Max Stearns
I went to bed election night heartbroken, knowing the next morning I'd wake up to tragic news. I didn't expect that unlike in 2016, Donald Trump would secure not only an Electoral College victory, but also a significant popular vote mandate.
I truly wish I could say something redeeming about Donald Trump. I cannot. Throughout his political career he has branded himself based on anger, hatred, and revenge. He has denigrated opponents, vulnerable populations, and nearly anyone who disagrees with him or seeks to hold him to account for his past behaviors. He has aligned himself with despots and exhibited a never-ending willingness to compromise democratic norms. He is incurious about all the things that motivate wise leadership.
The Wednesday morning quarterbacking went full force, with commentators claiming that the Democratic party failed by having Biden stay in too long, by not having a primary, by failing to understanding the other side, by tacking too far left, by appointing the wrong VP nominee, by not distancing from Biden, and by Biden's late gaffes. Historians will debate causal questions for decades, and there's no reason why immediate political commentators should be given particular deference. I think these early diagnostic claims get it wrong. And the reasons have notable implications for what we must do if we are ever to get our democracy and politics right.
I do not believe Kamala Harris would have won this election had she tacked more toward the center, if she had selected Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as running mate instead of Tim Walz, or frankly if she had done much else given the state of our nation as it presently sits. I don't think gaffes or distancing mattered. I say that as a center-left democrat who would have preferred her to run toward the center as a matter of personal policy preference.
The fact is that we are an intensely and increasingly bimodal electorate. Even as a 2020 Democratic primary candidate, Harris sought to position herself as a bridge between traditional Democrats and progressives. It's a tightrope walk. Moves to the center alienate the progressive base; moves to the progressive wing alienate the center. There is no win-win, and optimal calibrations are extremely hard to identify. As 2024 nominee, she faced the same challenges, with a far more truncated election cycle. All the arguments about tacking miss that these strategic choices in real time are about nearly impossible attempts to keep intact a fractured party. The diminution in Democratic turnout likely exposes those fault lines. What it doesn't do is clarify that tacking left or right would have let her win.
On substance, I found Harris's rhetoric on Israel and Gaza frustrating even as, on balance, I thought she exhibited a strong commitment to Israel's defense and sound moral commitment to improving the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. I found her greed-flation policies inane. No one can credibly imagine the reason for inflation is that farmers, supermarkets, and food chain suppliers thought that the way to make more money was to grab consumers by the eggs.
In both cases, I didn't fault her because I understood the strategic set of choices she faced. She could have tried to better educate the public on these issues, to explain that although the loss of life in Gaza is utterly tragic, it is first and foremost the consequence of the dire circumstances that Hamas has created for those residing there. She could have pointed out that the military-to-civilian casualty ratios were comparatively low given urban warfare, which is especially surprising in light of the Hamas strategy, deliberately placing Gaza residents at maximal risk. She could have criticized Bibi Netanyahu for earlier stewardship that empowered Hamas and for policies that benefitted him by keeping him in office, avoiding criminal exposure, rather than putting all effort on negotiating the release of hostages, and possibly ending the war, even if those efforts were unlikely to succeed.
On the economy, she could have explained that Trump added $ 7 trillion to the national debt, which is ultimately a form of delayed inflation since there is zero chance of significantly raising taxes or cutting spending. It all gets paid for one way or another, and Biden, by allowing inflation, tapped a pressure-release valve, that kept the growth of the national debt at least somewhat in check in real-dollar terms.
But could she seriously have done any of that? Of course not. This wasn't a campaign of education and nuance. And it could not have been.
That she was a woman, Black and Indian, undoubtedly motivated some voters to support her, but tragically it as likely discouraged more given our electorate's desperate enthusiasm for alpha-male leadership. And while Donald Trump is an equal opportunity insulter, his absurd claims about Harris as low IQ may have stuck with too many voters for obvious disquieting reasons.
So if these accounts don't explain the election or how to fix things, where's the hope?
If there has been one defining insight that has defined my career, this is it: in any collective decision-making institution, outcomes are rarely independent of the processes that generate them. I began to see this when studying anomalies in the Supreme Court doctrines and other aspects of constitutional decision making. Over the last five years, I’ve broadened my focus, with this core insight still at the center.
Once democratic nations that lost their way, moving toward dictatorial governance, aren't populated by people who are more morally incapable. Rather they had deeply problematic choices foisted upon them as a consequence of equally problematic institutions. I don't mean to imply voters lack agency, but rather, the extent of their agency very much depends on the institutionally-generated choices they face. Our system gives voters--Republican, Democratic, or other--extraordinarily limited agency compared with better systems.
What happened to the GOP since 2015, when Donald Trump declared his first candidacy, is tragic. It is also the consequence of a failed system created nearly a quarter millennium ago. In the information age, that system has enabled a candidate with dictatorial inclinations and whose own top advisors describe as fascist to take control of one of the only two parties capable of gaining power, and then of the nation as a whole. This has now happened twice. But having too many parties also threatens democracy as a comparably problematic candidate can then gain more seats than others in the legislature and then roll over the remaining parties one by one to gain power.
For democracy to thrive, and to reduce the risk of a dictatorial takeover, it’s vital to have more parties than two but not too many more parties. The goal is a sweet spot, or Goldilocks principle, around three to four parties at the low end, and seven to eight at the high end. And it’s vital that those parties have a meaningful opportunity for influence by helping to form the government. Accomplishing this demands reform along two key democratic axes: how we elect the House of Representatives, our lower legislative chamber, and how we select and hold accountable to President.
When we look back, the hopeful lesson to emerge from this past election should be this: for some time now, our institutions have failed, leading to a set of electoral cycles that a better system would have, and could have, avoided. To be clear, although Trump captured both the Electoral College and the national popular vote this round, in a thriving multiparty democracy we would have faced more and better choices of parties and candidates. Effective multiparty parliamentary systems, those that optimize the number of parties, are less prone to dictatorial takeovers than systems, like ours, with only two parties, or others that have far too many parties.
Tens of millions of people are variously delighted or heartbroken by this electoral outcome. Looking forward I hope those happy today come to appreciate the mistake our nation has made. I don’t say that to insult or denigrate, and I do not wish for policies that harm them or others, although I fear that's inevitable. I simply say this with the hope that overtime, they, and we, can come together and produce a system that better ensures a thriving democratic future.
One might well read the lesson from November 5, 2024 as simply reflecting that our nation tragically turned toward nationalism and hate, or that it has succumbed to a campaign based on lies and misinformation. And alternatively one might read it to place blame in countless ways on what some regard a feckless Democratic party playbook. Even this early on, I reject both accounts. I'm convinced that the true lesson is understanding that where we land as a nation is a function and consequence of the institutions that led us there.
And then the work begins to produce better institutions and a better future.
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