An Election About Elections

Posted on Tuesday 5 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

We won’t know today.

  • David A. Graham at The Atlantic about how this election is a test;
  • Evidence about how European nations would vote in today’s US presidential election;
  • More about the Republican backlash to the idea that women can think for themselves;
  • Short items about educated women, submission to Christ, how Democrats are demonic, how RFK would remove fluoride, and how today Trump uttered 15 falsehoods in 15 minutes.

The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 5 Nov 2024: This Is a Test, subtitled “Can the country pass?”

This is an election about elections.

One of the two leading candidates in the race, Donald Trump, has not only demonstrated a long-running skepticism of rule of law; he is also the only president in American history to attempt to remain in office after losing an election. This election is a test: Can the American public resoundingly reject a man who has not merely been a chaotic extremist but has also attacked the American system of republican government itself?

No, because to many Americans, Trump represents something more important than the “American system of government,” despite how much they claim to venerate the Constitution. Graham concludes,

So now the matter is before voters, every other safeguard having failed. Trump has abandoned none of his election denial. He has refused to acknowledge that Biden is the rightful president, despite Biden having won a resounding victory. Trump has discredited Americans’ faith in their own democracy, with consequences that will last for generations. He’s spent the past few weeks seeding doubt about another American election, even though he might win it.

Democracy is a tough idea to get one’s arms around. It’s abstract, and until recently, it felt so deeply embedded in life in this country that, despite its failures, it could be treated as a given. When voters decide whom to support, they understandably sometimes focus on the more urgent questions directly in front of them—matters such as their standard of living, their rights, and their social structures. But the essence of the American system is not which path we take on these issues, but the procedures by which we decide. That fundamental idea is being put to the test today.

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I suggested a while back that, since people in other nations have an interest in how America behaves in the world, why shouldn’t they be allowed to vote in the US presidential election? After all, the US is the most powerful nation in the world, right? Has the most influence on other nations, who have to suffer the consequences of America’s policies?

As it turns out, polls have been done in European nations of who they prefer to win in the US, of those who intended to vote in local elections. This is via a Facebook post by David Brin.

Europe Elects, 4 Nov 2024: U.S. Election: Europeans Would Vote for Harris if They Could—but There’s a Wide Gulf Between East and West.

Unsurprisingly, the more advanced, peaceful, egalitarian nations prefer Harris; the more authoritarian ones prefer Trump. The latter used to be America’s enemies.

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This next piece keys off that suggestion that women don’t have to tell their husbands how they vote.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 5 Nov 2024: Bracing for MAGA’s backlash: The strategy behind secret Kamala Harris voters is safety, subtitled “MAGA outrage over wives voting for Kamala Harris is funny — but it’s also dangerous”

Whatever the intention behind these ads, they set off a major tantrum in the GOP, which confirmed that feminists have been right all along: the MAGA movement is about controlling women. Fox News host Jesse Watters, who cheated on his first wife with his current wife, compared a wife refusing to vote for Donald Trump to having an affair. Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is married to his third wife after cheating on his second, called the ad “sick” and evidence of moral “decay.” Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA obsessed about this, claiming Harris could only win by “the largest mass conspiracy of spousal lying in political history” and suggested wives who vote for Harris are “stealing money.” Trump himself, of course, got caught up in the MAGA outrage about wives who exercise their own judgment.

And

These Republican leaders are sending an unmistakable final message to men: Women have no right to think for themselves.

Pure tribal morality, of course.

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More on this topic.

And closely related.

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