In the days leading up to the second presidential debate of the 2024 election season, I was paralyzed. My mind was a jumble of semi-coherent half thoughts. I felt overpowering anxiety and fear, just waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop after the first debate. I felt urges to snack, sleep, and tackle my “to do” list, with a strong preference for things that didn’t matter so much, didn’t take much attention or caring, just to avoid the sinking feeling that all was not right with my world. The first presidential debate had left me scarred and scared. I couldn’t get myself to watch that Biden-Trump face-off. I didn’t just not watch it, I made the affirmative decision to spare myself the anticipated suffering, predictable pain. As feared, President Biden clearly lost that June 27 debate, if not lost “it,” as the expression goes. By all accounts, at the end of the agonizing hour and a half, there seemed to be no avoiding a second Trump term and, with it, the end of democracy and decency in our public life. Less than three months later, as the second debate of the election season was approaching, the dominant question for me was how do you spell PTSD?
Of course, much had changed. On June 27, Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee. On September 10, it was Kamala Harris. She was coming off a triumphant, joyful Democratic convention. Democrats were united, energized, and focused on electing the Harris-Walz team, and renewing, if not saving, democracy. I couldn’t not watch this debate, albeit with sweaty palms and shaky nerves. There was so much riding on this encounter, and I was so worried about a repeat of the debacle of the earlier debate.
I needn’t have been so concerned. Kamala Harris was presidential, Trump an unhinged fool. Score one for democracy, decency, and joy. All is not lost.
But my enthusiasm and excitement are tempered by at least three cold, hard realities. First, while it’s hard to imagine Trump prevailing in the popular vote, we are burdened by a vestige of political compromises built into our Constitution. Presidential elections are not democratic. They are decided by the decidedly undemocratic Electoral College, protecting minority rule from the perceived dangers of majority rule. In 2016 when Trump was elected, the majority of Americans had voted for Hillary Clinton and did not prevail. It could happen again.
Secondly, even if the popular vote and the outcome in the Electoral College both give the Presidency to Kamala Harris, Trump has already signaled that he will be a sore, vindictive loser, unleashing armed militias, as he did on January 6, 2001. We are at risk of serious and deadly political violence of the sort we have never known in this country. That should be enough to give us all pause.
And third, there’s the state of our two political parties. I have long felt that the Republican party has lost its soul, and the Democratic party has lost its way. As I wrote in an earlier essay, “The Political Moment,“ first under the leadership of Joe Biden and now with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, I have a sense that the Democratic party has returned to its traditional values, roots, and priorities. The Republican party, on the other hand, has suffered a hostile takeover, becoming the party, the cult, of Donald Trump. What’s to happen next to the Grand Old Party, the party of Lincoln?
There are three groups of actors in this unfolding Republican drama. There are the Trump loyalists, those willingly, maybe even enthusiastically, following his lead. I have special disdain for a subset of those loyalists, the likes of Ted Cruz, Nikky Haley, and JD Vance, men and women who have publicly criticized and expressed contempt for the Donald, yet now are craven sycophants.
Besides these Trumpkins, there are many, indeed most, Republicans in the mold of former President George W. Bush who have chosen silence as their 2024 electoral strategy. They won’t endorse their party’s nominee, but neither will they speak to the dangers of electing this self-declared would-be dictator. Their cowardice is also dishonesty, if not lying, then at least failing to speak the truth as they know it. There’s a special circle in Dante’s hell reserved for this group.
And last, there are a few brave souls - Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Bill Weld, and Christine Todd Whitman among them – urging their fellow Republicans to defeat Trump, reject his MAGA perversion of Republican values, and reclaim their party.
Whither the Republicans?
The election is still five weeks away, and I anticipate feeling continuing anxiety for those five weeks. There’s so much at stake and things could go horribly wrong. January 6th serves as a reminder of how fragile our democracy really is. It depends on good will and respect for law and can be undone by their absence. November 5, 2024 presents us with another watershed moment, a crossroads. That one man could be putting so much at risk violates our reason and our shared history. He could easily spell the end of our grand, nearly 250-year-old experiment in democracy.
If we’re able to survive the day, there remain many critical challenges for us as a nation - global warming, pollution, water shortages, global terrorism, the growth of authoritarianism in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, unfinished business in healthcare, the large and growing divisive gap between haves, have-nots, and have-a-lots in the U.S. and around the globe, our legacy of racism, and the social, economic, racial, religious, and cultural differences that have been stoked by Trump and his followers, to name a few. President Harris and all of us will be tested. Do we have the will and ability to address fundamental underlying problems even as we’re managing the day-to-day? And is there a way to not just heal but to learn and grow from what we’ve been through and are still going through? That will be our ultimate test.
well said jay. me too. but at least i signed up to vote. no sitting on the sidelines this time
but i fear ...
Concisely, clearly, and comprehensively stated, Jay. No matter who wins in November, I fear our fragile democracy will be sorely tested in the days following. However, there is one clear alternative by which it will be rescued from near-certain oblivion at the hands of a delusional, dangerous narcissist.