About Last Night August 20, 2020August 20, 2020 Honesty, decency, and prosperity — that’s what Barack Obama gave us for eight years . . . along with super hard work, a great example to our kids, world leadership, a national debt shrinking relative to the economy as a whole, and a scandal-free, highly competent team. (His first Energy Secretary was an esteemed nuclear physicist; Trump’s had no idea what the Energy Department even did and had campaigned on abolishing it.) No Drama Obama. Here’s what he gave us last night. I had lots of other things I wanted to write about today, but they all seem so small and inelegant by comparison. So let me just add this quote that one of you was kind enough to send my way. Winston Churchill, addressing the House of Commons on October 31, 1944: The foundation of all democracy is that the people have the right to vote. To deprive them of that right is to make a mockery of all the high-sounding phrases which are so often used. At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper — no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point. A key part of the Republican strategy has for decades been to make it difficult for certain people to vote. Never more than now.