Earlier this month, Maine voters resoundingly rejected tampering with voting rights in a nationwide election outcome the Mississippi Democratic Party called “a historic rebuke of extremism.” Days later, Sen. Angus King and others turned their backs on the overall threat Donald Trump’s regime constitutes to our democratic republic. 

King argued at a Nov. 9 presser that he and his cohort gave up the shutdown because it “wasn’t working.” The shutdown was the first serious, organized Democratic opposition to Trump’s authoritarianism. But not a word from King that Sunday night about the threat to the republic.

Nothing about the astounding Trumpian cruelty as it fought judicial defenses to address hunger, support those forced to work without being paid, who were laid off, etc.

The narrow “not working” argument King voiced orally now stands revised in these pages by an afterthought paean to democracy and its requirements, after receiving, immediately, from me and probably many others, rebukes for his narrowness of view, ignoring the egregious threats to the very foundations of our nation and our ties to one another.

There is a huge amount of work to be done if the idea of America is to be protected, competence in government restored, civil service protected, church and state kept separate, checks and balances restored, the rule of law protected and the first 10 amendments fully honored. We’re owed an apology, not a belated, unsatisfying explanation, and his promise to do better.

Hendrik Gideonse
Brooklin