Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
A Decisive Election Result Reflects (Among Many Other Factors) the Power of Blackmail
Our so-called “coin flip” election has been called. The side that called “heads” won.
So why is no-one surprised by the absence of allegations of election rigging this time? What if the result had been “tails”?
Once again, our elections were run smoothly and competently, with no evidence of fraud or abuse of a kind or on a scale that might credibly impact the integrity of the outcome.
Once again, hundreds of thousands of neighbors volunteered in tens of thousands of neighborhood voting precincts around the country, pitching in to ensure that their critical link in the elaborate chain of cooperation we call our democratic elections worked as it should.
Once again, thousands of county election board workers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia carefully and accurately counted the votes. Once again, the counties conveyed their votes efficiently and accurately to state authorities. Once again, the states compiled and recorded these results, and provisionally apportioned their electoral college votes.
Once again, the presidential election in our great sprawling democratic republic has been legitimately called, and the result made public.
Once again, this critical first-order dimension of our venerable democracy delivered its small miracle: a credible election—honed by ingenuity, trial and error, and incremental improvements over decades and years. Not perfect. Nothing is. But as statistically close to perfect as anything so complicated involving actual human beings can get.
The certifiable—but not yet certified—results are now in.
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But this time, no rancorous recriminations. This time, no wild, unfounded allegations. This time, no violent scuffle outside the walls or in the halls of Congress or anywhere else over certification is coming. Why? I think I know why.
We all do. Because the side that called “heads” won. The result turned out to be “heads,” so they won fair and square this time. All quiet on the various fronts.
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So many “what ifs”. What if our current octogenarian president had never foolishly decided to pursue a second term? What if the Democrats hadn’t abandoned working people? What if they had poked fun at woke puritanism instead of pursuing it as doctrine? What if their candidate had been a man instead of a woman? Or a thoroughly battle-tested generational talent rather than a (however high-profile) poorly defined product of the Democratic machine? What if the divisive issue of immigration, which has been with us since the founding of the republic, had not been allowed by politicians of both parties over several generations to fester as an open wound? What if inflation was assessed relative to its rates in other countries rather than by its absolute impact on a family’s ability to buy eggs? (No way.) What if incumbents anywhere had a fighting chance? What if young voters disconnected from their screens and reconnected with civics? What if all those sensible, honest, honorable Americans believed our functioning but flawed and in many ways unfair system could be reformed to work better for them too, and didn’t deserve a big giant “Fuck You!”? What if we could still tell the difference between “reality” and Reality TV? The list of “what ifs” is almost endless.
It is fascinating (in a morbid, navel-gazing, anthropological way) to behold the explosion of sweeping postmortem generalizations, the systematic over-interpretation of factor X, factor Y or some combination thereof. Probably inevitable, too.
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But one question that surely belongs on this list is the one I started with: What if the result of this “coin flip” election had been “tails”? Best not even flirt with answering that question. We already know those rabid dogs bite. It’s not like we need to get bitten again. Trump made it more than clear what he planned to do again if he lost, again. I can’t help but feel that, baked into the incontrovertible 2024 result, is an element of quiet fear, of quivering calculation. Many voters, including a critical mass who were on the fence until the last minute, may have simply preferred not to risk it. Can you blame them? This may explain the counterintuitive feeling of relief even among some of us who had devoutly wished for the result to be different.
Because now there will be no flimflam court filings. No protracted bogus recounts. No outbreaks of real violence and constant threats of the same. No mafioso appeals to “find” extra votes. No corrupt machinations behind the scenes. No outrageous accusations about our elections having been “stolen”. No flag-waving claims that if we don’t fight back we won’t have a country anymore. (Where would it go? Where did it go? Why is it still here?) No defecation in the corridors of the capital to underscore the high principle.
Nothing like a bit of blackmail to help focus the mind. I’ve seen it work the same way elsewhere,1 just never thought I’d see it work here. The feeling of relief is perfectly understandable, if not exactly rational. By inviting the forces of anti-government and chaos back inside, we buy short term peace and quiet at the cost of the further erosion and possible destruction of political norms and institutions over the long term. We’ll see.
But hold on, hold on. Unlike the two mirror-image elections prior, this time the result was decisive. For the first time in three tries, the president-elect won even the popular vote, and got over 50% to boot. (I was tempted to write “the thrice-elected president”, taking the man at his word. But, if so, this would mean he is now in violation of the opening clause of the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution, which states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…” Shouldn’t he now retroactively and unequivocally acknowledge his decisive 2020 defeat to clarify the confusion before taking office a second time?)
Still, how to explain such a dramatic result? Whatever else may be true, a majority of Americans seems now to want what he’s selling; the other side’s stuff, not so much. But not only that.
Taking their cue from the man we just re-elected, many Americans renounced the fanciful notion that the outcome of democratic elections is by definition unknowable in advance; that is, intrinsically uncertain. (Who really knows what’s in another person’s mind?) That the side they don’t support can legitimately win. That an undesired result is not automatically the mark of a stolen election. Is this the new normal in our near 250-year old democratic experiment? If you can win three times, what else might be possible? Four? Might we look forward to the installation of a family-type dynasty now? Of precisely the kind that our very first president helped us to avert from day one?
I know of other countries that have done it. “L’etat, c’est moi. L’etat, c’est nous.” (The state is me. The state is us.) Why not here, too?
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With our successful democratic elections behind us, now comes the time for those stubborn second-order challenges. The prosaic, boring, brick by brick tasks of actual governing, of delivering on promises, of giving the people what they want.2 Will the national and international contexts tangibly improve? Will the world breathe a sigh of relief and the worrying wars in Ukraine and Israel magically end? Will big businesses make even more money now than before? Will the stock market soar even higher? Most important of all, will the lives of the people (who the once and future president purportedly represents) get palpably better?
Or does it matter? Will the glee from the grandstands as the gladiator engages in endless virtual reality battle do the trick? Must critics or rivals and other “enemies within” (real or imagined, there’s reportedly a list) now be punished as part of the show? What else might be necessary to seal the deal?
While we all hope for the best and want to give the “new team” a chance to prove our (experience-derived) skepticism wrong, it has been said that hope is not a plan. And some of us have seen this roadshow before—both here and elsewhere. Let's say things don’t quite work out in practice, again. Let’s say the nationwide network of immigrant detention camps, the massive across-the-board tariffs, the additional tax cuts for billionaires, not to mention the emerging new and potentially bare-knuckled international order, let’s say these and other things fail to achieve what the people thought they wanted.
Or let’s say that, like the border wall Mexico was to pay for the first time around, none of it happens. We shouldn’t take him either literally or seriously. It was all just for show.
Either way, will we be able to make a different choice four years from now? Or will the same threat—of mad dogs unleashed amid the spread of absolute nonsense and lies—hang over our heads? Or will it be worse still? What happens when the result of our next credible election contradicts the preordained one?
Yes, it all sounds wacky and melodramatic. But once upon a time certain other things that have since come to pass did, too.
Back when I was a political officer in Bolivia from 2003-2006, strongman leader Evo Morales famously gave the country an implicit choice. “Either elect me president or expect continued chaos on the streets.” Worked like a charm.
H.L Mencken’s quip about democracy being “the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard” comes to mind. But not being a fascist, I disagree.