Editor's Note:
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is the widow of the late Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings.
She is the speaker, strategist, and author of the next book, "RAGEISM: Race, Age, Gender, Exclusion, and the Politics of Health Equity" (Routledge Press).
The opinions expressed in this comment are yours.
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(CNN) -
Despite her dying wish that she not be replaced until a new president is installed, President Donald J. Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell barely waited a few hours after the death of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg before announcing her intention to do so.
only that.
No one should forget that it was McConnell who blocked a Senate confirmation process for the Supreme Court election of former President Barack Obama, Merrick Garland, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016 because, McConnell argued, the seat did not it should be filled before a national election nearly nine months away.
The disrespect and blatant hypocrisy displayed by Trump and McConnell perfectly sums up the political perversion we have seen for nearly four years.
From Trump's vicious attacks on undocumented immigrants, his nasty and divisive rhetoric, to his seemingly endless list of scandals, and his blatant mishandling of covid-19, Trump's toxic combination of political inexperience, mendacity, and cunning has brought pain, anxiety and loss for many Americans.
It is devastating that it has been protected by Republicans who have engaged in a pattern of asymmetric political warfare designed to secure their partisan advantage at the expense of our Constitution and democratic institutions.
My late husband, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who passed away in October 2019, was not only concerned about the irreverence of the Republican Party, but was deeply disturbed by Trump's erratic and autocratic leadership style.
So much so that, at the end of his life, he had determined that Trump was not simply unfit for the office of president, but was also an imminent danger to the American people and our system of government.
Elijah simply saw the 2020 elections as the battle for the future of our democracy.
The son of two preachers, Elijah was raised to believe in fair play, which meant you followed the rules, treated people the way you wanted to be treated, and didn't judge a book by its cover.
So when Trump became US president after a controversial campaign, and after Elijah's friend and mentor - the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis - called on Democrats to boycott the inauguration, he sought the blessing. from Lewis to attend.
Why?
Because, despite everything that happened, he wanted to make a good faith effort to work with the new president, respecting the institutions of our republic.
If there was an opportunity to work with Trump to achieve things for the American people, he was determined to find it.
So Elijah and I went to the inauguration ceremony and lunch afterward where he introduced himself to the president and came up with the idea of working together to lower the prices of prescription drugs to help the American people.
But after a meeting in early 2017, which Elijah initially thought went pretty well, Trump quickly lied to the media about what Elijah said and showed no interest in collaborating on the pricing of prescription drugs.
That is, until July, when, in a seemingly desperate campaign move, he signed a series of executive orders claiming sole credit for trying to cut prescription drug costs, deliberately poking fun at Elijah E. Cummings' inferior prescription.
The Drug Cost Now bill (named after Elijah) that passed the House of Representatives in late 2019.
Elijah would not have been surprised by Trump's snub because he had seen Trump denigrate former President Barack Obama and attempt to undo or claim credit for the achievements of the Obama administration.
Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Elijah understood how the psychology and ethics of racism prevented people from recognizing the ideas, accomplishments, and dignity of black people because they fundamentally conflicted with his own belief system.
Trump's comfort in using racist and dehumanizing language and adopting racist policies simply reinforced Elijah's perceptions of Trump's inherent biases and his inability to lead a diverse nation.
Trump's repeated attacks on Baltimore, a diverse American city that Trump has always tried to define as unworthy and outside the body politic, was another testing point.
Although Elijah found the attacks on him and Baltimore painful, one of his biggest concerns was what he called the president's "empathy deficit," or the inability to understand and feel the pain of others.
Elijah's investigations into the separations of children from immigrant families on the US southern border led him to believe that Trump had a streak of cruelty that revealed an extreme disregard for the value of human life.
Elijah wrote his book, "We're Better Than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy," before the world knew the new coronavirus was coming, but if he were alive to see what has happened, he would have deduced that Trump's response was not simply inept, it came at the cost of innocent American lives.
Trump's private acknowledgment of Bob Woodward that he knew the disease was deadly all along ("it goes through the air," he told Woodward in February) would have made it clear that his failure to develop a national plan, his efforts to misinform and misinformation and his administration's demand to invalidate the Affordable Care Act amid a global pandemic endangered all Americans, but especially Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans, who have disproportionately alarming rates high number of infections and deaths from covid-19.
Elijah also determined that Trump does not understand or does not seem to care about civic education, thus trampling on rules, regulations and restrictions in a way that puts the institutions of our democracy under extreme threat.
During Elijah's lifetime, Trump's blatant disregard for democratic norms took the form of telling blatant and constant falsehoods, refusing to testify or hand over documents, ignoring subpoenas, and taking advantage of the courts to block and prevent accountability.
Since Elijah's death, the Department of Justice, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the US Postal Service are just a few of the public institutions that Trump has flagrantly used against the people. American for his own personal and political gain.
As Elijah predicted, our nation's democratic institutions are under attack and face a growing crisis of legitimacy.
Written in the last year of Elijah's life, his book "We're Better Than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy," released Tuesday, was his urgent call for the American people to do everything in their power. its scope to prevent Trump from being re-elected.
Because Elijah believed with every fiber of his being that Trump's re-election would result in the death of American democracy and all the promises of security, freedom and justice it offers.
Elijah Cummings