OUR CRITICAL ELECTIONS
An essay in four parts by Susan Barsy
All rights reserved.

This is a revised and updated version of my work on critical elections, first published here in 2012. Changes are ongoing. New content includes coverage of the 2016 election in Part Four below, devoted to Trump’s political career and the elections that carried him to the presidency.

PART ONE
WHAT IS A CRITICAL ELECTION?

For historians, the term “critical election” has a special meaning.  It doesn’t mean simply an election that is vital or all-important; it means one that changes the party system itself, by re-defining what one or more of the political parties represents.  In a critical election, the parties undergo significant internal change, as the central ideas around which they are organized are reformulated in ways that are fundamental, many-sided, and long lasting.

Whereas every presidential election cycle introduces some new ideas and personalities, not every election produces change in the parties’ essential beliefs.  A critical election is a rare sort of generational event that attains landmark significance because, by aggregating ideas in a new and different way, it charts a new direction for the country and opens up new possibilities.  When such an election occurs, the basic message of an entire political party is transformed.  Political parties sometimes die; new parties emerge.  So, critical elections are about more than the candidates and their characters; they are about the ideas that define the nation and how these ideas come to be embedded in a structure of power.

There have only been a handful of critical elections in our history, and it’s no wonder, because when a critical election occurs, it can be kinda scary.  The parties are usually in a state of crisis, and the nation’s political discourse as a whole is usually in a state of heightened controversy.  Yet critical elections, which involve massive levels of thought, input, and organization at every level of the citizenry, are necessary.  Their results can be salutary.  They’re the means by which parties retain their usefulness by meaningfully organizing large blocs of citizens around instrumental ideas and goals.  Through them, new strategies and principles are given a fighting chance to redress our most pressing problems and controversies.

The key agents in critical elections are gifted ideologues and speakers who understand how to combine new ideas in a synergistic, holistic way that can appeal to a majority of the citizenry.  Without critical elections, the parties become calcified, leaving voters without constructive options, and leaving the nation itself without overarching goals, which are necessary to its continuance and integrity.

Though the idea of a critical election is somewhat esoteric, the concept helps us make sense of what’s happening with the parties.  Although Americans may not be conscious of the need for some such redefinition, there are signs that both the Democratic and Republican parties are losing their salience and no longer positively organize the mass of the electorate around the issues and goals that conduce to a brighter future.  As a consequence, circumstances are ripe for independent party movements or for the redefinition from within of either or both of our dominant political parties.  Depending on your temperament, this prospect could be either welcome or alarming.

PART TWO
PARTIES MADE NEW:  THE FIRST SIX CRITICAL ELECTIONS

Now let’s look back over the entire course of US history to get a feel for the magnitude of ideological change that our party system can accomplish.  It’s eye-opening to survey the elections that really shook up the parties and recast the terms of national debate.  Although we’ve had only two monolithic national parties for the last 150-plus years, the long perspective of history shows us that we can create other parties if we want to, and that the parties we have can again be transformed from inside.

Here, then, are the nation’s first six critical elections and their consequences.  They changed the character of the parties and the basic political constellation of their times. After the year 2000, the US has had one more critical election, identified with Donald Trump, whose political career is summarized in Part Four, below.

1. THE ELECTION OF 1800: JEFFERSON

The election of 1800 marked the beginning of organized party opposition in the United States.  By then, eleven years had passed since the states had ratified the Constitution and set up a new government along its lines.  One of the peculiar features of the new government was the virtual absence of dissenting parties and the existence of something like one-party rule.

The Federalists, who had done the most to establish the Constitution and the new government, naturally found themselves in a dominant position, almost unilaterally in control of the new polity they’d willed into being.  Former opponents of the Constitution either participated in the new experiment as a skeptical minority—ready to take action should the government fail—or chose to opt out entirely.

As long as George Washington was on the scene to embody the Federalist spirit and serve as president, most of his contemporaries were comfortable acceding to his authority.  He was elected president unanimously.  His immense personal popularity and the almost universal respect he commanded, both as statesman and commander-in-chief, limited dissent, as did longstanding ideas about the destructive effects of faction in a republican government and a practical recognition that infighting could destroy a government so new and frail.

Washington’s retirement and the succession of John Adams to the presidency in 1796 brought changes to the scene.  Under Adams, the repressive and restrictive tendencies of Federalism became more evident, and critics became justly concerned about his absolutist leanings.  Adams’ vice-president was Thomas Jefferson, who had served the new government faithfully as Washington’s Secretary of State and Minister to France.  Jefferson now became concerned about the direction of  government under Adams and the way the provisions of the Constitution were being realized.  While Adams hewed to a very backward-looking vision of the government, as being the province of a tiny group of elite leaders, Jefferson wanted to realize the Constitution’s more egalitarian possibilities.  With the aid of his fellow-Virginian, James Madison, Jefferson successfully mobilized other dissenting politicians to form a party dedicated to government along truly republican lines.  After a very nasty and bitterly fought campaign, Jefferson and his fellow “republicans” carried the day.  The election of 1800 established the nation’s ability to withstand a contested election, a landmark event that served to legitimate the idea of political parties—and partisan strife.

2. THE ELECTION OF 1828: JACKSON

Despite the democratizing spirit that inspired the formation of the Jeffersonian party (or Democratic-Republicans, as they were sometimes called), politics remained a gentleman’s game, where men of a certain class ran the country and informally determined who the nation’s next leaders would be.  Madison and Monroe followed Jefferson in the presidency, and they were similar enough to him (and to George Washington) in outlook and background to inspire the phrase “Virginia Dynasty.” (All were Virginians and masters of plantations).

Nonetheless, satisfaction with the type of leadership they embodied was sufficient to give rise to what is known as the Era of Good Feelings, for once the Jeffersonians triumphed over the Federalists, that party gradually died, and no party of equal coherence took its place.  Instead, competition organized itself around the visions of particular men.  Instead of national parties, there were cliques of followers, as in 1824, when there were four presidential candidates, each backed by circles of “friends”.  Campaigning that year was carried forward by groups referring to themselves as “Adams’ men” or “Crawford’s men” or “Clay’s men,” for instance.

The disappointment of one of those four candidates—Andrew Jackson—would give rise to a tremendous upheaval in the next election cycle.  In 1824, Jackson won the popular vote for the presidency, but won only a plurality in the electoral college, rather than the majority that victory required.  This threw the election into the House of Representatives, where Henry Clay, the lowest-polling candidate, was also the Speaker.  Clay threw his support behind John Quincy Adams, giving him, rather than Jackson, the victory.  After the inauguration, Clay became Adams’s Secretary of State.

This “stolen election” infuriated Jackson.  He determined that in 1828 he would defeat Adams with a victory expressing the popular will, the people’s sovereignty.  In the process, he and his friends changed the very definition of democracy.  They embarked on a systematic campaign to establish Jackson committees in every state and reached out to engage a mass electorate in an unprecedented way, destroying the power of the coteries.  By the time the election was over, the Jacksonian Democrats were an organized national force, and Jackson had been elected by a landslide.  Assisting in Jackson’s victory was his friend and political ally Martin Van Buren, a brilliant political manager who understood that the future of American politics lay in engaging the public fully.

Not only did 1828 mark the birth of a new, more democratic style of presidential campaigning, it gave birth to a new type of president, who espoused a bold and distinctive set of ideas that were firmly “anti-aristocrat” and that rejected forms of government action believed to confer disproportionate benefits on the privileged.

Jackson came from a very different background from the men he succeeded.  His father had died before he was born, and he grew up with little schooling and in relative poverty.  He was from the frontier rather from the long-settled coastal regions of the country.  Jackson was, famously, a boy-soldier in the Revolution who experienced captivity and ill-treatment at the hands of British authorities.  Throughout his meteoric rise as a soldier, lawyer, judge, plantation-owner, and legislator, he retained a rough and violent side.  He was a person of great personal courage, whom the threat of pitched conflict did not unnerve one iota.

Not surprisingly, high levels of conflict characterized his presidency.  Jackson ran on a platform of “reform, retrenchment, and economy.”  He eliminated funding for many government-backed projects and wiped out the $60-million debt the government was carrying.  He refused to re-charter the national Bank of the United States, a private bank relied on to regulate the money supply, on the grounds that government should not be propping up its small group of directors.  Jackson pushed lifers out of the national civil service and tried to make it more of a meritocracy.  And he sought lower tariffs and designated funds to be given to the states to spend as they pleased.  Jackson’s extensive use of the veto enabled him to thwart and neutralize a Congress he viewed as elitist.  He was also an ardent nationalist who presided over the removal and relocation of Indian tribes from Georgia and other southeastern states, a shameful project known as the Trail of Tears.

Opposition to Jacksonianism coalesced in the newly emergent Whig Party.  The Whigs took up the mantle of the Federalists.  They advocated for commerce, a stronger national currency, and internal improvements (what we would call “infrastructure investment” today).  While the Democrats wanted decentralization and a laissez-faire economy, Whigs wanted a stronger federal government and tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing.

Many intelligent, influential people were drawn to the Whig Party, but it was born under an unlucky star.  Only two times did Whigs manage to win the presidency, and, on both occasions, the presidents died—William Henry Harrison in 1840 and Zachary Taylor a decade later.  In the latter instance, the succession of the southern-born Vice President, James Polk, to the presidency caused chaos within the leadership of the Whig Party.  By the mid-1850s, the party was in shambles, all its unity and promise gone.

3. THE ELECTION OF 1860: LINCOLN

Which brings us to the election of 1860, which I guess you could say is my favorite critical election.  Not just my favorite, but the one I think people like to know about because it precipitated this Civil War and resulted in the election of Lincoln.  It’s in this election that you can clearly see the emergence of a new constellation of political beliefs that were distinctive, and you can appreciate, I believe, how fluid the parties were back then: that parties devolved, they ended, and they became exhausted and they ceased to be, and that that was a very common phenomenon in the nineteenth century, and one that we’re a little bit less accustomed to these days, I think unfortunately.

The issue of slavery, and specifically whether slavery should be allowed to spread into new territories and states, was the thorniest issue in American politics, one so thorny that, for decades, the major parties sought to avoid it.  Throughout the 1820s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, whenever it was absolutely necessary to deal with the issue of slavery, the Whigs and Democrats compromised.  An equal division between slave and free states enabled the two parties to maintain a balance of power in the federal government, so, while neither party wanted to lose power by losing control of this issue, neither did they wish to alienate any of their voters by agitating this issue too strongly, for both parties drew support from all parts of the country.

During all this time, there was an abolition movement, but, to be honest, there were never enough Americans who felt strongly enough about this issue by itself to make it a mainstream party.  For decades, the drive to get rid of slavery outright languished, while the opening of many new territories in the West and the question of whether slavery would be allowed there made it increasingly important that the issue be settled.

Many members of the Whig party (including Abraham Lincoln) recognized that their party, though popular, was never going to be quite popular enough to triumph over the Democrats.  After 1850, single-issue parties—like the Know-Nothing Party, which was an anti-immigrant party, and the Anti-Slavery Party, which was an abolitionist party gaining some headway in New England and New York—began to draw off some of the Whigs’ base of support, and, with the death of President Taylor in 1854, the Whig Party itself began to dissolve.

This left many talented Whigs without a party.  Some became involved in the “Free Soil” movement.  Unlike the more radical Anti-Slavery Party, which was unequivocally against slavery—whether in the Old South or the new territories—, the Free-Soilers, as they were called, sought only to keep slavery out of the new territories.

Meanwhile, the urgency of the slavery question intensified.  After 1856, when violent pro- and anti-slavery forces began killing one another over whether slavery would be legal in the Kansas Territory, middle ground on the issue grew scarce.  The Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic party were deeply invested in slavery’s continuation and continued to defend it ardently.  Meanwhile, politicians in the North began trying to figure out how to make opposition to slavery a central element in a new mainstream party.

They did this by yoking opposition to slavery’s expansion to other economic arguments that would appeal to white people.  Lincoln was one of the masters at this, arguing that a continued toleration of slavery would result in a “house divided” that could not stand.  Slavery could not be allowed to exist in a free economy, not just because slavery was bad, but because it weakened the rest of the economy and undermined the peaceful operation of our political system.  It threatened the independence and integrity of free whites.

In fact, Lincoln’s ability to strike a more moderate tone in discussing slavery was exactly what enabled him to prevail over other candidates seeking the new party’s presidential nomination in 1860: his rivals were all more openly and unequivocally anti-slavery.  The newly formed Republican Party appealed to white northern voters because it promised them that the territories would remain the domain of free workers rather than slaves, and that their prospects would be brighter because of the existence of “free soil.”  Republicans’ avowed desire to create economic opportunity for free white workers also garnered them the immigrant vote.

The Republicans swept to power with the potent formula “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men.”  Even before the election, the Southern states had begun pledging armed resistance, breaking the Democratic Party apart into Northern and Southern wings.  Each wing put up its own slate of candidates, while in the South a hastily formed party of pro-slavery unionists provided a fourth alternative.  As we know, solid Northern support carried the Republicans and Lincoln to victory, setting off a Civil War and consigning the Democrats to oblivion for the next twenty-five years.  Such was the birth of our present-day Republican party, though, from then to now, it has undergone much change.

4. THE ELECTION OF 1896: McKINLEY

William McKinley’s considerable impact on the party system doesn’t get a lot of attention today.  Assassinated in 1901, just a few months into his second term, and succeeded by his charismatic vice-president Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley had an understated style of governing.  His election in 1896 was nonetheless a pivotal event, ushering in major operational changes in politics and redefining Republicanism in ways that altered its base of support and ideals.  In 1896, the party shook off the vestiges of its Civil War identity and poised itself to do battle in the twentieth century.

The Civil War had a devastating impact on the parties, which the passage of time was slow to heal.  The southern rebellion had left the Republicans unilaterally in charge of the government for several decades, and even after the so-called “end” of “Reconstruction” in 1876, political sentiments remained balkanized.  A solid South supported the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, corruption and issues related to the commodification of agricultural output and other farming grievances tended in the late-nineteenth century to hold center stage.  Ruinous fluctuations in crop and land prices and the growing power of railroads, banks, and grain speculators fueled a populist movement in the South and Midwest that was hard to contain.  The Republicans had lost their edge in appealing to those who might once have identified themselves as “free soilers.”  Yet, all was not lost, for McKinley and other Republicans correctly saw that the power of rural voters was destined to wane, as more and more Americans became city-dwelling.

With demography on their side, McKinley and his advisers fashioned a platform catering to the the urban and industrialized parts of the country, using advocacy for the gold standard to gain support among Eastern capitalists, and advocating protectionism in a way that appealed to manufacturers and skilled workers alike.  During the primary season, McKinley’s forces also sought to break down the monopoly over the South that the Democratic Party had long enjoyed.  McKinley’s success in securing the support of some Southern delegates proved crucial to his nomination.

In the general election, McKinley secured a solid victory over his Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan, an outcome attributed largely to the formidable strategic skills of McKinley’s friend Mark Hanna.  Just as Martin van Buren presided over the birth of Jacksonian Democracy, so Mark Hanna recast the politics of his era.  McKinley and Hanna were both from Ohio, then the economic powerhouse of the US.  While McKinley maintained the illusion of passively awaiting the verdict of the general election (in what was alluded to as the “front porch” campaign), Hanna worked tirelessly behind the scenes, raising an unprecedented amount of money and increasing the potency of the Republican committees.  His efforts capped off a period during which the bureaucratic structures of both parties increased to the point where their organizations became permanent and national.  Hanna is said to have outspent the Democratic opposition by a margin of five to one.

Although in the coming years, the Republicans would harbor a progressive wing, with McKinley’s election they shifted decisively away from the landed and egalitarian basis they emphasized previously.  Henceforth, the party became the champion of big business, catering to the needs of capitalism and industry, and working to enhance America’s growing global might.

5. THE ELECTION OF 1932: FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT

Our next critical election was in 1932, with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  In a way, this critical election belongs in a category all by itself.  Because it was through FDR’s election, really, not prior to it, that a big ideological change occurred within the Democratic party.  It’s a perfect example of how parties can change within themselves, just as the Republicans did during the election of 1896, where they abandoned their foundational ideas and formulated new ones that enabled them to become a substantially different party.

The same thing happened after FDR gained office.  Sure, he mentioned something about a ‘new deal’ when he was running, but no one knew what that meant, and it wasn’t in his interests to elaborate.  The distress of the Great Depression was driving voters away from the incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover; FDR’s only task was not to alienate them.  Only after his election did he and his “brain trust” figure out what the New Deal meant, and create and defend the ideology of the New Deal, which had to do with a more active government, a government active in times of distress, especially.

This was a new theme: the theme of protecting people from calamity.  The whole notion of social welfare was one that earlier generations of American leaders didn’t really consider.  What we think of today as securing a particular quality of life for Americans and keeping them from true hardship: this had not been a dominant idea.  It had been a lesser idea.  That the government needed to take an interest in securing our well-being now came to the fore for the first time.  This conception lastingly reshaped the Democratic Party, as this traditional champion of decentralization and states rights became a champion of centralization, regulation, and greater state power.

New Deal Democrats were understandably intent on finding ways to uplift the nation and its citizens in a time of terrible and endemic calamity.  This wasn’t something that needed to be done only for the sake of the poor and the downtrodden; the Depression affected so many people at every level of economic existence that it was a matter of great national concern.  By the end of Roosevelt’s first two terms in office, a host of new government practices and institutions had been established.  To paraphrase FDR’s biographer, Alan Brinkley, during this period the government established Social Security and other forms of assistance for the poor and unemployed; began protecting the rights of labor unions; created a more stable banking system; instituted agricultural price supports and farm subsidies; established a prototype for the FDIC; and undertook many other initiatives the government had never before contemplated.

Now, you may decide that you don’t approve of a lot of the things that happened during the New Deal era, whose consequences extended far beyond FDR’s presidency, which ended with his death in the mid-1940s.  You can say, “Oh, we didn’t need the WPA,” or “We didn’t need the CCC,” but in fact by the time it was over, banking, farming, and the labor system had been changed, and the nature of the pact between ordinary people and their government transformed.  All these fruits of the New Deal are still with us, and this is why FDR’s election was a critical election.  It changed the entire landscape, political and economic, and it changed who the Democrats were, in ways that were permanent and profound.

6. THE ELECTION OF 1980: REAGAN

Our sixth critical election occurred in 1980.  It carried Ronald Reagan into the White House and rejuvenated the Republican party, again changing its identity.  Now, to this day, many liberals dismiss Reagan as a fool, mistaking his folksiness for foolishness, and shrugging him off as simplistic and naive.  People who fail to credit Reagan with enormous shrewdness and judgment, though, are much mistaken.

What’s interesting about Reagan’s election is not so much Reagan himself but the whole ferment that occurred in conservative America around the time he came to prominence, and the way he and his coterie assimilated those ideological trends and political forces and rode them to power.  All those subcutaneous percolations and permutations stamped his presidency with great significance.  Because, when Reagan came to power, so did certain ideas, and certain elements of the body politic, which are still very much with us, attained influence for the first time.

The first of three major ideological elements that became important in 1980 and afterward was the Moral Majority.  The Moral Majority was composed—not of Christians per se, but of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, of conservative Christians—who organized themselves and decided that they wanted to make a difference in the polity; they wanted to use their political power as citizens to further agendas that were moral in nature.  Although we no longer use the term Moral Majority to describe the religious right, they remain one of the most significant political forces in the country.  It is equally important to recognize that, though powerful, they are a minority rather than the majority they wish to be.  But, since their emergence in the 1980s, they have used their considerable influence to push the state to “legislate morality,” in a manner that our Founding Fathers could not have foreseen.

Besides this moral stance, Reagan Republicans embraced two other transformative ideas.  The first was the idea of returning power to the states, basically countering the centralizing aspect of national politics.  The direction of our political evolution had been toward greater power in the federal government, and people on the right correctly argued that this centralizing aspect is only one strain of our political tradition; the other aspect of federalism is state identity, state variety.  Republicans took this basic idea and managed to go a long way with it; many people found it very empowering.  The idea of returning power to the states was a very appealing idea and something that, though at the moment you may not have agreed with all of its implications, was a legitimate organizing idea.  It served to correct an excessive activism at the federal level, which many people had come to see as ineffective and costly.  For, though the government was purporting to carry out many noble goals on behalf of the nation and its people, there was widespread skepticism about whether those goals were being realized, or even could be.  The Democratic Party was slow to realize this, but it was true.

The final concept central to the Reagan era was, of course, Reaganomics.  What a great term.  Reaganomics entailed the embrace of laissez-faire economics—the principle of “letting the market be”—, along with an unflagging belief that free-market capitalism would confer broad benefits on the whole American people.  If only government would refrain from interfering, the benefits of a powerful unfettered capitalism would “trickle down” to society’s very lowest levels.  Republicans still rely heavily on this idea.  It receives reinforcement from the principle of limited government.  The idea that prosperity created at the top will “trickle down” and benefit all Americans magically wills away the idea of any conflict or tension in capitalism, while supplying a political justification for helping capitalists and corporations enrich themselves to the fullest degree they can manage.

These Reaganite strains, particularly the influence of conservative Christianity, remain central to Republicanism.  The crystallization of disparate ideas into something called Reagan Republicanism served the party well, giving it a formidable cohesion that subsequently propelled the Bush family to power and enabled the party to command legislative majorities.  The 2008 defeat of the McCain-Palin ticket, however, and even more the failure of the Romney-Ryan ticket in 2012, demonstrated the difficulty of continuing to hold together a national majority on the basis of Reagan-era ideas.  By 2016, the Republican Party was foundering like a rudderless ship, when Donald J. Trump came along.

PART THREE 
SOME GENERAL REMARKS ON CRITICAL ELECTIONS

1.  One of the things we can observe about critical elections is that they are periodic.  They don’t happen close together.  Instead, they tend to happen at 30-, 40-, even 50-year intervals.  They occur as new conditions and preoccupations emerge that the existing party ideologies do not adequately speak to.  Critical elections are the mechanism by which our massive parties remain relevant to voters and the country.  Historically, the best party leaders have been able to understand and anticipate national needs and refocus their party’s mission around those concerns.

2.  Critical elections demonstrate the great mutability of our political parties.  It’s empowering and encouraging to know that the parties can behave pragmatically, elevating and discarding ideological positions to suit the times.  Since their beginnings, the two parties we are familiar with today have changed substantially.  There’s nothing irrevocable about the ideology of our parties. When necessary, their core ideas can be retooled.  It’s on the voters to judge, though, which ideologies truly benefit them and comport with our nation’s republican ideals.

3.  As parties change, they appeal to different elements of the electorate, so that the same parties have had very different voter bases over time.  Prior to the Civil War, for example, the Democratic Party was a favorite of the more laissez-faire elements of the citizenry.  One of its strongest bases of support was Southern slaveholders, along with others who did not want an overly active central government.  In the Gilded Age, the Democrats stood for agrarian populism, with strongholds in the more rural parts of the country—the South and Great Plains.  The party became popular in the urban and industrial north under FDR.  Recently, Democrats’ strength in the South and among rural voters has declined, and the party’s base has become dangerously concentrated in the urban and coastal parts of the country.

The Republican Party has gone through some similarly dramatic transformations.  In its infancy, the party embraced the idea of a free multiracial republic, empowered by a more equitable ownership and enjoyment of landed property.  Its past was very different from the pro-capitalist triumphalism that its twentieth-century leaders were committed to.  Its voter base was initially northern and socially progressive, before emerging as a favorite of market capitalists and social conservatives.  Since 2008, the Republican Party has gradually reinvented itself, jettisoning its longstanding emphasis on cosmopolitanism and expertise, in favor of a more nativistic anti-federalism that has proved surprisingly popular throughout the South and Great Plains as well as in areas of the north where voters have experienced or fear downward mobility.

4.  A final and very important observation has to do with the role of thought and strategic organization in achieving these crucial redefinitions within the parties.  All of our critical elections have been centered on figures with exceptional political instincts, but the ideological transformations they are associated with are never the work of one person alone.  Critical elections depend upon ideas–on their articulation, promotion, and recombination.  Critical elections occur when a party gets behind a new set of ideas that speaks to the times.  This can’t be accomplished without mutual influence and support.  Every critical election features a group of intellectuals, writers, political strategists, and operatives working to popularize principles and strategies that they believe will propel their candidates to power and revitalize their parties.  The work of such cadres is to divine what a broad mass of the citizenry can support and to create platforms that voters identify with and rally around.  Each critical election, for good or ill, represents the culmination of a massive intellectual and organizational drive.

PART FOUR
TRUMP PREVAILS IN THE ELECTION OF 2024

With all this in mind, let’s turn to President Trump and how the elections of 2016 and 2024 have been “critical,” in the sense of transforming the Republican party and the political system.  Although Trump’s ideology has been iconoclastic from the beginning, we can see clearly in retrospect how his sway over his own party and federalism itself has grown more complete since he entered politics in 2015.  Looking back on his non-consecutive presidential victories in 2016 and 2024, we can discern the various stages of this ascendancy and how Trump’s rise to power illuminates nuances of critical-elections theory.  Unquestionably, Trump instigated and presided over a rapid change in American politics.  Were his victorious elections in 2016 and 2024 both “critical” elections, however?  Was one more “critical” than the other?  And, if so, why?

Trump’s 2016 presidential victory was but the beginning of his quest to remake the Republican Party.  He hewed to this objective even after losing the 2020 presidential election, ultimately prevailing in the critical election of 2024.  Throughout this span of years, he faced strenuous opposition from various quarters, even as his ideology intensified, becoming more extreme.

The 2016 Election

Trump entered politics as a moderate independent.  A business tycoon, he claimed to be one of the best people, but he was also a shyster with a barely hidden history of dubious financial dealings.  He had mastered television as star of The Apprentice, a reality show that expanded his understanding and skill when it came to engaging with and leading ordinary people.

Trump entered presidential politics in July 2015, joining a crowded field of Republicans contending for the nomination as President Obama’s second term came to an end.  Trump had never held public office.  He had never formally identified as a Republican.  Like Bernie Sanders, a lifelong independent who chose to affiliate as a Democrat in order to run for president in this race, Trump was an outsider and an interloper, hoping to take over the Republican party from inside.

Trump proved a tireless campaigner.  He was very garrulous but also a very disciplined communicator.  He had three major positions, which he expressed in a bold and controversial fashion.  They were very easy to understand: he wanted to build a southern border wall and make Mexico pay for it; he wanted to stop China from taking advantage of the US, and he wanted to restore the prestige of being an American citizen.  Trump repeatedly asserted in various ways 1) that the United States was a mediocre nation that he would restore; 2) that the US and its citizens were victims with major grievances in an unfair world.  Trump positioned himself as the savior of a beaten nation, which needed him to “Make American Great Again.”  These assertions were controversial, because, objectively, the US was and is wealthier and more powerful than other nations in the world.

Trump beat sixteen Republican rivals to secure his party’s nomination.  During the primary, he spoke about his opponents and other types of people he disliked in an openly crude and ruthless way.  He said demeaning things about women, people of color, and individuals with disabilities.  He mocked people.  He made fun of his opponents’ physical features, their spouses, their way of being. He groundlessly cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Obama’s electoral successes, questioning again and again whether the latter was truly a US citizen.  In short, he attacked people verbally in a way that was un-Christian, intolerant, and unfair.  Trump routinely violated the norms of civility that American leaders had relied on for centuries to maintain cordial working relationships in ideologically fraught times.  Bad behavior became Trump’s stock in trade, because, he discovered, it kept him in the news.

Trump understood the electoral map.  Scorning gatekeepers, he took his message to the people.  He went out courting the votes of people the Democratic Party found it hard to reach.  The people that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, called “deplorables,” began turning out for Trump’s rallies in large numbers.  Trump created loyalty with voters by positioning himself as their champion against foreign powers and establishment elites, whether in the Democratic Party or his own.

As for Clinton, she, too, was a good campaigner; she was popular with women and minorities, with college-educated voters, and with the moderate Democratic base.  She led a somewhat fractious party, however, with many Democrats having voted for the far more progressive Bernie Sanders in the primaries.  Needing to retain these votes in the general election, Hillary was poorly positioned to court the vast pool of unaffiliated voters who might go for Trump instead.  Then-president Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and vice-president Biden went out to stump for Clinton in critical “swing” states like Florida and Pennsylvania.

It was no use.  Trump prevailed.  Clinton won the popular vote, but he won the combination of states needed to secure a majority in the electoral college, capturing 304 votes, well above the 270 required.  Trump captured Florida and Pennsylvania, as well as all the southern and Plains states, leading to the red and blue map Americans are familiar with today.  Clinton’s support (in blue) was concentrated in the northeast and urban parts of the country, whereas Trump (in red) cleaned up in the vast regions that were rural or more sparsely populated.  It was a stunning loss for Clinton, who tearfully conceded late the following day.

Even as his star ascended, Trump began making false assertions about his own election and the election process in general.  Eking out a narrow victory over Clinton, he claimed he’d won in a huge landslide. This claim was false. He twisted facts to deny her greater popularity at the ballot box.  In the debates, Trump had refused to commit to accepting the election’s results, though these were an expression of the people’s will.

In short, Trump embraced what came to be known as “election denial,” a chimerical doctrine antithetical to our entire system of representative democracy.  He has since consistently spouted misinformation that slights the people’s sovereignty and citizens’ Constitutional power to choose who will occupy the presidency.  This posture has gravely lessened the stability of Constitutional federalism.

In 2016, Trump proved the viability of his signature ideas; but, overall, he had to make do with divided government.  The extent of his popularity within his own party in Congress remained unclear.  In his first term, Trump had a conventional Cabinet and was initially intent on conforming outwardly to the norms of Constitutional government.  He did not achieve his campaign objectives but always had reasons. Even the covid epidemic, which killed a million-plus Americans, he treated in an offhand way, resisting preventive measures and demeaning the nation’s leading doctors and scientists.  It was an early expression of the anti-intellectualism later central to his philosophy.

In 2019, the House of Representatives impeached Trump on the grounds that he had improperly withheld military aid to Ukraine in an effort to coerce Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelenskyy to dig up dirt damaging to Trump’s chief domestic rival, Joseph Biden.  The Senate acquitted Trump of the impeachment charges after a lengthy trial.  The vote fell along party lines, with only one Republican, Mitt Romney, averring that President Trump had committed an abuse of power in seeking a quid pro quo in exchange for foreign aid.

Significant popular unrest roiled the end of Trump’s first term.  The police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 spawned rioting, looting, property destruction, and open conflict with police in many communities.  The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, dating from George Zimmerman’s 2013 acquittal for the murder of Treyvon Martin, shifted into a higher gear, mobilizing massive protests across the country and internationally, involving millions of people.  Many of these demonstrations were peaceful, but others were profoundly disruptive, paralyzing the normal life of cities.  The protracted protests disrupted transit, destroyed businesses, and provided cover for unrelated lawlessness and crime.  Despite the sympathy many Americans felt for the cause of racial justice, the disorder engendered was regrettable.  It bred cynicism and aversion to the movement in some quarters.

Meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, the protests that Floyd’s death triggered morphed into an entrenched semi-siege of the city center that lasted over a year and included vandalism, sporadic street battles with law enforcement, and the arrival of heavily armed federal forces to protect federal property.  Many of the most committed protesters were young and white, with grievances that went beyond racial injustice or police brutality.

Trump took a hard line.  Notably, he never acknowledged the righteous demand for true racial equality and justice that motivated the protests.  He made no distinction between troublemakers and citizens exercising their Constitutional rights of assembly and free speech.   In Portland, he focused on the role of the Antifa movement (a leftist, anti-fascist anti-Trump organization), decrying its use of violence and threatening to designate it as a domestic terrorist organization (while ignoring or even sanctioning the overtly militarized tactics of far-right political groups). Moreover, Trump seized on riots in major cities as an opportunity to criticize and wrangle with local officials, whom he viewed as despicable adversaries because they were, in the main, Democrats.

When the capital was the site of a major BLM demonstration, Trump allowed Secret Service to whisk him off to an underground bunker for his safety, betraying cowardice.  Then, to demonstrate his readiness to use the armed forces against American citizens, he had Lafayette Square cleared of protesters, then paraded across it with a military detail that included the nation’s top military officer, the Joint Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley.  Having crossed the square, Trump posed in front of St John’s Episcopal Church with a Bible, apparently signifying that his status as president enjoyed divine sanction of some kind.  These were forays into an authoritarianism that Trump would continue to rely on in coming months and years.

The Republican Party underwent a sea change during Trump’s first administration, as he sidelined, ostracized, and repelled many prominent figures; made problematic appointments; and endorsed unknowns who were controversial and/or under-qualified.  Some political stars set or were eclipsed; others rose. And some, meteorically, did both!  Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Rex Tillerson, H. R. McMaster, Jeff Flake, Mike Pence, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Jeff Sessions, Chris Christie: Trump impacted the careers and images of these, and many other, leading lights.  In addition, the never-Trump movement that began in 2015 accelerated and gained traction, with figures like Christie Todd Whitman and George Conway encouraging fellow Republicans to weaken Trump through attrition. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell kept Republicans united behind Trump on key votes, including on impeachment and Supreme Court nominees.  So even as Republican opposition increased, Trump’s control over the party also grew.

Trump’s loss to Biden in 2020 and the insurrection of January 6, 2021

The 2020 presidential campaign unfolded amid these conditions: bellicose rhetoric from the president, civil unrest, a dangerous plague.  Increasingly, the president expressed hostility and resentment toward the nation’s people: toward any American who criticized him, dissented, or was unmanageable or disorderly.  Many of his own administration he forced out.  In a nation based on toleration, Trump was openly intolerant.  Covid vaccines had yet to come out and the disease was still raging, spreading whenever people gathered.  Given the dangers of congregation, public places were deserted, with most Americans avoiding human contact and operating from home.

Under these peculiar conditions, the election season was peculiar, too.  Stumping, rallies, and debates occurred amid bitter wrangling over public-health precautions and the social and economic costs of covid containment. The energy that normally flowed through mass gatherings went into social media, mainstream media, and online media, instead.  The incumbent Trump railed against his own medical authorities, notably Anthony Fauci.  Trump took the side of Americans who resented masking and social-distancing; they objected to these and other anti-covid regulations because they curtailed essential everyday activities such as working, shopping, worshipping, running a business, and studying.  Again Trump seized on what would work to his political advantage, instead of defending government policies that, while inconvenient, were best for the nation, and were the most humane.  He denounced life-saving measures as tyranny.  

Protests against covid “lockdowns” occurred in several states where high fatalities had prompted strict containment.  The April 2020 protests in the Michigan state capital of Ann Arbor drew over 20,000 protesters, including armed militia members.  On social media, Trump hailed these protests, styling them as a cry for freedom, at the expense of political order and majoritarian rule. These libertarian-leaning demonstrations became another node of political unrest in a fractious time.

Meanwhile, former vice-president Joe Biden emerged from a field of 26 contenders to sew up the Democratic nomination early on.  Once again, Bernie Sanders was a contender, initially outperforming Biden, as did two other progressive candidates, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. Biden, however, secured the support of influential South Carolina congressman, Jim Clyburn, just before that state’s primary, which proved pivotal.  The highest ranking African-American in Congress, Clyburn enhanced Biden’s position with respect to black voters in his state and beyond.  The impact of their understanding went beyond that, influencing Biden’s choice of running-mate (Kamala Harris), tilting the Democratic party toward black progressivism (as expressed in BLM), and arguably impacting the destiny of the party in 2024.   By Super Tuesday, Sanders and others had withdrawn from the race, uniting behind Biden in a pitched race to defeat Trump and Trumpism at the polls.

At the state and county level, the pandemic posed special problems for election officials. They were responsible for ensuring that the 2020 elections honored every eligible citizen’s right to vote.  States implemented and expanded procedures for voting early or by mail, so that voters could exercise their rights without going to the polls.  Some localities authorized the use of ballot drop-boxes, so that voters could return their ballots personally, given that the pandemic-era postal service was understaffed and the mail was slow.  When an early debacle snarled the Iowa caucus results, the need for the most infallible voting procedures possible was driven home.  In the end, the conduct of the 2020 election was highly creditable, thanks to all involved, from the secretaries of state on down to the local election officials who impartially run the polls.

Regardless, Trump endlessly assailed the integrity of the election procedures.  He hadn’t won the popular vote in 2016, so higher Democratic turnout in the “wrong” places this time could mean his defeat.  Conventional wisdom held that expanding ballot access would work to Democrats’ advantage.  So, as a matter of strategy, Trump and his surrogates did everything they could to impair and discredit the pragmatic innovations, particularly in swing states and Democratic cities.  Should Biden win, Trump was poised to claim that Biden’s victory was a hoax, that the people’s choice was somehow suspect and illegitimate.  At bottom, Trump was taking aim at the will of the people and their Constitutional rights.

To be continued…

Trump returns to office in 2024

Reflections

Changes are on-going to this part of “On Critical Elections.”
Please check back to see the concluding sections indicated above.

© 2012-25 Susan Barsy

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