Whether their candidates won or lost, Americans should commend election officials and volunteers for their outstanding work this year.

Instead, many are calling them criminals.

Day and night, critics on radio, TV and social media push false tales about misconduct by a wide array of election officials, voters, Democrats and companies. Even as many Republicans accept election results of every other race on the ballot, they reject the results of the presidential race.

They are encouraged to do so by President Donald Trump.

Truth is, this election was much better run than any of us could have expected. From start to finish, election officials exceeded expectations, especially when you consider the obstacles they faced.

Here’s an excerpt from a Nov. 12 Associated Press story: “A coalition of federal and state officials found no evidence that votes were compromised or altered in last week’s presidential election, rejecting unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud advanced by President Donald Trump and many of his supporters.”

With complete disregard for facts, Trump, aided by accommodating Republicans, launched a disinformation campaign to undermine the election and people’s faith in it.

While the results were unchanged, trust in the system crumbled.

Morning Consult, a research company, found that “(p)rior to the election, 68 percent of GOP voters said they had at least some trust in the U.S. election system. Post-election, that dropped to 34 percent.”

Why do Americans choose to take the word of a man whose long record of dishonesty is well documented? Why trust him over bipartisan poll workers and election officials?

In part because they are sore losers, but mostly because they hope to gain politically.

It’s a dynamic we have some familiarity with. Afterall, Democrats have been calling Trump an illegitimate president for four years.

They whined that he got fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. They pointed to Russians throwing the election to Trump. They complained about voter suppression policies.

In a 2019 interview with CBS, Clinton said about her 2016 loss: “I know that he knows that this wasn’t on the level. I don’t know that we’ll ever know what happened.”

It can’t surprise Democrats when Republicans resort to similar tactics for political advantage.

Of course, Democrats and Republicans argue that their claims are true – while the other side is lying.

As if dishonesty is peculiar to one or the other party.

Both Democrats and Republicans understand the corrosive effects of their attacks. They have chosen to further damage people’s faith in their own country’s democracy because it’s politically expedient.

Their selfish, partisan ploys are especially galling this year, given how well our elections were handled.

Of course there were isolated problems – a few human errors, some technical glitches, the rare instance of cheating. It’s never been and never will be a perfect operation.

But state and local officials in Kansas and across the country were diligent in their efforts to make voting accessible and fair.

They managed to deal with the loss of many of their volunteer workers, with unprecedented numbers of absentee ballots, with cyber threats from home and abroad, with an onslaught of questions and concerns from the public, and with safety protocols that required new equipment, new rules and new attitudes.

They made sure democracy still works – despite everything. They are among the real heroes of 2020.

The big political issues in Kansas and across the country this year were the economy and the coronavirus.

The two are intricately linked. And neither is easily controlled.

While both are serious issues, it has been entertaining to watch Republicans spin economic news – over the past several months and the past few years.

Back in 2012, when Democratic President Barack Obama was running for re-election against Mitt Romney, Republicans were furious when Obama claimed that government programs (things such as public schools, highways and small business loans) had helped rich Americans succeed.

Lots of conservatives disagreed, claiming rich Americans had grown wealthy despite the government, not with its help.

But this year, when President Trump claimed that he personally was responsible for Americans’ economic success, the same Republicans applauded their approval.

Here’s an excerpt from Trump’s political rally last month in Omaha, Nebraska:

“I delivered $28 billion to our incredible farmers here in Nebraska and Iowa and all across the country. … Nobody else is doing that. In fact, some people say our farmers do better now than they did when they actually had to farm.”

Extra government payments to farmers were approved after Trump started trade wars with many of the nation’s biggest buyers of agricultural goods, which drove farm prices down.

Still, the president often claims, falsely, that he deserves credit for creating the best economy in the history of the world.

He continued to brag about his economic powers even as the nation saw historic losses in its Gross Domestic Product this spring. Trump and Republicans blamed COVID-19, which slowed or shut down big chunks of the economy in the second quarter.

In the third quarter, the nation’s economy rebounded, although not completely.

Trump immediately proclaimed he was responsible for the biggest three months of economic growth ever.

It’s not surprising when a president shifts blame for bad news and takes credit for good news. But no one should be fooled by such rhetoric.

It’s true that big piles of federal money can mitigate economic disasters. It’s also true that government policies can help or hurt international trade, create fair or unfair playing fields, and provide opportunity or disincentives for various economic sectors.

But no one president has the power to control the economy. And no American should think it would be good if a president did wield such authority.

The last 20 to 30 years indicate that the nation has gotten modestly better at governing its economy through regulations and policies overseen by an array of federal agencies and officials.

Our nation’s economy grew mostly slowly but steadily through that period, with the big exception of the severe recession that started in late 2007 and ended in June 2009.

Another significant exception is 2020. We have seen huge drops and gains in GDP because COVID-19 has disrupted our lives and economy in ways we have not experienced before.

Because of COVID-19, we are still in a hole economically, compared to where we were before the pandemic started.

Take the pandemic out of the picture and economic performance during the Trump years was about the same as during the Obama years – steady but slow growth.

That’s not the picture painted by Trump or his partisans. But Americans by now should be wary of politicians who claim superpowers over the economy.