Reality Check

Let’s start, as we should, with three statements of pure, unadulterated fact, a cold splash of unfiltered reality in a time enshrouded by the lazy fog of obfuscation.

Joe Biden won the 2020 election, comfortably. Both his 81 million votes and incumbent President Donald Trump’s 74 million votes were records; that’s because there are more voters, this was an election with a remarkable level of enthusiasm on both sides, and despite (or, rather, because of) a pandemic, efforts to make voting easier were largely a success.

Second, there has been no credible account of election fraud on any significant level — none. It should be a point of pride, a moment of celebration for our democracy: Despite a global pandemic, unprecedented partisanship at home and hostile meddlers abroad, every election official from both parties made this, as the president’s own election security officials said, “the most secure in American history.”

Finally, those who suggest otherwise, who promote baseless attempts to challenge the legitimacy of its outcome, are liars. And their efforts are not benign: They strike at the heart of democracy, and they till fertile ground where poison seeds of authoritarianism can grow.

Sadly, that group not only includes President Trump but a large number of Republican enablers and sycophants — including U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin, recently reelected to represent the 1st Congressional District. Its voters, who have placed him in that role, are dismally complicit, like it or not.

Of all the commentary on the sorry last few weeks, as the outgoing president, in a fit of pique, attempts to lay waste to the government he’s been evicted from, it was Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times who best summed up the fantasy that Donald Trump is wallowing in — that he actually won the election — as Republican acolytes scrub his back.

Mr. Bouie raised the concept of “kayfabe” — it’s the willingness of participants and observers to suspend disbelief and accept an “alternate reality,” usually for entertainment purposes. Think professional wrestling, where the heroes and heels are not actors but actual superhuman combatants, both in and out of the ring. Or “The Apprentice,” a “reality” TV show where a wealthy man, born on third base but convinced he hit a triple, deftly played the part of a successful businessman despite a long history of failures and bankruptcies.

All the lawsuits — including the farcical one that Lee Zeldin supported, along with more than 100 Republican colleagues in the House — were “part of a performance, where the game is not to break kayfabe,” Mr. Bouie wrote.

This is not professional wrestling, or a reality TV show. This is not harmless. This is, as Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro labeled it, a “seditious abuse” of the court system — an attack on democracy itself, seeking to disenfranchise millions of votes and allow a faction of party footsoldiers to install a leader.

In listing, for all to see, the legislators who signed on to a “friend of the court” brief supporting the ill-fated Texas lawsuit rejected unanimously by the Supreme Court, Ruth Marcus, deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post, summed it up: “Every one of these individuals has forfeited any claim to believe in anything but fealty to Trump and their own political self-interest. Because nothing could be less conservative, less consistent with supposed Republican principles, than urging a court to overturn a democratic election.”

Lee Zeldin’s name was on that list, not surprisingly: He’s been front and center as a reliable echo chamber for the president since 2016, when, reluctant at first, he agreed to sell his soul for the bounty of right-wing 1st District votes it would bring him. He threw in his principles as a bonus.

The 1st District is incredibly diverse, split almost exactly evenly between the two presidential candidates this year, even as Mr. Zeldin won reelection with room to spare. Its easternmost reaches are far more left-leaning — making it all the more remarkable that these voters are represented in Washington by someone who has no equal in fealty to President Trump’s worst impulses. In reality, they have no voice there at all.

Mr. Zeldin gleefully spreads half-truths and outright falsehoods on social media about voting irregularities, giving weight to absurdities that have been debunked over and over. It seems clear that he will be on the front lines of a radical GOP effort to undermine the legitimacy of President Joe Biden and his administration.

These are not normal times, and this should not be shrugged off as “politics as usual.” The very foundations of American democracy are being assailed, and Mr. Zeldin is wielding an ax.

After the Electoral College made it official on Monday, President-Elect Biden said the following: “In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed. We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact. And now it is time to turn the page, as we’ve done throughout our history. To unite. To heal.”

Early Tuesday, President Trump tweeted: “This Fake Election can no longer stand. Get moving Republicans.”

It’s a stark choice you have to make, Mr. Zeldin. We’ll be waiting over here, in the real world, for you to join us. But we won’t hold our breath.