What Donald Trump Is Doing Doesn’t Have to Damage Our Democracy

Democrats and much of the mainstream media¹ are saying Donald Trump is damaging American democracy by his continuing refusal to accept defeat in the presidential election and to start the transition process for President-elect Biden.  I agree that what President Trump is doing is appalling and that it makes the United States look stupid around the world, but it’s not the first time President Trump has done that, and given that January 20 is still two months away, it may not be the last (unfortunately).  It is, after all, what President Trump does.  We all know that by now.  Why should we be surprised he continues to do it?

But, as for whether President Trump is causing lasting damage to American democracy, that’s up to us.  What he is doing doesn’t have to cause lasting damage to democracy – unless we let it.  We can agree that what President Trump is doing is wrong and that we will never do it ourselves.  We can make what President Trump is doing a one-time thing by agreeing that we will concede when our opponent gets more votes and that we won’t go around saying our opponent wasn’t really elected once the votes are counted. 

We can make sure President Trump’s conduct in the last two weeks is a one-time thing by agreeing that we will never do it ourselves.  We can hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct.  If we can agree to that, and do that, then what President Trump has done will not cause any lasting damage to our democracy or our standing around the world.

Perhaps we should follow the example of a candidate in an election a long time ago.  It was unclear who really won the popular vote that year, and there were allegations of vote fraud in several states.  In fact, a scholarly study years later found that, in one of those states, while vote fraud may not have affected the presidential contest, it almost certainly changed the result in a significant local race.²

But the candidate conceded the morning after the election, and when newspaper articles started appearing about alleged vote fraud, the candidate called in the reporter and told him:

“Earl, those are interesting articles you are writing – but no one steals the presidency of the United States. … Our country can’t afford the agony of a constitutional crisis – and I damn well will not be a party to creating one just to become President – or anything else.”³

That sounds like the standard we should expect our candidates to follow and that we should expect of ourselves.  If we can all agree to that, then what Donald Trump is doing now will become an obscure footnote in American history.
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¹ But I repeat myself.
² Edmund F. Kallina, Jr., Courthouse Over White House: Chicago and the Presidential Election of 1960 (1988), p.166.
³ Kallina, p. 104.