Voting in November

For John, BLUF:  The view of some has grown fairly extreme in understanding how the year will evolve.  Much of it centers on what President Trump may or may not do.  In a way, it is sad.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Will We Actually Get to Vote in November?

From The New Yorker, by Ms Sue Halpern, 4 June 2020.

Here is the lede plus two, plus the final:

I’ve kept a copy of Timothy Snyder’s book “On Tyranny” on my desk since it was published, in 2017. It’s a small volume—the cover is about the size of an index card. Most of the time, it’s buried under stacks of paper from stories I’ve been working on.  Snyder is a historian of the Holocaust and of fascism, at Yale, and this book, subtitled “Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” is a claxon rung to get our attention.  “Listen up,” Snyder seems to be saying to Americans.  “Tyranny, fascism, authoritarianism could happen here, too.”

The juxtaposition of those two things—Snyder’s book, which was published shortly after Donald Trump took office, and my stack of papers, which focus mostly on aspects of American democracy—has not been lost on me.  If it were simply a contest of words, and the contest were confined to my desk, democracy would be winning.  But we know this is not the case.  American democracy is imperilled, and not just because of Trump and Trumpism but because of an ingrained and widely shared belief that the Founders of this country insulated us from the excesses of government with the power of the ballot.  We heard it the other day from Representative John Lewis, the civil-rights leader and icon.  “To the rioters here in Atlanta and across the country,” Lewis said, “I see you, and I hear you.  I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness.  Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long.  Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way.  Organize.  Demonstrate.  Sit in.  Stand up.  Vote.  Be constructive, not destructive.”  These are vital words, earned words, wise words.  But they also come from an abiding trust that, no matter what, the electoral system many of us were born into, and others, like Lewis, had to bleed for, will prevail.

We have now crossed the threshold where we must think about the unthinkable:  what happens if the November election is subverted.  For the past three and a half years, we’ve watched the Trump Administration, along with its enablers in Congress and in the courts, ignore or decimate democratic norms.  Since January 20, 2017, we’ve seen this play out in ways big and small—the Muslim ban, the children in cages, the demonization of the press as “fake news,” to name just a few.  Each outrage has undermined a basic tenet of our democracy: the American government will not discriminate based on religion, asylum seekers will be granted court hearings, and government officials will uphold and respect the freedom of the press.  If we shook our collective head each time there was a new evisceration of a democratic principle, it was always with the understanding that, after four years of cruelty and kleptocracy, the American people would go to the polls and vote Donald Trump and his collaborators out of office.  Even those who expected the Trump campaign to flood the zone with disinformation and find new ways to cheat, and its candidate to lie, most likely believed that if enough people voted, none of that would matter.

. . .

But the lesson of Snyder’s book that I keep going back to, and the one that seems to acquire more salience the longer Trump remains in office, is the one where he exhorts readers to “defend institutions,” because they cannot protect themselves.  “The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced they will do,” Snyder wrote.  “Sometimes institutions are deprived of vitality and function, turned into a simulacrum of what they once were.”  I would like to believe that, if we are lucky, we will mail in our ballots or go to the polls in November, and the election will be free and fair.  But, truly, luck will play no part in it.

There is always the view that President Trump will go rogue, that he will not operate under the same rules that have governed the nation for over 200 years.  Yes, that is possible.  However, it is more projection than likelihood.  It comes from people who would be willing to engage in a soft coup in order to rid us of this President.

I will take the bet regarding the election.  I bet it happens, and notwithstanding the high handed actions of people like Governor Gavin Newsom of California, will go as per usual.

Regards  —  Cliff