The Constitution must be defended — except when it must be jettisoned.

We’ve heard much upon the anniversary of January 6 about how Donald Trump wanted to distort the Constitution to get Vice President Mike Pence to try to throw the election to him a year ago.

And this was, indeed, a cockamamie, counter-constitutional scheme. Neither the Framers of the Constitution nor the drafters of the Twelfth Amendment, the provision in question that day, intended to invest unilateral power in one person to decide presidential elections.

Indeed, besides Pence, who refused to buckle to Trump’s pressure, the biggest hero of the post-election period was the constitutional system itself. Once again, it proved a durable vehicle of representative government and a frustration to anyone hoping to seize and wield illegitimate power.

Its distribution of power via federalism to the 50 states, its separation of powers at the federal level, and its provision for an independent judiciary made it impossible for Trump allies to press one button and reverse the outcome of the election.

So, it’s bizarre for the Democrats and the Left to profess to consider a possible repeat by Trump in 2024 an ongoing national emergency, and yet establish more precedent for a president of the United States acting unilaterally beyond his constitutional powers (via Biden’s eviction moratorium and OSHA-imposed vaccine mandate); push to nationalize the country’s voting rules; play with the idea of destroying the legitimacy of the Supreme Court through Court-packing; and generally undermine and tear at the fabric of the Constitution as a racist relic unworthy of the 21st century.