Two years ago, half the country was shocked that Hillary Clinton lost the presidency and an even higher percentage, including Donald Trump, was stunned that Donald Trump won. He became the fifth candidate in history to lose the popular vote while winning the electoral college, joining John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison and George W. Bush.
Only one of them, Bush, managed to win re-election, perhaps because a president who fails to win a popular majority always carries an odor of dubious legitimacy. Trump seemed to many in 2016 unfit for office and had an approval rating the day he was sworn in of 45.5%. Two years later, he has still rarely bested that level.
Many regard today’s vote as an unofficial referendum on Trump, or at least a chance to provide some check on a gimcrack administration allergic to careful planning and addicted to improvisation, staffed with sycophants and cronies and enabled by a craven Congress.
Still, a solid 40 percent or so of the electorate hasn’t yet seen through Trump, or is willing to hold its nose to get benefits that they think cover his multitude of sins — tax cuts, a reactionary Supreme Court, a populist willingness to restrict immigration and keep Hispanics, African-Americans, Muslims, liberals, women, the news media, educated, science-based elites in their place.
Will enough of those who oppose Trump turn out to provide a check on a lawless and retrograde executive by winning either one or both houses of Congress? That is the question today’s events will answer. This assumes the vote will be legitimate, of course.
News reports suggest both Russia and Iran may be actively attempting to influence the outcome by nefarious, cyber means. Racist robocalls have polluted the races in Florida and Georgia. The president has appended his name to a shameful Willie Horton-redux ad, implying a cop killer Latino on death row is no different from any immigrant and that Democrats welcome such creatures to America, though in fact his poster boy villain arrived during the Bush era.
Voter suppression is alive and well, legislated in two dozen states controlled by Republican majorities, including Georgia, Nevada, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Texas, North Carolina, and Kansas. And who knows how many Americans no longer believe, as a result of the last two years, that democracy works, their vote counts, the playing field is level, not rigged by a corrupt system. They may feel voting is a waste of time.
They aren’t wrong to be short on idealism with a glaring example of self-serving contempt for our form of government and its constitutional protections occupying the Oval Office. Consider Trump’s recent claim that he can nullify, by a simple executive order, the 14th Amendment’s granting of birthright citizenship.
Legal scholars, including Ted Cruz before he went over to the Trump side, say such executive action in unconstitutional. The real amendment process is clearly outlined in Article V, but that won’t stop Trump from promising his base to eliminate pesky provisions like birthright citizenship, freedom of the press, of religion for Muslims, of speech for his critics.
A recent “New Yorker” article, “The Memory House,” discusses a form of palliative care for dementia patients. It’s called validation therapy. Instead of correcting the erroneous views of sufferers, which agitates them, caregivers “enter into the emotional world of the person with dementia and validate their feelings, because feelings [are] more important than facts.”
It appears that Trump is treating his base voters, and Republicans in Congress are treating Trump, as if they are demented. Rather than object to obvious falsehoods or correct errors of fact, we now live in a realm where, if the Queen of Hearts says so, black is white, up is down, climate is not changing, caravans of invaders are storming our southern border, and presidents can rewrite the Constitution on a whim. Better to agree than to agitate the deluded.
Some Pollyanna’s urge us to remember that we got this far in America despite apparently insurmountable odds at the time of the Revolution, a bloody Civil War, terrorist attacks, crippling economic busts, misguided foreign adventures.
Yes, but…
Inequality of income and opportunity may never have been greater. Minorities stiff face daunting discrimination. A changing economy has disrupted long settled ways of life. An international order that sustained our security and prosperity for decades is crumbling. Divided government has proven incapable to address these and other ills.
And most worrying, as the rise of Trumpism shows, many of our fellow citizens are unwilling or unable to distinguish truth from fiction, happy to choose anger, grievance, and Fox News and internet conspiracy theories over rational analysis and evidence. When the American reality is so painful to so many that they are willing to believe a pack of lies or embrace an alternative reality, the days of democracy may be numbered.
The Founders thought an educated, literate electorate, informed by a free press, was necessary for civic virtue to endure and prevail. We shall see when today’s ballots are counted whether the sun is rising or setting on our noble experiment in government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It commenced 230 years ago when the Constitution was ratified by enough states to become law. When it ends is up to us.