In yesterday’s post, reviewing a Washington Post op-ed by Ruth Marcus that called efforts by the duly-elected President to direct the bureaucracy to implement his policies a “power grab” and an “onslaught against the government itself,” I described the piece as reflecting “kindergarten-level constitutional analysis.”

After all, my 6 year old first-grader grandson is fully capable of reading the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution (“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”) and figuring out that this guy is given the sole and full power to direct the executive branch of the federal government. Nothing about the elected President exercising such powers is or can be a “power grab.”

If you are somehow unable to grasp that simple proposition, you therefore must be at sub-first grade level of comprehension, and thus kindergarten level, at the highest.

Well, today Kindergarten Konstitutional Law came to the Southern District of New York.

“Democracy.” What does that term mean? The single biggest theme of the recent campaign of Democrats and of Kamala Harris was that we had to vote for them to save “Our Democracy.”

If I get to summarize the meaning of “Democracy” in 25 words or less, here is my effort: “The people periodically get the opportunity to vote the current authorities out, and replace them with new authorities who will implement new policies.” (That’s 23 words.)

Here in the U.S. we admittedly do not have a pure Democracy, but instead a constitutional Republic, with various limitations on government powers and also power sharing among the government’s branches. However, the element of Democracy — that is, the ability of the people to demand a change of direction by exercising their power at the ballot box — is a very big part of the system, at least in theory.

And yet, during my post World War II lifetime, despite the theoretical promise of Democracy, the ability of the people to get some change in direction of the government through exercise of the franchise has been extremely limited. Maybe the majority approved of what they were getting, but most often when there seemed to be a vote for change, little changed. The biggest change agent by far in this period was Ronald Reagan; but to be honest the Washington establishment fought him mostly to a draw. Nixon and the two Bushes largely continued the status quo. Trump in his first term was far less effective at “draining the swamp” than I would have hoped.

But now we have Trump in his second term suddenly showing us what Democracy can mean in our system.