Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/Senate/Counting of Electoral Ballots/Pennsylvania Objection Debate/Warren Speech
Ms. Warren. Mr. President, more than 350,000 of our loved ones have died from a terrible disease. Small businesses have gone under, never to reopen. Millions have lost their jobs, and too many families don’t know how they are going to pay the rent or put groceries on the table.
It is tough out there, but Americans are fighters, and despite all the challenges, in November they did what Americans do when they are unhappy with their leadership—they voted for change. They turned their backs on a sitting President who fans the flames of hatred while bodies pile up in the morgue. Instead, they elected a new President who wants to save lives, to save our economy, and to save our democracy.
Even as the pandemic raged, Americans showed up for democracy. States worked overtime to set up safe systems, ballot drop boxes, early voting, and gallons of hand sanitizer. Voters mailed their ballots earlier, put on masks, and stood in line at the polls. The election of 2020 shattered voting records.
So here we are on the floor of the U.S. Senate in the aftermath of a historic election held in the middle of a pandemic. People are suffering, and we should be working to get them the help they need. Instead, we are here because Donald Trump wants to overturn the results of that election. The Republicans objecting to the results of this election will be judged by history, but the rest of us will be judged as well.
It is our responsibility to stand up for our democracy even while other Senators work to undermine it.
Losing is hard. I ran for President myself. It was a hard-fought primary, but Joe Biden won and I lost. I am not the only one to live through that; a number of Senators in this room have run for President. None of us was successful, and when we lost, we conceded and we got out of the race because that is how democracy works. None of us lied about the results. We didn’t throw temper tantrums. We didn’t tell our allies in Congress or the States to overturn the results. We didn’t feed poisonous propaganda to our supporters. We didn’t urge people to march on State capitals or to descend on Washington. We accepted the will of the voters.
And it is not just us; it is everyone who has run for President since the beginning of America. Only once in America’s history have the people who lost tried to burn down our democracy on the way out. They caused a civil war that nearly destroyed our Nation.
Make no mistake, the violence we witnessed in this Chamber today was the direct result of the poisonous lies that Donald Trump repeated again and again for more than 2 months. His words have consequences. Our democracy has been grievously injured by this lying coward.
This effort to subvert our democracy is not merely one last Presidential tantrum. This effort is designed to knock out the basic pillar on which democracy is founded: the idea that the voters—not the sitting President and not the Members of Congress but the voters decide who will lead this Nation.
A democracy in which the elected leaders do not bend to the will of the voters is no democracy. It is a totalitarian state. And those who pursue this effort are supporting a coup.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on this effort to overthrow our democracy.
I yield the floor.