One year later, Himes sees deeper threat to democracy
Rep. Jim Himes has thought about the siege on the U.S. Capitol exactly one year ago more than most of us, and not just because he was in the thick of it. But he was there, and the images do stick.
Himes, the Connecticut Democrat from the 4th District, was among a small handful of House members huddled in the upstairs gallery, the last to evacuate to safety.
“The insurgents had gotten to the doors and so we were with a bunch of police officers who were pretty panicky because they didn’t know which door to open,” Himes recalled in a conversation we had Wednesday.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, was also in that group. They heard the gunshot by a Capitol police officer who killed an insurgent, Ashli Babbitt, later ruled legitimate self defense.
When they finally exited through a side door, police in riot gear held down insurgents on the marble floor.
Harrowing as that day was, indelible fear aside, that’s not what Himes thinks about a year later when you ask him about the danger of Jan. 6, 2021.
“The echoes that I feel are not actually about what happened that day,” Himes said.
Instead, he’s thinking about what has happened since, with a strong majority of Republicans still believing the brazen, baseless lies by former President Donald Trump and Fox News that Trump won the election and had it stolen.
“It’s very painful to me to see that America didn’t learn,” Himes said. “I’m more worried for our democratic republic today than I was on Jan. 6.”
More worried because he’s thinking about what’s happening now, in state houses across the country as changes afoot point to an ominous possible scenario in the presidential election of 2024.
Jan. 6, Himes said, “is not going to happen again. The big danger to our democracy is that in 2024, we’ve got a close election and around the country in swing states, legislatures override the will of the people to send Trump electors to Washington. That is a very plausible scenario.”
That was the goal in 2020 and in the insurrection that Trump sparked at the Capitol on Jan. 6. And Himes said, “They’ve changed the legal structures in enough states that they may be able to perpetrate a fraud.”
It may sound far-fetched, or maybe not, because were already seeing the results of a two-party system so broken that basic legislation can’t happen anymore. Many issues that had broad, bipartisan support, such as cap-and-trade energy rules to slow climate change, now have zero Republican votes.
“An instinct to authoritarianism doesn’t come out of nowhere,” Himes said Wednesday.
As for himself, he serves in a Congress that has fully 147 members, most in the House, who voted to reject that 2020 Electoral College result on the very night of the mob attack, Jan. 6. That’s been difficult.
“I won’t be in the same room with some of the fascists,” Himes said, naming Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Florida and a couple of others. “But you know, I have to work with an awful lot of people who are Republicans if I’m going to make any progress. It was hard and it remains hard but that’s the decision I took.”
There’s no question that legislatures have broken down, starting with Congress. But an existential threat to democracy? Overblown, said Ben Proto, chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party.
“It was a dark day in our history,” Proto said of Jan. 6, 2021, condemning the attacks and agreeing that President Joe Biden did indeed win the election legitimately.
But he added, “We have survived darker days … and our republican form of government has survived and will again.”
Proto named other elections in which members of Congress opposed results, notably 2004, when an Ohio congresswoman moved to strike the victory in that state of then-President George W. Bush over challenger John Kerry — which would handed Kerry the White House.
“The world was going to come to an end in December of 2000 when the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore declared a winner. It didn’t,” Proto said. “Look, we survived a civil war which completely tore apart our country.”
Fair points. I hope Proto is right and I suspect Himes does, too.
Still, what Himes is talking about is more than a crisis conflict. It is the gradual, wearing away of the core of a free society, which is respect for the institutions that uphold a peaceful transfer of power through the will of the people.
That was the subject of the 2018 book, “How Democracy Dies,” and it’s not a trivial fear. Yes, it’s amplified by policy disputes over immigration, taxes and the right to vote. But the threat of Trumpism — and that’s what we’re talking about here, the cult of an authoritarian who thinks rules don’t apply to hum — goes beyond policy.
“If you like Donald Trump because he cut your taxes, because you believe in less regulation, because you’re angry about immigration, I may disagree but God bless you. If you can’t say that Donald Trump lost the last election,” Himes added, “you are a danger to our democracy.”
He repeated: “You are a danger to our democracy.”
Certainly in Connecticut, we’re seeing some effects of Trumpism but as Proto points out, both parties are deeply divided. That’s why it’s a bit silly that Democrats will gather in a 1-year anniversary press conference Thursday to commemorate the attack on the Capitol, and also to call for Republicans to rid their party of the extremist faction.
They will call on Bob Stefanowski, the 2018 GOP nominee for governor and 2022 hopeful, to denounce Trump’s claims of victory.
That’s over the top. We’re a blue state and it’s the job of us in the media to demand answers from all candidates, and it’s the job of the voters to make a decision.
But just because we’re likely to survive doesn’t mean the threat is unreal. That’s the message from U.S. Rep. Jim Himes a year after he truly, legitimately had reason to fear something he never thought would happen in the United States.
“A bunch of insurrectionists stealing items from Nancy Pelosi’s office were never going to end our democracy,” he said. “But what has happened since Jan. 6 is a deliberate attempt to end our democracy that may succeed.