Here’s the thing about elections: They don’t really settle anything. Yes, somebody gets elected and somebody else loses, and one party or another is strengthened or weakened in pursuit of its agenda. But in a democracy, the dispute really doesn’t end, because we know there will be another election, and another chance for one side or another to prevail.
That’s important for us to understand as we look at an electorate that is so evenly divided across the country. We’ve been here before, and we ought to be calm about what lies ahead for a divided country.
John Kennedy, after all, became president thanks to the margin provided by the electoral votes of a single state – Illinois. George W. Bush won only because Florida came to his column. Abraham Lincoln won only 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860.
What concerns a lot of us now, of course, is that one candidate for president this year has claimed for years, falsely, that the last presidential election wasn’t fair – that it was “rigged” – and that he might try to make this one the last if he doesn’t emerge triumphant. Donald Trump’s clear admiration for authoritarians around the globe, and his loose words about wanting to be a dictator – “maybe for one day,” he said – make us worry. Maybe our time as a democracy has run out.
But I don’t think so. And I’ll tell you why.
It’s not that the election doesn’t make a difference. I didn’t buy the line written by Pulitzer-winning columnist Kathleen Parker the day before the 2016 election – Parker wrote, “Calm down. We’ll be fine no matter who wins.” We were not, in fact, fine after that – that is, during Trump’s term in the White House: He strengthened the hand of America’s foes around the world while weakening the Western alliance; he empowered racists and radical nationalists at home; he hugely expanded the national debt, pushed tax law changes that made society less fair and, by downplaying the threat of Covid, surely cost tens of thousands of lives.
So, yes, elections have consequences. And that’s precisely why I remain bullish on America, regardless of the outcome of the many races on the ballot across the country this week: because voters are energized by what happens at the polls, and that energy strengthens democracy.
During the half-century or so since I became a voter, an awful lot of Americans got pretty lazy about citizenship. Voting didn’t matter much, a lot of people said – and the turnout of eligible voters showed it. Through the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, barely more than half of the people who could vote did so in presidential elections – and far less than that in off-year elections. That began to change, though, after George W. Bush was declared president in 2000 despite losing the popular vote. And then, four years ago, two-thirds of eligible voters cast ballots either for or against Donald Trump. That 2020 turnout marked the highest percentage voting since 1900.
Clearly, a lot of people who used to take their vote for granted don’t feel that way anymore. And I think that will stick with us for a while. Voting tends to become habitual.
True, uncertainty is nerve-wracking in an election this consequential. And it’s hard for many of us to tolerate uncertainty – especially those of us with strong opinions about the candidates. In fact, social scientists have found that people who have ideologically-shaped perceptions of reality – like, say, people who are addicted to Fox News and its fact-challenged take on what’s happening – those people are the most uncomfortable with uncertainty. According to researchers at Brown University, that leads them to, in the scientists’ words, “form black-and-white interpretations of inflammatory political content.”
So defeating polarization among Americans may hinge on combatting the growth of the misinformation vendors in our news ecosystem. Axios, a fine news organization that has emerged in the digital era, has described this as the “shards of glass election” – meaning that how and where American voters have gotten informed has broken now into scores of pieces – to podcasts and social media influencers and the like, that target hyper-specific pockets of voters. Those shape the conversation as surely as any newspaper front page. With an eye on the next election, then, we need to join in supporting truth-oriented information sources – yes, like public radio – to avert a future where partisans are spreading lies.
That’s the course ahead, just as preparing for the next election starts right now. There will be another election, and one after that, and we need to be prepared for it by first, staying engaged with politics and, second, supporting a healthy news ecosystem. So, yes, nothing is settled by this election – except that it means we’ll need to be ready for the next one.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.