Democracy contains the seeds of its own recovery

FOR ALL Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn this month’s election, American democracy never looked likely to buckle after polling day. Sure enough, on November 23rd, even as the president once again condemned “the most corrupt election in American history”, he agreed that the federal government should give Joe Biden the resources he needs to prepare for office.Mr Trump has still done harm, as have the Republican leaders who indulged him (see ). Given that four in every five Republican voters say the vote was “stolen”, trust in the fairness of elections has been shaken and Mr Biden unjustly undermined from the very start. Henceforth in close votes routine jobs like counting and certifying votes will risk being part of the battleground. That is not a threat to the republic’s existence, but it does mark a further partisan deterioration in American democracy.