Adam Serwer, The Atlantic: “The chaotic scene in Washington was familiar to American history but foreign to many living Americans – an armed mob seeking to nullify an election in the name of freedom and democracy. The violence was a predictable consequence of the president’s talent for manipulating dark currents of American politics he does not fully comprehend. What transpired yesterday was not simply an assault on democracy. It was an attack on multiracial democracy, which is younger than most members of the Senate.”

“The Washington Post described the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol as ‘would-be saboteurs of a 244-year-old democracy.’ But true democracy in America is only 55 years old, dating to 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act guaranteed suffrage – at least on paper – to all American citizens, regardless of race. Four decades later, a multiracial coalition elected a Black president. As in the past, the rise of Black men to political power made some white Americans question the wisdom of democracy. That president’s successor, and many of his supporters, now insists that he must be allowed to remain in power despite having lost his reelection campaign, arguing that his opponent’s victory is illegitimate regardless of the results, and demanding that votes from predominantly Black constituencies in swing states be thrown out. As Trump put it, ‘Detroit and Philadelphia – known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country, easily – cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a presidential race.’ Presenting the disenfranchisement of Black Americans as an exercise in good government is one of the most recognizable constants of American history.”