On January 6, 2025, four years after Donald Trump ordered a mob of his supporters to march on the Capitol to block the election of Joe Biden, the US Congress certified Trump’s 2024 victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. Monday’s certification was the final constitutional procedural hurdle before Trump is sworn in as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.
In stark contrast to the events of four years ago, not one senator or representative objected to Trump’s re-election, despite his leading role in orchestrating the failed coup in close coordination with a majority of the Republican Party, elements within the police-military-intelligence apparatus and the Supreme Court. This time, instead of a few hundred police officers and bike barricades, the Capitol Complex and surrounding area were transformed into a virtual police state, with eight-foot-high security fencing erected around the Capitol.
Inside the chambers, Vice President Harris, serving as president of the Senate, oversaw Monday’s certification alongside recently re-elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. The two were seen smiling and talking jovially throughout the event. After the final Electoral College votes were read out by Harris—312 for Trump/J.D. Vance, 226 for Harris/Tim Walz—the chamber erupted in bipartisan applause, capped by Harris warmly shaking Johnson’s hand.
Before and after the certification, leading members of the Democratic Party, including current President Joe Biden, made clear they would do everything in their power to ensure a “smooth transition” for Trump. This includes not only dropping any reference to Trump’s fascistic personality and plans but also whitewashing the coup itself.
In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post the evening before the certification, Biden referred to “violent insurrectionists” but avoided identifying the figure they were fighting to keep in power. In the entire column, Biden never once mentions Trump by name, despite his leading role in promoting the “big lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged” and that “patriots” needed to come to Washington D.C. to “stop the steal.”
Biden wrote that there has been an “unrelenting effort … to rewrite—even erase—the history of the day.” While Trump and the Republicans have indeed attempted to portray the events of January 6 as merely a “peaceful protest” that “got out of hand,” the fact remains that Trump’s return to the White House is only possible because of the Democratic Party’s refusal to pursue criminal investigations into not only Trump but also his accomplices in the Republican Party, the police-military-intelligence apparatus and the Supreme Court itself.
Ignoring the reality that the top coup plotter and his most loyal advisers are returning to the White House, Biden wrote, “We should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault. And we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year.”
Commenting on Biden’s “pathetic” column, David North, chairman of International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, observed: “The ‘shameful attack’ will not be repeated because the man who led the January 6 assault will be inaugurated.”
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Biden presented the threat of dictatorship as a thing of the past. Referring to Trump, Biden said, “I think what he did was a genuine threat to democracy. I’m hopeful that we are beyond that.”
Biden’s column paved the way for further Democratic prostration on Monday. Leading Democrats presented their willingness to rewrite history and acquiesce to Trump as evidence that the fascist threat had passed. Seeking to chloroform the public to the looming threat of dictatorship, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer refused to name Trump or to acknowledge his role in the attack during a 10-minute speech before the joint session.
Instead, Schumer blamed amorphous “rioters” and “insurrectionists” gripped by “election denialism” for the attack. It took Schumer over eight minutes to acknowledge that some Republicans had “tried to subvert the election.”
Seeking to portray January 6 as a moment of unity, Schumer claimed the insurrection failed not because of the inexperience of the mob but because “Democrats and Republicans were united amidst the storm of utter lawlessness and committed to finishing the job of certifying the election.” He added that January 6 was a “historic moment of bipartisanship where both sides united in the protection of our democracy.”
According to Schumer, the failed coup was not an expression of the disintegration of American democracy but simply “election denialism” run amok. He stated:
I mention January 6 to warn this generation and future generations of the immense dangers that arise when election denialism is tolerated, excused, and propagated. We can never again allow the level of unhinged election denialism to happen—not from Republicans, not from Democrats, not from anyone. And we are setting an example today.
In reality, a majority of House Republicans voted against certifying the election after the attack and refused to impeach Trump less than a month later in a truncated trial. Trump has continued to claim that the 2020 election was stolen, praised the hundreds of right-wing militia members who stormed the Capitol on his behalf and promised to pardon hundreds—if not over 1,000—of the low-level foot soldiers he claims have been mistreated by a justice system biased against Republicans.
The only time Schumer referenced Trump directly was when he briefly criticized “the President” for “considering pardons for these rioters who broke the law [and] attacked our police officers on January 6th. Pardoning the criminals who assaulted police officers and tried to halt the democratic process would be a dangerous endorsement of political violence.”
Schumer, an ardent supporter of the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, added:
It would send a message to the country and to the world that those who use force to get their way will not be punished. It is wrong, it is reckless, and it would be an insult to the memory of those who died in connection with that day.
Even as Democrats roll out the red carpet for Trump, the president-elect fumed on his social media site Monday that Biden was “doing everything possible to make the TRANSITION as difficult as possible, from Lawfare such as has never been seen before, to costly and ridiculous Executive Orders on the Green New Scam and other money-wasting Hoaxes.”
The Democrats’ groveling response to Trump’s return underscores that resistance to the rule of the oligarchy will not come from either party of big business. Immediately following the failed coup four years ago, the WSWS warned that the danger to democratic rights “has not passed.” We wrote:
It is essential to build a network of rank-and-file committees in factories and workplaces capable of organizing broad-based popular resistance through the mobilization of all sections of the working class.
Above all, workers must understand that the disintegration of American democracy is rooted in the crisis of capitalism. In a society riven by staggering levels of social inequality, it is impossible to preserve democracy.
Then, as now, we call on our readers to: “Take up the fight for socialism and the defense of democratic rights by joining the Socialist Equality Party.”