The 2024 Election Is Really The Most Important Election
We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. — Abraham Lincoln, comments to well-wishers serenading him on his reelection, November 10, 1864.
I am thinking about our martyred 16th president as I write this blog on President’s Day. And in this election year, when American democracy is under threat, Lincoln’s explanation of why it was important to hold an election in the midst of a rebellion resonated.
I am also reminded of a truism commonly invoked in the 1990s by officials at the State Department in reference to the countries of Eastern Europe that had recently thrown off the shackles of Communism. It is not the first democratic election that is difficult, so the truism went, it is the second. Russia itself, seems to prove the validity of the observation. While Russia held relatively free and fair elections in the 1990s, the presidential election slated for next month will hardly be a paean to democracy. Vladimir Putin’s reelection to a fifth term is a foregone conclusion. Putin controls the electoral apparatus, and he is not reluctant to dispose of opponents, as the death of Alexei Navalny last week proves.
American history provides another case in point. The election, and reelection, of George Washington as the nation’s first president was never in doubt. It is probably safe to say that the Constitution, which established a strong executive, would never have been adopted or ratified had it not been understood that Washington’s firm hand would be on the tiller. But it was the peaceful transfer of power to John Adams in 1796 that established the validity of the electoral process, which was reinforced four years later — to an even greater degree — by the peaceful passing of executive control from Adams to his political opponent Thomas Jefferson.
Lincoln was determined to maintain — even strengthen — American self-rule not despite the rebellion, but because of it. “It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own existence, in great emergencies.” (Emphasis in the original.) He saw secession and the ensuing Civil War as “a severe test.”
Now, we are being tested again. Barring a miracle, Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president. That means the presidential nominee of one of the nation’s two major parties is a man who does not accept the results of the last presidential election. Rest assured that if Trump loses at the ballot box in November, there is zero chance he will give a gracious (or even ungracious) concession speech the day after.
Could he win? Part of me says, no way. Trump has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in virtually every national election since 2016. The Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to abortion energizes Democrats, brings women to the polls in record numbers (not to mention the men who know them and believe in the right of women to make decisions concerning their own bodies), and even angers many voters in strongly Republican states. Trump’s egregious behavior — from election denial to the use of Nazi-like tropes (see “vermin”) — alienates not just Democrats, but many independent voters and even a few Republicans. A conviction for one of the many crimes for which Trump has been indicted could swing enough votes to guarantee Trump’s defeat.
And, yet… on President’s Day 2024 The New York Times runs a piece headlined “Anti-Trump Burnout: The Resistance Says It’s Exhausted.” The headline says it all! And while President Joe Biden is right to claim the 2024 contest as another battle to save American democracy, how many times can voters be asked, figuratively, to mount the barricades? That question is critical, given the importance of turnout. As has been the case in several recent presidential elections, the outcome in 2024 likely will hinge on the results in a handful of closely contested battleground states. A repeat of 2016 is a very real possibility: Biden, like Hillary Clinton in 2016, could win the national vote — by a substantial margin — and yet lose in the Electoral College.
Given the lack of commitment by Trump — and the great bulk of the Republican Party, which marches (perhaps goose steps is a more apt description) to his drumbeat — to free and fair elections, the possibility of cheating is real. If Republicans control both chambers of Congress, will they fairly count the electoral vote? Republicans voted to reject electors in 2020, but that go-around was just practice. Even if Congress accepts the electors sent to it by the states, what guarantees that Republican-controlled legislatures will honor state results in sending those electors to Congress? Or, the balloting itself might not be free and fair. In 2021, a detailed report by Reuters revealed a pattern of threats against local election workers from right-wing zealots.
To further his ends, Trump is refashioning the Republican Party in his image. He ousted a loyalist as Republican National Committee chair, Ronna McDaniel, who he loved, until he stopped loving her. (Proving one’s loyalty to the pooh-bah of Mar-a-Lago is a never-ending chore.) In her place, he is installing vociferous election deniers, including his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. For her part, Lara Trump says, “Every single penny will go to the No. 1 and the only job of the RNC — that is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country.”
Ignoring down-ballot races might be a mistake, one would think. After all, a person elected president likely would have a more successful tenure with a Congress controlled by the new president’s political party. That is true, I suppose, for a normal president. But Trump was not — and will not be — a normal president. He and his aides have made no bones about telegraphing how he would govern.
Trump would move to expand presidential power, concentrating greater authority in the executive branch. He would limit — if not end — the independence of federal agencies Congress created to operate outside presidential control, and he would eviscerate protections for government workers, thereby bending the civil service to his will. A second-term President Trump would use the Justice Department as a tool of revenge against his opponents and a weapon to silence critics, undermining American democracy.
In other words, Trump would amass dictatorial power in the office of the presidency and emasculate Congress. A Republican Party loyal only to him could be used to intimidate opponents and keep Trump and his minions in power. The remade Republican Party reads like a contemporary version of Mussolini’s Fascist Party and Hitler’s Nazi Party. The only things missing are the uniforms, a slogan, and a fearsome symbol. The elephant will not do. And as for the uniform, Mussolini took black, Hitler brown, which leaves orange for Trump.
So, if Americans want to have a free, fair, and meaningful election in 2028, they had better wake up and heed the calls to action. They had better turn out in record numbers this November and handily defeat Donald Trump, because — while every presidential election is important — this one is critically important!
Posted February 20, 2024