The Threat to Democracy
How I think about the issue
I can think of few more level-headed people than my friend John McWhorter. He’s nobody’s idea of an extremist. And yet, as you’ll see in this clip from our most recent Substack subscriber-only Q&A session, he’s willing to negate the will of all those millions of people in order to keep Trump off the general election ballot
Loury takes the other side:
We should not have a president in office who was found to violate the Constitution. But we cannot have a president in office whose victory was secured not because he won an election but because there never really was one. For the country to be free of the threat Trump allegedly poses, he must be defeated in a free and fair election.
I would rather not devote a whole lot of my substack to this topic. Let’s see if I can put together my thoughts here and then be done.
I have a very minimalist view of the virtue of democracy. I think that its main benefit is as a mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power. In other forms of government, leaders are less likely to give up power. Coups and civil wars are more likely, especially when a leader dies.
I do not champion “the will of the majority” as having some sort of moral or epistemic significance. But when people vote to change leaders, then we should absolutely respect that.
President Trump did not like the way that the 2020 election turned out. If he were a decent person and a statesman, he would have put the interests of the country first. He would have conceded the election. To deal with concerns about election irregularities, he would have appointed a bipartisan commission to examine election procedures and propose remedies for future elections. Instead, he showed an unwillingness to accept the outcome.
I think that who wins a given election is less important than that it lead to a peaceful transfer of power. Mr. Trump took the opposite view.
Mr. Trump’s enemies are in what I might call the entrenched left, the college-degreed elites who hold sway in academia, media, and government. His friends tend to be voters without college degrees.
The entrenched left is anti-democratic. To me, that seems obvious. Even though I am in the same social class, I see the entrenched left as my enemy, so to speak. But although Mr. Trump is the enemy of my enemy, his post-election conduct makes me unable to regard him as my friend.
We know that Mr. Trump has at least a decent chance of winning the election in 2024. (Otherwise, why would it be important to keep him off the ballot?) That implies that those who would deny him that opportunity are against democracy in the “will of the people” sense. Even though I am not a fan of the “will of the people,” taking away the majority’s chance to select their leader is wrong.
Mr. Trump’s opponents fear that he will replace the entrenched left with his own entrenchment. That is how they believe that he is a threat to democracy.
Suppose that Mr. Trump tries to entrench himself as President, by running for a third term or by refusing to abide by court decisions that block part of his agenda. In that case, I have faith that many of his supporters will turn against him. Of course, some will stick with him. But not many will go along with him trying to completely overthrow the system. Without enough popular backing, he will not be able to threaten our democracy.
Overall, I think that Mr. Trump’s supporters want to see a peaceful transfer of power. I think that their main motivation is not to entrench Mr. Trump; their main motivation is that they want to take down the entrenched left.
If he wins, and the smug elites lose some of their status, thar is not the end of our form of government. Of course, to those smug elites it feels that way.
I wish that Republican voters would choose someone other than Mr. Trump as their champion. In his first term, he showed that he is unable to select key personnel for competence, rather than for personal loyalty. He got into many conflicts with his own officials. He will not be able to govern effectively unless he can do better.
But I do think that it is time for the entrenched left give way. I am afraid that a peaceful transfer of power is the last thing that the entrenched left wants to see. I shudder to think how they will behave should Mr. Trump win in November.
substacks referenced above:
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Instead of asking 'who should rule?', we should only be asking 'how do we best remove bad leaders without violence?'
--Karl Popper.
The US constitution did not intend to establish a democracy, but a republic based on the principle eloquently expressed by Karl Popper above. The over-reaction to "Orange Hitler" was truly bizarre and extreme. Trump is not an authoritarian by any means, and he sought the presidency simply hoping to fix economic issues and bad business practices which he believed were not in America's interests.
To characterize the shenanigans in the 2020 presidential election as mere irregularities is a vast understatement. There is a mountain of evidence showing that it was most irregular indeed. Trump's refusal to concede was certainly an evil for the reasons you have outlined above, but given the nature of the election, it remains a serious question as to whether it was the greater or lesser evil.
The entrenched left is not a local but a global problem. We have seen them become precipitously more authoritarian, more extreme, more evil, and quite frankly, more unhinged. If the world is to fall into brutal, democidal, totalitarianism again, it will come from the left, not from Trump and his supporters.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Trump is absolutely the worst candidate for president - except for everybody else! Maybe he will go into the role this time (assuming he is permitted) with his eyes open, with better advisors, and restore the USA to something more like a constitutional republic. Even if he bumbles this, he remains by far the lesser of two evils.
"President Trump did not like the way that the 2020 election turned out. If he were a decent person and a statesman, he would have put the interests of the country first. He would have conceded the election. To deal with concerns about election irregularities, he would have appointed a bipartisan commission to examine election procedures and propose remedies for future elections. Instead, he showed an unwillingness to accept the outcome."
How does the former president, decent or otherwise, appoint a bipartisan commission to examine anything? I realize that you, like many academics, don't want to sully your hands on this issue, but there were glaring irregularities in the last election, and as important as the peaceful transition of power is also the honest transition of power and authority. What you prescribe makes no sense.