Joe Biden is not going to magically fix this country.
I don’t think anyone actually believes he will, but speaking only for myself, I don’t believe for a second that a Biden presidency will return us to pre-Trump, or that our pre-Trump status quo was somehow idyllic or ideal. It wasn’t. Otherwise we wouldn’t have ended up with Trump or lawmakers who support him.
THAT SAID.
I look at a Biden presidency like a choice between a sinking ship and a lifeboat.
The sinking ship is obviously a bad choice that’s only going to get worse. Stay aboard, and options start dwindling real fast.
The lifeboat isn’t what anyone would call ideal either. You’re still cold. You’re still quite possibly wet. You’re not out of the proverbial woods, and a whole lot is going to have to happen before anyone’s sleeping comfortably in their beds.
But you have OPTIONS. You have a SHOT at getting back to shore.
The sinking ship is headed for the bottom of the ocean regardless of what you have to say about it.
Electing Biden isn’t going to magically put us all back into our metaphorical warm beds and make the shipwreck a distant memory. But it is the one and only viable alternative we have to certain disaster.
I don’t agree with a lot of Biden’s policies, past or present. I’m not a fan. But the alternative is a candidate who has demonstrated he has no regard for the law, the truth, traditions, customs, foreign relations, or even basic decorum. He surrounds himself with sycophants, vilifies anyone who doesn’t toe the line, and has no compunction about contorting government departments to service his purposes or behaving as if the Attorney General is his personal attorney.
No, Biden will not restore us to the previous status quo. No, Biden will not usher in a new era of something better. We as citizens are in for a long and arduous period of marching in the streets, demonstrating tirelessly, and holding elected officials’ feet to the fire. Yes, there will be a collective sigh of relief on January 20th, and I suspect there will be a lot of people just taking that day for some long overdue self-care, but then on January 21st, the pressure is back on.
Because the fact of the matter is we’re never going to get progress by asking nicely for it. We’ve tried, it didn’t work, and now we’re going to have to fight HARD for long overdue change (including changes that will make third party candidates viable in the future in ways they are NOT right now). And yes, it will still be an uphill battle post-Trump.
But if Trump remains in power, that battle is going to be a lot harder, because we’ll be fighting against a president who not only disregards law and custom, he has nothing to lose because he doesn’t have to worry about being reelected and Congress has demonstrated it won’t hold him accountable.
There are two choices in this election. Yes, it sucks – both that the system is currently set up to only allow for two viable candidates, and who those candidates are – but that’s going to be our reality until the electoral college and other problems are dealt with. They won’t be dealt with between now and November.
In November 2020, we have a choice between a sinking ship and a lifeboat, and as someone who has studied authoritarian regimes for years, I cannot overstate how significant the difference is between Biden and Trump:
Biden means an ongoing and exhausting fight for change.
Trump means losing the freedom to fight for anything.
Nationalism is a disease on Earth that prevents the development of the dictatorship of the proletariat and must be wiped out. The only form of nationalism that is acceptable is in the form of Marxist-Leninist national liberation, similar to what the People’s Republic of China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and Cuba has experienced. As the hierarchy of capital grows, nationalism blinds the average citizen of the horrors of imperialism due to an increase in immediate material conditions. Nationalism is thus a coping mechanism for the have-nots, instead of a scientific outlook on the status of socioeconomic and political hierarchies. Nationalism shall not be tolerated in a communist nation and world, but it is important to manipulate and arrange current forms of nationalism to oppose imperialism and western chauvinism.
In what ways has the 2020 presidential election been unprecedented?
The pandemic led to exponentially greater use of mail-in voting. And because some state legislatures refused to authorize the counting of absentee votes before Election Day, the process of counting votes (never mind re-counting them) has taken longer. Also, because voting by mail was primarily by Democrats, President Trump was way ahead in several critical states on Election Day, only to see Biden come roaring back—fueling Trump’s claims of fraud. Of course, Trump created this situation by discouraging his base to vote by mail.
This election has also been unprecedented in the sense that one of the candidates was complaining about fraud months before Election Day.
On November 10, 2020, the New York Times reported “President Trump, facing the prospect of leaving the White House in defeat in just 70 days, is harnessing the power of the federal government to resist the results of an election that he lost, something that no sitting president has done in American history,” and that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, "There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
What concerns should these unprecedented developments be raising?
In context, it appears that Pompeo was joking, but it’s a scary joke that seems to reflect the denialism among the Trump administration and many of his supporters. This is frightening and unprecedented. One major difference between this situation and the post-election crises of 1876 and 2000 is that, in those situations, the incumbent president was not one of the candidates. Here, we have a defeated president who is nevertheless fighting for a second term. Will he abuse the office to make that happen? This is the man with the armed forces and nuclear codes at his command.
It is mind boggling, and that’s understatement. The new conference started with his false claim that he won the election, and went downhill from there. The President apparently considers “legal” votes and “illegal” votes as synonymous with Trump votes and Biden votes respectively.
The big lie at the heart of Trump’s complaint is that he had Pennsylvania and other key states easily won until the suspicious onslaught of Biden votes. The only reason for both Trump’s huge lead and Biden’s big comeback was the fact that Democrats voted largely by mail and most Republicans voted in person.
What would happen if Trump refuses to accept the election’s outcome and refuses to leave?
Fortunately, the winner of this election seems fairly clear, and no recounts or lawsuits seem likely to change the outcome. If Trump refuses to leave, he will presumably be escorted from his office—by force if necessary.
It’s not often taught that the Electoral College was a compromise the North made with the South. In the process, white slave owners were able to count each black person they enslaved as 3/5 a person, and thereby gained greater representation in the Electoral College.
Given this history, are there any civic arguments to keep the Electoral College?
The argument one hears most often is that the Electoral College protects the interests of small states. The senate protects the interests of small states (since every state, even the least populated, gets the same two senators), and no one proposes abolishing the senate. It is argued that, without the Electoral College (ensuring that even the tiniest state has 3 electoral votes), candidates would never visit small states. This gets things backwards. Without the Electoral College, candidates would have at least some incentive to campaign in all states. Because of the Electoral College, they spend almost all of their time in a handful of swing states (whether or not small).
How might Trump’s lawsuits succeed in altering the election outcome?
It appears that he would need to reverse the outcome in several states. In other words, he’d need three or four Bush v. Gores, and even that doesn’t capture the desperation of his situation. Florida in 2000 was essentially a tie, and the legal arguments on both sides had at least some merit. Trump has offered no semi-convincing reason why the outcomes in any of the close states should be reversed.
In addition to litigation, might there be other routes Trump could take to derail the election result or attempt to stay in power?
The one being pushed by Trump allies is to try and convince Republican legislatures in several states to substitute a Republican slate of electors for the Democratic slate that was chosen in the election. After all, the Constitution empowers state legislatures to choose the “manner” in which electors are chosen. The problem for Trump is that these electors did choose the manner—popular elections. They can’t just substitute their will for that of the people because they don’t like the result.
He can try, but there’s no legal basis or precedent for a president remaining in power after his term was over.
Of the past presidential election crises, do any resemble the situation we are in now?
It resembles both 1876 and 2000 in that the election came down to a few states with narrow margins. And, like 2000, recounts and litigation will extend the period of uncertainty. But the Biden margins appear to be large enough that we will probably avoid the chaos that ensued after those elections.
Can you go into more detail about parallels between the current moment and the election crises of 1876 and 2000? What form did corruption take then? How might it manifest now?
As the 2020 post-election crisis unfolds, we must learn from history—specifically the presidential election chaos in 1876 and 2000. In each of these three elections, the outcome came down to one or more disputed states. Most history books claim the 1876 election was resolved by a fifteen-man commission that voted along party lines. In truth, Democrats were prepared to ignore the commission’s determinations, and the threat of duel inaugurations and another civil war loomed ominously. The resolution came only when Republicans assured Democrats in Congress that, if they went along with Rutherford B. Hayes’s election, would cease implementing Reconstruction. The nation paid a terrible price for the backroom dealing. In 2000, the election was resolved by the Supreme Court – with five conservative Justices intervening to assure the election of George W. Bush.
Today, both of these threats are present—political deal-making and/or a partisan Supreme Court could determine the outcome. There are additional parallels to 1876 and 2000 that need to be explored. In both 1876 and 2000, as in 2020, the election took place against the backdrop of voter suppression. In 1876 and 2000, like today, there were calls for state legislatures to intervene and nullify the results of their state’s popular vote. In 1876, states sent competing slates of electors that Congress had to choose between. Today, the possibility of competing slates of electors cannot be ruled out. Ditto the threat of the conservatives on the Supreme Court intervening.
To prevent these destructive outcomes, we need to understand how things unfolded during the prior election crises.
In your latest book, A Short History of Presidential Election Crises, you write: “Abolition of the Electoral College would reduce but not eliminate the dangers of a presidential election marred by fraud and post-election chaos.” How would your proposed Presidential Election Review Board potentially help eliminate the dangers of post-election instability?
Trump’s various claims of election irregularities would be resolved by a tri-partisan (Democrats, Republicans, and independents) commission rather than the courts. Because many judges are seen as partisan, the public would rightly have more confidence in the process and outcome.
Alan Hirsch, Instructor in the Humanities and Chair of the Justice and Law Studies program at Williams College, is the author of numerous works of legal scholarship and many books including A Short History of Presidential Election Crises (And How to Prevent the Next One), Impeaching the President: Past, Present, and FutureandFor the People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights (Free Press, coauthored with Akhil Amar). He received a J.D. from Yale Law School and B.A. from Amherst College. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Newsday, and the Village Voice. Hirsch also serves as a trial consultant and expert witness on interrogations and criminal confessions, testifying around the nation. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Well … let’s put it perspective … I’d you had to do it with a president, in order for you loans to be forgiven … who would you choose? BIDEN or TRUMP?
Personally, I’d let Biden plow me like a field, for no reason at all … while there isn’t enough money in the whole world for me to do it with TRUMP, regardless of the reason!
