at 1 p.m.

Until four years ago, Congress’s certification of the presidential election results wasn’t much of a quadrennial news event, just a somewhat boring, bureaucratic feature of American democracy. To the extent that it is still big news this year, that’s mostly just in comparison to the aberration of last time — and the fact that the person who inspired that violence, which he has rebranded a “day of love,” is back and legitimately victorious. The biggest political drama of the past week was Trump swooping in to save Mike Johnson’s Speakership from a small group of House Republicans, in large part to ensure a Speaker was in place for the certification.

The biggest January 6 drama moving forward will be how many people Trump decides to pardon among those who, unlike him, were held legally accountable for what happened four years ago. More than 1,500 members of that mob have faced federal charges, more than 1,200 have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to those charges, and more than 600 of them have received prison sentences. Trump has long decried their prosecution and vowed to pardon the “peaceful protesters” on his first day in office. The entire “J6 Prison Choir” probably won’t be able to perform their version of the national anthem live at Trump’s inauguration, but it’s possible they could be released in time to hold a concert at the White House a few days later.

January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented attack on America’s democracy that broke the chain of peaceful transitions of power dating back to George Washington — which took place even and especially if those transitions were contentious. This January 6 aims to make history by returning to form and restarting that chain. That should be celebrated, even if the president receiving the power doesn’t deserve it, and even if he thinks he can erase the trauma and significance of the attack on the Capitol, free the people who carried it out, and imprison those who tried to hold him responsible. We should welcome back the peaceful transition of power, even and especially if Trump’s return to power isn’t welcome.