Is it really possible that this could be the last election in American history?
Ahead of today’s vote, that was the message issued by partisans on both sides. Joe Biden claimed for months that he was running to save American democracy from the ravages of Donald Trump, and late in her campaign, Kamala Harris said the same thing. Trump is a fascist, she said during a CNN town hall in late October. “I believe that Donald Trump is dangerous.”
Oprah Winfrey, speaking Monday evening at Kamala’s last rally in Philadelphia, said: “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to cast a ballot again.”
Historian Michael Beschloss, appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Election Day, opined: “If historians in the future are allowed to write books—and by the way, that question is open this morning—and if people are allowed to go on television and say what they think in the future—which, again, that question is open this morning—in the future, historians are going to look back on this day and say, ‘This is the day that America made a choice between freedom and democracy on one side, and authoritarianism and dictatorship on the other.’ ”
Of course, this is not news to MSNBC viewers, who have been hearing this warning for months now, from just about everyone who appears on its air.
Their most persuasive evidence was Trump’s actions after he lost his reelection in 2020—and then proceeded to try to find ways to stay in office, by hook or by crook. His persistent denial that he lost that election—even after federal courts closed down his legal challenges—led to the national disgrace of January 6, 2021, and the brief and doomed effort to pressure Congress not to certify President Joe Biden’s victory.
And the Republicans? Some of Trump’s most vocal supporters claimed if he did not win, this would be the last American election. Take Trump’s uber-supporter Elon Musk, for instance. On September 29, he tweeted to his more than 200 million followers: “Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election.” (He also says that if Harris wins the presidency, she’ll toss the rule of law aside to put him in jail.)
More? In 2022, Donald Trump Jr. said after an anti-MAGA speech by Biden that it was as if “Mussolini and Hitler got together.” Trump and the Republican Party point to the Biden administration’s collusion with social media companies to ban users that dissented from the Centers for Disease Control on Covid. They deride the talk from Democrats to pack the Supreme Court and eliminate the filibuster in the Senate. And they notice that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg prosecuted a meritless and unprecedented case against Trump during the election year. Plus, of course, MAGA supporters firmly believe the Democrats have eroded democracy by “stealing” the last election (for which, of course, there is no proof).
This rhetoric has become so widespread that most of the country now believes it. According to a March poll by the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, a staggering 81 percent of Americans believe that “democracy in America is currently being threatened.” If you wonder why there are rumblings of a new “civil war,” this rhetoric is a good part of the reason why.
It’s not just wrongheaded; it’s also a betrayal of our history. To compare the failed and doomed effort to overturn the 2020 election that didn’t even last an evening to the Civil War is to dishonor the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died to preserve the Union.
Amid claims that Donald Trump’s victory will lead to the end of the republic, it’s worth remembering that we have managed to have successive elections in America since 1788. The surest way to break this streak of elections is to give in to the catastrophic fantasy that this election is the last.
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