“I really believe it’s down to one issue on the ballot. Not taxes, not even abortion, nothing. The one issue is: Do you believe in democracy, or do you believe in authoritarianism?”
— Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, discussing the upcoming election on CNN
My take
In a healthy democracy, this obviously wouldn’t be a topic of conversation. In that world, we’d have a conservative and a progressive party, at minimum, battling over philosophies of government. In that world, the political pendulum would swing one way for a while, and then the other way.
It’s the world that existed for well over two centuries of American history. Not always perfectly, for sure. Not only have Blacks and women had to fight for the right to vote, but democracy is messy and controversial at times, it can occasionally be unfair, and no one ever gets everything they wish for. Nevertheless, democracy in America has become more inclusive over time and, as the pendulum swings, each side typically has an opportunity to implement its ideas.
In that world, partisans celebrate their wins and accept their losses. They know there will always be another election, and they know their opponents will also accept their losses when the time comes, however grudgingly.
They know this because they live in a democracy. Everyone accepts the results of elections because, well, that’s the only way democracy works. Despite political differences, the one thing that has always united Democrats and Republicans — and Whigs, Federalists, Socialists, Libertarians, Greens, and every other party that has ever existed — is a common belief in democracy.
Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, not at this moment in American history. And when the specter of creeping authoritarianism is on one side of the ballot, political ideologies simply matter a lot less, as Adam Kinzinger notes in the above quote.
When I was promoting my book, Quest for the Presidency, I did an interview for the National Archives in which I noted that, while I strove to look at every election from the perspective of history and to write in as nonpartisan a manner as possible, I did have a pro-democracy bias and was offended by those times when a group of partisans threatened democracy, whether it was Southern Democrats during Reconstruction or the Trumpian segment of today’s Republican party.
I don’t apologize for that bias. The idea of America is founded on the ideals of democracy. Without democracy, the America that we have always known ceases to exist.
So, yes, saving American democracy is what counts. Everything else can wait for the next election.