Dan Coats NYT Opinion: What's at Stake in This Election? The American Democratic Experiment

[Mike 03]

New York Times
Sept. 17, 2020
By Dan Coats
Mr. Coats served as the director of national intelligence from 2017 to 2019

Congress should establish a bipartisan commission to monitor voting and ensure that laws and regulations are followed.

We hear often that the November election is the most consequential in our lifetime. But the importance of the election is not just which candidate or which party wins. Voters also face the question of whether the American democratic experiment, one of the boldest political innovations in human history, will survive.

Our democracy’s enemies, foreign and domestic, want us to concede in advance that our voting systems are faulty or fraudulent; that sinister conspiracies have distorted the political will of the people; that our public discourse has been perverted by the news media and social networks riddled with prejudice, lies and ill will; that judicial institutions, law enforcement and even national security have been twisted, misused and misdirected to create anxiety and conflict, not justice and social peace.

If those are the results of this tumultuous election year, we are lost, no matter which candidate wins. No American, and certainly no American leader, should want such an outcome. Total destruction and sowing salt in the earth of American democracy is a catastrophe well beyond simple defeat and a poison for generations. An electoral victory on these terms would be no victory at all. The judgment of history, reflecting on the death of enlightened democracy, would be harsh.

The most urgent task American leaders face is to ensure that the election’s results are accepted as legitimate. Electoral legitimacy is the essential linchpin of our entire political culture. We should see the challenge clearly in advance and take immediate action to respond.

Read here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/opinion/2020-election-voting.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Before this noble endeavor can come to fruition

Democrats must take the majority in the Senate while retaining the majority in the House. It simply wouldn’t happen where repugs are in power. Mr. Coats just cannot bring himself to say what needs to be said.

[lagomorph777]

2. Coats come so close to honesty.

Without actually ever arriving there.

[Captain Zero]

3. Day late, Dollar short, Dan. Shows up

Where was he during the impeachment proceedings?

[LittleGirl]

4. We have that set up now!

The GOP think they if they cannot get votes, then gerrymandering, voter suppression and voter ID will stop them libs!

That guy used to be a Senator? Good grief.

[BlueWavePsych]

5. If we fail we'll be worse than 3rd World countries.

We can't fail. GOTV.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. I'm not worried about the House

And I think we'll at least tie the Senate. Even if we come within one, there is Mitt Romney voting like Susan Collins and Ben Sasse always say they will.

It's the cheating at the Presidential level that worries me. The October Surprises, and there will be several - vaccine, culture wars, false flags treated as insurrections. Free speech as insurrection, by the way, is a tall order. I think most grand juries would laugh it out of town unless there were weapons, an actionable plan, and conspiracy.

Mr. Coats, for some reason, is showing the truth in a veiled way. He seems to be saying that both sides, "foreign and domestic" as he writes, are pointing to similar flaws in our political systems. It's an interesting take, and with some considerable degree of truth. What he's missing is that one side has all the political power at present and is distorting the outcome. He can't quite bring himself to go there.

Or maybe I should read the whole article. No time tonight.