Venezuela as Object Lesson: Democracy Requires Accepting Electoral Defeat

Rejecting Legitimate Election Results Can Initiate a Slide Toward Dictatorship

It came across as a cruel irony.  In his recent online conversation with Elon Musk, former President Trump warned that if “something happens with this election,” the two would have to meet next time in—of all countries—Venezuela, “because it’ll be a far safer place to meet than in our country.” 

Anyone who has followed recent developments in that proud but beaten down South American country had to be aghast at the reference.

Venezuela has been in a frank free fall for the past decade plus, plunged into an epic political, economic, social, and humanitarian crisis.  In the space of a generation, Venezuela, a country endowed with the largest proven oil reserves in the world, has been transformed from the richest country in South America with a functional if flawed democratic government into an authoritarian thugocracy that has driven the economy—and the country—almost literally into the ground.  More than 20% of Venezuela’s population, close to 7 million people so far, have been forced to flee their homeland over the past ten years, many of them to the United States.  More are likely on their way. 

Venezuela’s multidimensional crisis has its man-made source in self-defeating politics, beginning with the reign of charismatic strongman President Hugo Chavez (1998-2013).  Chavez sought to perpetuate his hold on power indefinitely while preventing the rise of any potential democratic challenger.  Unsurprisingly, given his success in doing just that, he died in office. The country’s crisis has only deepened and grown more intractable under Chavez’s incompetent and corrupt hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro.  Problems pointedly include alleged crimes against humanity, widespread security service abuses, and (while slightly reduced in recent years) rampant citizen insecurity.  Venezuela is among the most dangerous places in the world outside of active war zones, which throws Mr. Trump’s claims about its relative safety into a jarring light.  

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Euphemistically, one might describe the Maduro regime as having systematically flouted the will of its people in a succession of sham elections.  Otherwise stated, Maduro has accepted the results of no election unless he himself was declared the winner.  Following the death of Chavez, Maduro won a 2013 “special election” by a narrow margin in a process that was widely seen as flawed, if not so fatally as to demand formal challenge.  

His reelection in 2019 was another story.  Declared illegitimate by the Organization of American States, many governments in the region and the world, including the United States, refused to recognize it.  The first Trump administration (ironically, in light of Trump’s own recent comments) led an energetic regional and international pressure campaign to force Maduro to step aside, including by imposing crippling sanctions and by recognizing then National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó as the constitutionally legitimate president.  Alas, that gallant effort failed.

Maduro’s second re-election in July of this year was seen by most observers as more brazen and shameless still—an election stolen outright in the full light of day.  Credible exit poll counts have shown that his opponent Edmundo Gonzalez won a decisive majority of the vote—approaching 70%.  (Gonzalez himself only became the candidate after the Maduro regime disqualified opposition leader, Marina Corina Machado, on transparently spurious grounds). But Maduro has once again refused to recognize the will of the people, claiming that he himself won the ballot while failing to provide any evidence in support of this patently false claim.  Instead, he has harassed, threatened, and jailed his rivals.  Recently, Mr. Gonzalez himself was forced to flee to seek asylum in Spain.

In that sense, the Venezuelan people are trapped in the collapsed shell of a democracy turned de facto dictatorship without the means to escape—apart from fleeing elsewhere.  According to some estimates, Venezuelans have now surged to the top of the list of illegal migrants showing up at our Southern borders.

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It seems unnecessary to argue that for democratic elections to be valid, participants must at a minimum accept their actual results. An undesired or unexpected outcome is not for that reason undemocratic or illegitimate.  One might even say that the essence of democracy is a willingness to accept electoral defeat. It keeps the country open to the possibility of political alternatives.  Foreclosure of alternatives is foreclosure of democracy. In that sense, Venezuela offers an object lesson for what happens when the basic rules of democracy are flouted, starting with the failure to accept the results of credible elections. 

I don’t mean to take any implicit comparison too far. US democratic institutions are more responsive, representative, and resilient than those of Venezuela. And US presidential elections have produced credible, legitimate, and largely uncontestable outcomes.  Fraud on a scale that might undermine their legitimacy has not been found in the modern era, notwithstanding overheated allegations to the contrary.  (Controversy is another matter.  See Bush-Gore in 2000.)  Still, democracy is a matter of choice, not a state of nature. We must make wise, well-informed choices to sustain our democracy. We can’t simply assume that all will be well.

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In this context, our current presidential candidates should be required to declare in advance, unequivocally and without caveats or conditions that, win or lose, they will accept the results of the November 5 elections. 

Mr. Trump’s responsibility in this connection is two-fold.  Not only should he declare his intention to accept this November’s results, including and especially if he loses, he should also publicly acknowledge his decisive 2020 loss in clear and unequivocal terms.  Given the depth of the disturbances and the extent of the damage he caused by repeatedly and emphatically lying about this fact before, his recent belated, low-profile, below-the-radar admissions about losing those elections “by a whisker” don’t quite cut the mustard.  (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-acknowledges-lost-2020-election-whisker-rcna169526)

The American people deserve better from their presidents or would-be presidents. Trump should publicly apologize for the great and totally unnecessary damage he caused by his repeated past lying and then solemnly promise not to go down that same road again.  Perhaps he could use the platform of the debate to begin trying to make things right.

Too much to ask?