You are now experiencing an autocratic attempt

This is not a dril

November 09, 2020

In recent weeks, I’ve been wrestling with my belief that Trump wouldn’t concede or leave willingly, in the face of a media that generally seems to expect the system to work. In the wake of the election, a handful of Republican leaders recognized its outcome, but most stayed silent. Prominent voices like George W Bush and Maryland’s Republican governor recognized Biden’s win over the past few days, which seemed to move things in the right direction.

But now Mitch McConnell has jumped in and thrown Trump a lifeline. In doing so, the Senate's leader called the election results “preliminary,” as he claimed the president had every right to contest the results. He then added:

“Let’s not have any lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.” (Bewildered emphasis mine.)

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McConnell should hardly be taken at his word, but that doesn’t really matter at this point. What does matter is that the norm-breaking leader of the senate gave oxygen to Trump when he needed it most. As Trump continues his assault on our democracy, he now does so with McConnell’s blessing.

So, while much of America celebrates the end of the Trump presidency, I can’t get that old Lenny Kravitz song out of my head. And while I was starting to feel like (hoping?) maybe I was reading a bit too much into recent events, Ezra Klein posted the following over at Vox (Vox!) showing he harbored similar concerns.

This is, to borrow Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar’s framework, “an autocratic attempt.” That’s the stage in the transition toward autocracy in which the would-be autocrat is trying to sever his power from electoral check. If he’s successful, autocratic breakthrough follows, and then autocratic consolidation occurs. In this case, the would-be autocrat stands little chance of being successful. But he will not entirely fail, either. What Trump is trying to form is something akin to an autocracy-in-exile, an alternative America in which he is the rightful leader, and he — and the public he claims to represent — has been robbed of power by corrupt elites.

“Democracy works only when losers recognize that they have lost,” writes political scientist Henry Farrell. That will not happen here.

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With McConnell's support, the chances of a quick concession, or really any concession, seem dashed. And it will likely stem the bleeding of other Republicans recognizing Biden's victory. In other words, it’s Florida 2000 all over again. This time around, it seems we’re loaded up with less scrupulous actors, and the pile of norms that haven’t made it into the wood chipper is running low.

This brings us to the notion of ‘legal ballots.’ If you search for the term on Twitter, you’ll find a litany of conservative leaders making calls like the one from Georgia’s governor.

The game is now all about casting doubt on the results. If they can do that, they might be able to get something in front of the Supreme Court that’s been trending marsupial. A 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that voter fraud occurred in just 0.0009% of ballots in US elections. In opposition of that, the Whitehouse website has a report from the deeply biased and fact-phobic Heritage Foundation (You may recognize the name from their efforts to cast doubt on the dangers of tobacco and the existence of climate change.) that uses hundreds of pages to largely decry the democratic horrors of one-off duplicate voting.

The odds of perverting the election’s outcome would normally seem long at this point, but these are not normal times. And even if that effort fails epically, the messaging around it will only serve to harden the divisions in our communities.