Author and Finisher
Tuesday's Presidential Election will determine the fate of American democracy.
“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” - Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address, 1838
In two days, Americans will elect Kamala Harris or Donald Trump as President. It is an existential election for America because Trump is an aspiring autocrat. We shouldn’t kid ourselves and assume that supporters of Trump are ignorant of his fascistic impulses. There’s no way to hide behind “economic anxiety.” You pretend he’s someone else at your peril. Harris is the normal Democratic politician who respects American democracy, the rule of law, and serves the Constitution. Trump wants to rule according to his petty whims and violent desires. I’m sorry that the stakes are so stark, but that’s where we are.
We have known who Trump is since he rode down an escalator and announced his candidacy for President in the summer of 2015. He has solidified the Republican party’s opposition to democracy, where the Democratic party and its supporters are not viewed as legitimate participants or even fellow Americans. This is not hyperbole but the plain speak of Trump and his fellow Republicans. That’s how we got to January 6th. There was no way Joe Biden (somehow both doddering old man and nefarious mastermind) could have won because his supporters didn’t count as real Americans, and so Republicans felt entitled to storm the Capitol. Republican representatives refused to certify the results of the 2020 election, again signaling that the choice of millions of Americans was not valid. Therefore, democracy was invalid. You don’t have a democracy if only one party is allowed to win elections.
I know it’s not fair to say, “This is the most important election of our lifetimes,” every four years, but this is what happens when you introduce someone like Trump to national politics. I’m not going to pretend that I was a fan of John McCain or Mitt Romney, but I’m fairly confident both men never considered ending American democracy for their benefit. We’re in this scenario now because right-wing media is the tail that wags the dog; Trump, a pure creature of that media who mainlined Fox News and Twitter, sought to implement those grievances into policy. The Republican base and the establishment have followed him down this route, and now they seek to impose this vision not through winning voters but by discounting and removing anyone who might oppose them.
America is a young democracy, and still one that hasn’t reached its full potential. We still labor under the Electoral College (for all the talk of this being a “close” election, it’s only close under the rules of the Electoral College; in a straight popular vote, Trump always loses). We have gerrymandering. We have disenfranchisement of felons whether they’ve served their sentences or not. But the story of America is expanding democracy beyond the Framers’ original vision and making for a richer country where we gather strength from our diversity.
But the only one who can end American democracy is the American people. As Abraham Lincoln wisely observed in 1838, the destruction of our democracy will come from within. It would be nice to pretend that we can put it all on Russian disinformation campaigns or Trump’s voters misunderstanding what they’re voting for. But most Americans have at least a broad understanding of who the candidates are at this point. They can tell themselves a story that maybe Trump won’t be so bad or that the only way towards a safer, more affordable lifestyle is through mass deportations. But underneath that lie is the obvious truth of Trump’s autocratic desires.
I don’t know how things will turn out on Tuesday. I know that as Americans, we like to tell ourselves stories of our greatness and overlook anything that conflicts with that narrative. I can see why people want to turn away from the reality of Trump and imagine him as something he’s not or that the threat he presents isn’t as dire as his opponents claim. If a majority of Americans in a handful of states choose to believe this fanciful idea or wholly embrace Trump’s authoritarianism, then that will likely be the end of American democracy as we know it. Trump and his allies will set up a system where any votes against the Republican party will be rendered meaningless. It will effectively be a one-party system similar to Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Day after day, I’ve had to fight against this doomerism, and I don’t always succeed. Some days, despair swallows me, and the anguish of 2016, when Trump pulled an upset against Clinton, becomes fresh in my mind. There is no data point I will trust, no narrative that can pull me back. But I have to hope for something better. I wouldn’t phone bank, text bank, and canvass for Kamala Harris if I thought a majority of swing state voters would always resort to their worst impulses. I believe that Americans want to keep their democracy. I believe they’re tired of Donald Trump taking up so much space in their lives and always resorting to the extreme rhetoric that’s common in right-wing media. I believe they want to author the continuation of our democracy, not its final chapter.