In a report published just prior to the US presidential election, the International Crisis Group was pessimistic. ‘The 2020 US presidential election presents risks not seen in recent history. It is conceivable that violence could erupt during voting or protracted ballot counts. Officials should take extra precautions; media and foreign leaders should avoid projecting a winner until the outcome is certain.’
The Crisis Group also feared the threat posed to US institutions. ‘Beyond the implications for any Americans caught up in unrest, the election will be a harbinger of whether its institutions can guide the US safely through a period of socio-political change.’
With Joe Biden securing the electoral college votes necessary to win the White House, the concern is whether the transition of power will be one marked by paroxysms of rage and disruption. Donald Trump is promising not to go quietly. Failing in the numerical stakes, he is now fighting the election in the courts. He is also crafting a narrative, unfounded in facts, that will endure with his supporters: that the election was stolen and that mail-in ballots were corrupted.
To state that the United States is divided has become a quotidian remark. What is less understood is the nature of US democracy itself. Far from being a democracy, the US is a republic, conceived as a bulwark against direct democracy and monarchical institutions. It was also the creation of white, privileged slave owners keen to preserve propertied values in the face of possible insurrection. To have embraced direct democracy, warned the sceptical Founding Fathers, was to embrace a political model that would eventually lead to tyranny.
Foremost among them was the second US president John Adams, who remarked in a letter to John Taylor in December 1814 that, ‘Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhaust and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.’
Preferable, then, was a separation of powers model focused on checks and balances, one that would contain factions and prevent any seizure of power by any particular one. As James Madison wrote in the tenth essay of the Federalist Papers (1787), ‘Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.’
The existence of the electoral college is a case in point. An institutional, anti-democratic firebreak meaning that the popular vote has failed to carry the day on five previous occasions: 2016, 2000, 1888, 1876 and 1824.
'What matters now is whether Trump’s narrative of the stolen election is absorbed by the institutional resilience of the republic.'
Incipient attempts have been made to readjust the balance of the republic. A proposal to abolish the Electoral College was put forth by Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y) in April last year. In introducing a constitutional amendment, Senator Schatz suggested that ‘the person who gets the most votes should win. It’s that simple.’ Co-sponsor Senator Durbin considered the Electoral College ‘a relic from a shameful period in our nation’s history, and allows some votes to carry greater weight than others.’
With the election looming, Trump’s critics feared that a second term would do irreparable harm to the country’s institutions. A common error tended to feature: seeing the US as a democracy rather than a weather beaten republic. President Richard Nixon’s former White House counsel John Dean suggested in September that ‘four more years of [Trump]’ would mean the end of US democracy. Francis Wilkinson, writing for Bloomberg, accepted the premise that the Trump administration was already autocratic. ‘Under the direction of Attorney General William Barr and Acting Homeland Security Chad Wolf, the state has assumed the form of unidentified men in unmarked vehicles, a hallmark of anti-democratic regimes.’
What matters now is whether Trump’s narrative of the stolen election is absorbed by the institutional resilience of the republic. Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law feared that, ‘The checks and balances, the legal constraints, the unwritten norms — they’re all under enormous pressure.’ The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s election monitoring team noted the ‘grave concerns’ from US election officials that legitimacy was being questioned ‘due to the incumbent President’s repeated allegations of a fraudulent election process.’
But there are signs that voices from the Republican Party and Trump’s own support base have distanced themselves. The New York Post, an often savage critic of Biden, suggested that Trump ‘take pride in what he’s done for the nation and the world for four years.’ He could easily run on his legacy in 2024 again ‘if he quits the conspiracy-addled talk of a "stolen" election.’ Fox News, despite some crankiness in its own ranks, also declared the presidency for Biden. Where the rank-and-file supporters of the 45th president of the United States goes, however, may be another matter.
Dr Binoy Kampmark is a former Commonwealth Scholar who lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Main image: Donald Trump speaks in the briefing room at the White House (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)