A Stress Test for Our Democracy

 
 
As we allow ourselves to take a breath, let’s remember that the mere reporting of election results is only the first step in this process. We’re now in the “interregnum” between election day and the point at which both candidates respect the outcome. We’re already seeing the contours of a clash election analysts, academics, political strategists, and lawyers have warned us about for months: a struggle between the structural integrity of our political system and the integrity of the sitting president and his enablers. Whether our system is resilient enough to withstand the coming turbulence — and the degree to which we will see an orderly transition of power — hinges not so much on a clear and unambiguous election result but on the norms that sustain our democracy.

The concession speech, like the one Al Gore gave in 2000 thirty-six days after election night, is one such norm. I imagine I’m not alone in thinking we’re more likely to see the release of The Winds of Winter this holiday season than a genuine concession speech from someone who’s laid the groundwork for the very postelection contest we’re seeing unfold. Any such remarks on the matter will undoubtedly be diluted with more baseless allegations of fraud that will seep ever deeper into the psyche of his base. It would, in effect, be the concession speech equivalent of a non-apology. Whatever scenario we can come up with for how this plays out, from the plausible to the harebrained, the reality is that each is eminently more likely than one in which Trump humbly concedes the election to one Joseph Biden.

Symbolic though they may be, norms matter a great deal for the preservation of liberal democracy. The peaceful transition of power is itself a democratic institution, and a sign of a properly functioning civil society. We take it for granted in the Western world today, but peaceful transfer represents a key milestone on a nation’s path to democracy, as exampled in Armenia following the Velvet Revolution in 2018. Countries without it — and countries who lose it — have proven vulnerable to fascist regime change and slid headlong into increasingly undemocratic outcomes.

That 2020 would be a stress test for American democracy was always a given. How we will fare in the face of it remains an open question, and will depend on the integrity of our political leadership and, very possibly, our instincts as a people for direct action defenses of our institutions and norms.

As Barton Gellman in The Atlantic impressed upon us last month: “Let us not hedge about one thing. Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede.”

 

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Feature image credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

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