As an American, I have always taken it for granted that defeated political candidates accept election losses with honor and with dignity. George Washington established that precedent in the 1790s by refusing to run for a third term, thereby ceding the political power of the presidency to his successor John Adams. At the time, the idea of a head of state willingly giving up such complete and extensive power was a radical idea. Monarchs, despots, and military leaders ruled their countries until they died, were removed by force, or conquered by another county. Rulers simply did not consider ceding power to another person as a viable option.
In the course of the next 220 years, this peaceful transfer of presidential power has continued unabated forty four more times. That is not to say that every American presidential election has been free of controversy. Several presidential elections in our history have been hotly contested and highly controversial – the most notable being the election victories of John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson in 1824, of Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel Tilden in 1876, and of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000. In each of these elections, the ultimate winning candidate received fewer popular votes than the losing candidate, but either won as a result of winning more electoral votes or, in the case of John Quincy Adams in 1824, winning the deciding vote in Congress. There was virtually no civil unrest after a presidential winner was declared.
Donald Trump changed everything in 2020. The groundwork for his refusal to concede defeat was aided and abetted by his Republican compatriots in the years preceding the 2020 election. It is an inexact science to pinpoint a specific event that precipitated our country’s abandonment of democratic principles – but in looking back over the last couple of decades, two instances come to mind: the Citizens United supreme court decision in 2010 and the accession of Mitch McConnell as the Republican Senate leader in 2006.
A strong argument can be made that the genesis of the current assault on our democracy began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan gave huge tax cuts to the super wealthy, mercilessly attacked labor unions, and encouraged the loss of manufacturing jobs by easing trade restrictions with foreign countries. The economic policies of Reaganomics began the erosion, displacement, and alienation of the middle class and put us on a path towards Trumpism.
The 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, however, injected the uninformed, angry American electorate with a stiff dose of anabolic steroids. Superpacs, pacs, and other nebulous entities were now given free reign to flood the airwaves with unencumbered propaganda with no financial limitations. In short, corporations were now people and money was now speech.
It should not surprise anyone that the Tea Party movement arose out of this environment. Disaffected lower middle class working people quickly found something they could relate to and be a part of. Mitch McConnell saw political opportunity in this shift in sentiment among the uneducated white working class electorate.
As senate minority leader during the early Obama presidency, Mitch McConnell quickly assumed complete power over his Republican colleagues in the senate. McConnell demanded that Republican senators block nearly every Obama judicial appointment by filibuster. As minority leader, Mitch was able to control his Republican senate colleagues by wielding the implicit threat of withholding funds for reelection bids. A backlog of federal judicial vacancies quickly piled up, and Chuck Schumer had little choice but to change the filibuster rules for confirmation votes of non-Supreme Court federal judgeships.
Things, of course, got worse when McConnell became majority leader. Upon the death of conservative Justice Scalia, McConnell prevented Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland from a judicial appointment by refusing to hold a hearing on his confirmation. He also protected Trump during his two impeachments by refusing to allow for witness testimony and to collect new evidence during the Senate trials. The day after the insurrection, McConnell proclaimed that Trump was “practically and morally” responsible for the mob violence on January 6, characterizing his actions as a “dereliction of duty.”
A few weeks later, McConnell proclaimed that he would “absolutely” support Trump if he were to become the GOP presidential nominee in 2024. Apparently, Mitch doesn’t seem to suffer from cognitive dissonance.
As a nation, we find ourselves at a crossroad. As a result of a toxic political environment aided and abetted by Mitch McConnell and our right wing Supreme Court, forty percent of our electorate, it seems, no longer supports representative democracy as its preferred type of government. That is a chilling proposition to digest.