by Kenneth Cooper

Democracy took an L last week. Will it bounce back?

In another round of “what had happened was,” two more people associated with president Trump’s campaign had to moonwalk away from earlier statements about not meeting with Russians. First up was George Papadopolous, a national security advisor to the President. Carter Page, another adviser, followed on Friday. That makes at least 6 people associated with the campaign, Donald Trump Jr, included, who’ve lied about meeting with Russians during the election. The back and forth usually goes something like this:

Reporter or member of congress: Did you meet with any Russians during the campaign?

Trump official: I don’t know nothing about no Russians.

Then when there’s evidence showing that they do and did know something about meeting with Russians, the moonwalking begins, usually with, “Oh that? That was nothing. They just offered to shovel some Clinton dirt our way

during a time when our campaign was trailing in the polls and reeling from another one of our candidate’s ignorant, offensive, or just plain wrong statements, but trust me, nothing ever came from that.”

Some Trump supporters just swallow this whole. You can find them on the radio or TV saying stuff like, “See. There’s no evidence the President knew” and other forms of denial. Meanwhile, Special Prosecutor Robert Muller continues to investigate and apparently slowly uncover a historically sloppy act of collusion with a foreign government.

Usually, we can turn to the Democrats and say, Ah…the sane party. That was until Donna Brazile burned a bridge in grand fashion. In an excerpt from her soon-to-be released book, Brazile, former interim chair of the DNC, confirmed what some Bernie Sanders supporters have been saying all along. Brazile claims the DNC colluded with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to help her beat Sanders and win the DNC nomination.

Apparently, Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were just as sloppy as Trump’s and the Russians. Instead of emails, they left paper trails, one which was a legit agreement to fundraise on behalf of the party, the other, which was not-so-legit, had the DNC forfeit control of strategy and operations over to the Clinton campaign – before she even won the nomination. Ironically, Brazile said she couldn’t find any act of collusion until she discovered that document. Somehow though, she forgot to check her own emails, because one of the reasons Brazile had time to write this book is because she was fired from CNN after Wikileaks revealed that she fed the Clinton campaign a debate question during the primary with the promise of more to come.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Leon Cannizzaro was involved in his local homegrown brand of collusion. In an act of legal correctness, Cannizzaro decided to recuse his office from Latoya Cantrell’s credit card fraud case. He decided to do this publicly, while Cantrell is in a heated run-off battle for mayor with the candidate he supports, Desiree Charbonnet, even though as far we know nobody asked about, inquired of, or wondered how his office would handle the case. But apparently, Cannizzaro felt that it was important that the press and all potential voters know that Cantrell, would henceforth be up for potential prosecution by the most powerful prosecutor in the state. Just a little FYI for you voters out there.

Apparently, a Cantrell supporter was like, Oh yeah? Well…take this tip about Charbonnet and let’s see where you shove it. It was a straight power move. Cannizzaro had no choice but to publicly shove it right up to the A.G.’s office too. Just a little more FYI, Cannizzaro is not up for reelection until 2020, but still, it’s never too early for voters to collude around thoughts of his replacement.

So this is the state of our democracy. Locally, it’s not as bad off as it is nationally, where you have one party most likely colluding with a foreign government to win an election, and the other allegedly colluding with its national committee to win a nomination. Yes, we still have the right to go to polls and vote for the candid

ate of our choice, but what does it say about our democracy when foreign governments or party officials are apparently working behind the scenes to manipulate or limit those choices?

In 1787, Benjamin Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention that

established this country. Supposedly, somebody stopped and asked him, “Well, what do we have here?” Franklin replied, “a Republic, if we can keep it.” 230 years later, that is still true.