Thread by @bansisharma

1. Ted Cruz's Ruse

Congress is not the forum for adjudicating election fraud. Congress cannot reject duly nominated electors. Neither members of Congress nor the Vice President has the legal authority to reject the State electors. Trump wanted to strong arm them into doing so.

2. After the Civil War, our presidential elections were a hot mess. States fought each other and within themselves like cats over who should be elected a president. Several elections became protracted battles post-election and Congress got embroiled in disputes time and again.

3. Ted Cruz is literate enough and astute enough to cite the 1876 example of a commission appointed by Congress to resolve the dispute of multiple sets of electors submitted by the States. But he is not as illiterate of history as he pretends to be.

4. That 1876 commission was a hot mess too. Congress tangled over this mess for years before passing the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to squarely place the primary responsibility for certification of electors on the States and specified a process for certifying electoral result.

5. Ted Cruz knows this very well. 1887 ECA is still the law of the land. And once all States submit a single set of electors from each State, Congress has no choice but to accept them. THAT IS THE LAW OF THE LAND. Trump was asking Mike Pence and Congress to upend the law.

6. Only the ignorant (of which I was one, till recently, on this matter) or the willfully ignorant (like Ted Cruz) would have you believe Trump was merely pressuring Congress to exercise their legal obligation. No, he was not. This was an attempt at subverting the Rule of Law.

7. And it blew up in his face, as it should have in a country governed by the greatest Constitution in the world, despite its historical imperfections like all works of man are, and a system governed by Rule of Law.

8. Yes the irregularities in this election were historic. Yes the complaints are genuine and sincere on the part of tens of millions of voters. Yes our country deserves a more transparent system for electing the president and yes we need higher election integrity.

9. But we didn't land in this mess only yesterday. It has been thus for generations, and it has been thus because Americans have not ascribed enough importance to the matter to get it fixed.

10. Despite feigned protestations and false accusations, by and large, Congress is a true reflection of the country. Americans cannot absolve themselves of their own complicity by complaining about and blaming state legislatures and Congress as if they fall from heaven.

11. They don't. Every legislator in the U.S. at all levels of the government is elected by voters. Get more engaged in the process, beyond casting a vote every four years, and issues will be fixed. It takes relentless engaged and willingness to put in the work.

12. Become a devotee of this politician or that, be it Obama or be it Trump, and nothing of substance will get fixed.

13. We don't get impacted as much by what politicians say, only by what they do. And guess what? Politicians don't get impacted as much by what people say, only by what they do. Politicians know it. They accept low poll ratings as the cost of doing business.

14. Willingness to be the target of people venting at the legislators to absolve themselves of being conflicted and complicit themselves is another service legislators provide.

15. Make no mistake. Legislators cannot resolve the conflicts manifest in the electorate. They can only fundraise off them. And they do. From the same voters who complain about them as a collective, but open their wallets to them as individuals. It is a very fine ruse!

The End

*engagement