Democracy Looks Like Trump’s Baseless Certainty He Will Win the 2020 Election
By: Katherine Emily
Tags: Elections, Politics, Trump, President, Election 2020

In the vernacular, democracy conjures up vision of government that rules in accordance with the will of the people. Morality in the democratic lexicon is a matter of numbers: belong to the majority and the right to rule is yours. Belong to the minority? Well, not only are your opinions disregarded by those in authority, but your rights might be in jeopardy, too.

In its purest form, democracy is mob rule. Its morality is numerical: the majority rules and controls not only the direction of public policy but the definition of what kind of government action is appropriate. Documents like constitutions create hard-and-fast rule about what government can rightfully do and what it can’t do. When it violates these, it also creates a system to ensure grievances are redressed.

That’s not true in a society where “right” is an ever-fluctuating definition, dependent on whatever the whims of those in power happen to be on a given day and their tolerance towards those who don’t happen to share their worldview.

In their continued insistence, despite evidence, that Trump won the election, the president, his surrogates in government, and his supporters in the media have taken up this most concerning of democratic mantras.

Debunked claim made by the president after debunked claim has shown that there is little to his claims of organized voter fraud, widespread enough to shift the election in Joe Biden’s favor.

But this hasn’t deterred the president, or his supporters, who, absent and hard facts, have fallen back on the level of popular support they believe they enjoy as justification for their claims.

How could someone as beloved by the people as Donald Trump possibly lose an election? Answer: he couldn’t. That love among his base, rooted in his administration’s fight for traditional values, must translate into votes

The case Texas filed with the Supreme Court, since joined by multiple states and supported by members of Congress (who strangely aren’t questioning the validity of any other races than the presidential one) is probably the most glaring example of the depredation this kind of democratic populism does to political thought.

This effort is darkly ironic: the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (who is currently under FBI investigation) filed a suit in the Supreme Court, requesting the body prevent electors in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin from voting on Monday, when the electoral college meets to finalize the election.

Paxton alleges changes to these states’ respective voting procedures, especially their use of mail-in ballots, are unconstitutional. What right does one state have to challenge the policy of another? None: within their borders, states are sovereign in all policy areas except those given to the federal government to manage. This leads to different approaches to the same issues. Once upon a time, Republicans understood that this was the result of federalism. They even celebrated the diversity it brings and the ways in which this helps people with different backgrounds and lifestyles attain the freedom they need to govern their own lives.

But now, instead of being concerned with the preservation of Constitutionally-protected freedoms, Republicans are helping destroy equal protections and the separation of powers by claiming the independent processes of states’ election practices are unconstitutional.

The election results in the states Trump’s surrogates are suing have been certified by election officials — some of them Republicans — and been reviewed by judges, thanks to the president’s lawsuits.

None found any significant evidence of fraud.

That Trump’s supporters have had to resort to something so desperate and patently ridiculous as a state-led lawsuit that seeks to infringe on another state’s practices, is, legally, at least, a good sign. The Supreme Court has set a very good precedent of dismissing lawsuits that deal with states’ internal election practices. The Constitution is pretty clear: in giving the states power over elections, there are few election matters over which the federal courts have jurisdiction.

So, factually the president’s claims of election fraud are wrong. And legally, the methods to which his supporters have turned are absurd.

Yet, as any Trump-supporting media makes clear, his supporters remain firm in their belief that they legitimately won the election and all statements to the contrary are just deep-state nefariousness.

That Trump has managed to create this persona wherein his is perpetually beleaguered and victimized by shadowy and nefarious rogue government actors is interesting. Populism, historically, has a few fundamental failures. It’s not a coherent ideology: it’s an emotional reaction. And when populist politicians gain power, they frequently don’t have any real ideas about how to govern successfully and soothe the ills they’ve talked up. Reflexive hatred against those in power — a product of the stark “us versus them” dichotomy that’s an integral part of populist thinking — also frequently turns on populists.

Trump, somehow, found a loophole to these weaknesses and has retained his status as defenseless outsider unable to be effective because he’s constantly being attacked by hidden enemies, frequently his own cabinet appointments.

And this feeds into the confidence Trump and his supporters seem to have that they will ultimately emerge victorious from the 2020 election fray. Trump has regularly been tweeting about election corruption, the completely baseless claim that he won, and that a Biden administration will be illegitimate as a result. Responses on social media are full of messages like “never concede” and “stop the steal.”

This is what democracy looks like. This is the belief, completely divorced from the reality of how each and every one of the claims Trump has been made have been refuted by election officials and judges, not all of whom are Democrats, that Trump not only won the election but will be recognized as the winner and inaugurated for a second-term. This is about the strength of pure belief and the wholly irrational belief that if it’s just held on to for long enough all the impediments to the will of Trump supporters will magically vanish into the ether.

It’s also about the way people — especially those who don’t belong to opposing political parties — who oppose the president’s narrative are treated. Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, has felt the lash of Trump’s tongue because he expressed support for the certification of his state’s election results and refused to go along with the president’s plan to throw out the results and have the state legislator appoint 16 presidential electors (loyal to Trump). Trump’s response? Kemp is polling badly and is “finished as governor.”

And that’s what happens when democratic sentiment is taken to its logical conclusion: sheer force of will, so long as the numbers are on your side, make all things possible and enable you to dismiss offhand your detractors. You can threaten their careers and take the narrowest possible view of their actions in order to make them look bad because all the power is on your side. And because all the power’s on your side, the only limitation upon it is the strength of your own conscience. That’s certainly not something Trump and his supporters, who disparage not the ideas and statements of their detractors but their motives and abilities, are interested in doing. Which is why limits on government, crystallized in the form of the Constitution, exist. It’s why there are democratic facets to our government but no branch — and especially not the executive — is not purely democratic.