2020: The most important election in American history?
Last week, I came across this article by Stu Rothenberg. Rothenberg is, generally speaking, one of the better journalistic pundits, which is why my beloved Roll Call keeps him on staff. 2020. How "important" is the 2020 presidential election, in historical terms? Rothenberg doesn't actually make a direct case that 2020 is the most important election, but rather elaborates on forecasting models from Moody's that essentially do what political science forecasting models will be doing next year when we have the appropriate political/economic data, except that Moody's is trying to forecast where the data will be next year, whereas most of us political scientists are just saying, "ask me again in six months," like the non-sentient Magic 8-Balls that we often resemble.
Except that I still have all of my hair, thank you very much. But I'm not vain, or anything.
Where was I? Oh, right. 2020. Is 2020 going to be "the most important election of your lifetime?" Or, in American history? Or, whatever?
The funny thing is that someone always makes the case that this is the most important election in, like, the history of the fabric of space-time. Remember 1996? Maybe not, you young'uns. Gather 'round, while I tell you the tale of a simpler time. The internet was blessedly still not infecting every aspect of our existence. I didn't need a damned cell phone. Let me list some musicians who were still alive: Ray Charles. Aretha Franklin. Generations of greats.
And no robo-calls.
Paradise? Not quite. I could go on about all of the great books and music not yet in existence in 1996, but that's not my point. The candidates in 1996 were Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Here's some wacky nuttiness from the good ole' days. Bob Dole, before he went on tv to leer at Britney* Spears like a creepy old man, tried to tell everyone that 1996 was the most important election of their lifetimes because whoever won that election would be president when the calendar rolled over to the new millennium.
And even if you are one of those persnickety folks who wanted to point out that the new millennium technically started on January 1, 2001, it was still technically true because the winner of the 2000 election wouldn't be inaugurated until January in 2001. So there, Mr.s and Mrs.s Smarty Pants-es!
On a scale of 1 to 10, how full of it was Dole?
Yup. Still funny.
Anyway, on any objective scale, 1996 was about as unimportant as a presidential election got. The Cold War was over, terrorism wasn't on the rise yet, democratic backsliding wasn't a thing yet, the economy was chugging along like a well-maintained machine, and policy-wise, while there was some significant distance between Clinton and Dole, Dole was basically a mainstream politician, and Clinton was a mainstream politician, and the general back-and-forth of the political system between mainstream politicians is what we call, "politics." It's a thing that happens. Or, rather, a thing that used to happen.
Point being, had Dole won, you can make a butterfly argument, alternate timelines, or something, but the direct consequences for America or the world didn't have that much at stake, in the grand scheme of things. Sure, there were stakes, but the stakes were lower than in any other election because the world, the economy and basically... stuff was stable. Least. Important. Election. Ever.
That doesn't stop people from the usual rhetoric, though. Gotta rile up that base!
But, since people say it every year, how do we evaluate it? 2020 would seem to have an easier claim, just... cuz', like, stuff.
In terms of ideological distinctions, Trump has transformed himself from whatever the hell he was before he became President to a mostly hardline conservative politician, with conservatism itself being redefined around his anomalies (e.g. protectionism and tariffs), and the Democrats are likely to nominate someone far to the left of anyone they have ever considered nominating before.
Michael Bloomberg? Does he have a shot? As of this morning, right after his maybe-entry into the race, shares of his nomination are trading at 7 cents on the dollar at PredictIt. That puts him right below Yang, and just above... um... Hillary Clinton. In other words, those shares are trading in what I'd call junk-investment territory, where the only people making those trades are doing it on a lark.
He ain't-a-gonna win.
In policy terms, then, the 2020 election will have the largest gap between the candidates we have ever seen. The gap between someone like Warren and Trump has never been matched before in a presidential election. No candidate in history has ever been as far left as Warren, or Sanders, or even Buttigieg. Not by a long-shot, and Trump has redefined conservatism. (And Biden's ship is sinking.)
So there's that.
However, that's not necessarily what people mean when they say that this will be the most important election.
Among Democrats and other Trump critics-- Weld, Walsh, Amash, Kasich for example-- this kind of rhetoric is based on the idea that there is something more fundamental at stake than policy differences between Trump and whomever the Democrats nominate.
Consider executive power. Donald Trump has claimed expansive executive power far beyond anything any past president has ever claimed. Donald Trump asserts-- falsely, of course-- that there is a clause in Article II of the Constitution that gives him the power to do "whatever I want." There is no such clause in the Constitution. However, beyond any such belief, Trump has asserted that he has uncheckable executive power, not just in informal speeches, but in legal defenses. His administration has asserted that Congress has no power to compel testimony from any executive branch employee, thereby asserting that Congress has no oversight authority. He has asserted that the president has the power to determine when an impeachment is or is not legitimate, thereby nullifying Congress's power of impeachment. He has asserted that when Congress denies a president's request for appropriations for a project, the president can declare an "emergency," and fund his project anyway, thereby nullifying the Article I/Article II division of power on who controls spending. The list goes on. Donald Trump's assertions of unchecked executive power are expansive far beyond anything in American history.
James Sundquist's The Decline and Resurgence of Congress is a point of reference here. The power of the president relative to Congress has fluctuated throughout history, but this level of executive power marginalizing Congress to the point of making it a vestigial institution-- as it currently is-- puts the current arrangement of checks and balances so far out of historical experience that the country is now just in a fundamentally different political system.
Or... is it? And that's the point of the 2020 question. Is the 2020 election an election in which we decide whether or not the political system will revert to one in which the power of the executive is checked by Congress, or whether we remain a system in which the president can "do whatever I want?"
Thought experiment time. First, suppose Donald Trump wins. How likely is this? According to Moody's-- the motivating piece behind Stu Rothenberg's article-- pretty likely. According to me and my Magic 8-ball? Ask me again in about six months, but it'll come down mostly to the economy, 'n stuff. If Trump wins, we know what happens. More of the same.
What if Trump loses? And here's where the thought experiment gets interesting.
If the economy falters, or something like that, it's conceivable. Will the impeachment help the Democrats? Historically unlikely, but not mathematically impossible. Trump could lose.
In 2016, Donald Trump's rhetoric about elections being "rigged" went so far that journalists had to press him about whether or not he would accept the results if he lost. He never said "yes."
If Donald Trump loses in 2020, he will not accept that loss, and we know exactly what kind of conspiracy theories he will propose, which will then be amplified by Fox News, talk radio, and his congressional allies. What we don't know is how the rest of the political system will respond, because that dictates the result. Donald Trump losing would still be among the ugliest political battles in modern American history-- just responding to Trump's refusal to accept that election result, and I wouldn't even place a bet on how that turns out because it relies not only on him, but on his party, courts stacked with his own appointments, a deeply polarized country and circumstances that I cannot predict.
So either Trump wins, or we have an ugly and unpredictable fight to get him to recognize a loss, with the stakes being, among many other things, the concept of unchecked executive power, as articulated by Donald Trump when he claims that Article II of the Constitution gives him the power to "do whatever I want."
2016 was the most important election of our lifetimes. By far. That wasn't close. I'm not a fan of the long-debunked theory of "critical elections," or, "realignment," first proposed by V.O. Key. David Mayhew did the discipline of political science a great service by ripping that nonsense to shreds, but there really is something to the observation that some elections stand out as more important than others. 1996 didn't matter, in the scheme of things. 1860 did. 1932 did. (1896 was always the asterisk in the "theory of critical elections.")
2016? Not a "critical election." Not by the technical definitions. Sorry, Valdimir. (Yes, that's what the "V" abbreviated.) However, it really was important, and far more important than 2020. It put the country on a path that is not deterministic, but the stakes were just far higher because of what the paths were.
How important is 2020? Meh. More important than 1996, but way less important than 2016. Way less important.
*Google auto-complete allowed me to spell-check that without actually searching and doing something weird to my browser history. Yay for auto-complete! And pick and damned spelling, people!
Except that I still have all of my hair, thank you very much. But I'm not vain, or anything.
Where was I? Oh, right. 2020. Is 2020 going to be "the most important election of your lifetime?" Or, in American history? Or, whatever?
The funny thing is that someone always makes the case that this is the most important election in, like, the history of the fabric of space-time. Remember 1996? Maybe not, you young'uns. Gather 'round, while I tell you the tale of a simpler time. The internet was blessedly still not infecting every aspect of our existence. I didn't need a damned cell phone. Let me list some musicians who were still alive: Ray Charles. Aretha Franklin. Generations of greats.
And no robo-calls.
Paradise? Not quite. I could go on about all of the great books and music not yet in existence in 1996, but that's not my point. The candidates in 1996 were Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Here's some wacky nuttiness from the good ole' days. Bob Dole, before he went on tv to leer at Britney* Spears like a creepy old man, tried to tell everyone that 1996 was the most important election of their lifetimes because whoever won that election would be president when the calendar rolled over to the new millennium.
And even if you are one of those persnickety folks who wanted to point out that the new millennium technically started on January 1, 2001, it was still technically true because the winner of the 2000 election wouldn't be inaugurated until January in 2001. So there, Mr.s and Mrs.s Smarty Pants-es!
On a scale of 1 to 10, how full of it was Dole?
Yup. Still funny.
Anyway, on any objective scale, 1996 was about as unimportant as a presidential election got. The Cold War was over, terrorism wasn't on the rise yet, democratic backsliding wasn't a thing yet, the economy was chugging along like a well-maintained machine, and policy-wise, while there was some significant distance between Clinton and Dole, Dole was basically a mainstream politician, and Clinton was a mainstream politician, and the general back-and-forth of the political system between mainstream politicians is what we call, "politics." It's a thing that happens. Or, rather, a thing that used to happen.
Point being, had Dole won, you can make a butterfly argument, alternate timelines, or something, but the direct consequences for America or the world didn't have that much at stake, in the grand scheme of things. Sure, there were stakes, but the stakes were lower than in any other election because the world, the economy and basically... stuff was stable. Least. Important. Election. Ever.
That doesn't stop people from the usual rhetoric, though. Gotta rile up that base!
But, since people say it every year, how do we evaluate it? 2020 would seem to have an easier claim, just... cuz', like, stuff.
In terms of ideological distinctions, Trump has transformed himself from whatever the hell he was before he became President to a mostly hardline conservative politician, with conservatism itself being redefined around his anomalies (e.g. protectionism and tariffs), and the Democrats are likely to nominate someone far to the left of anyone they have ever considered nominating before.
Michael Bloomberg? Does he have a shot? As of this morning, right after his maybe-entry into the race, shares of his nomination are trading at 7 cents on the dollar at PredictIt. That puts him right below Yang, and just above... um... Hillary Clinton. In other words, those shares are trading in what I'd call junk-investment territory, where the only people making those trades are doing it on a lark.
He ain't-a-gonna win.
In policy terms, then, the 2020 election will have the largest gap between the candidates we have ever seen. The gap between someone like Warren and Trump has never been matched before in a presidential election. No candidate in history has ever been as far left as Warren, or Sanders, or even Buttigieg. Not by a long-shot, and Trump has redefined conservatism. (And Biden's ship is sinking.)
So there's that.
However, that's not necessarily what people mean when they say that this will be the most important election.
Among Democrats and other Trump critics-- Weld, Walsh, Amash, Kasich for example-- this kind of rhetoric is based on the idea that there is something more fundamental at stake than policy differences between Trump and whomever the Democrats nominate.
Consider executive power. Donald Trump has claimed expansive executive power far beyond anything any past president has ever claimed. Donald Trump asserts-- falsely, of course-- that there is a clause in Article II of the Constitution that gives him the power to do "whatever I want." There is no such clause in the Constitution. However, beyond any such belief, Trump has asserted that he has uncheckable executive power, not just in informal speeches, but in legal defenses. His administration has asserted that Congress has no power to compel testimony from any executive branch employee, thereby asserting that Congress has no oversight authority. He has asserted that the president has the power to determine when an impeachment is or is not legitimate, thereby nullifying Congress's power of impeachment. He has asserted that when Congress denies a president's request for appropriations for a project, the president can declare an "emergency," and fund his project anyway, thereby nullifying the Article I/Article II division of power on who controls spending. The list goes on. Donald Trump's assertions of unchecked executive power are expansive far beyond anything in American history.
James Sundquist's The Decline and Resurgence of Congress is a point of reference here. The power of the president relative to Congress has fluctuated throughout history, but this level of executive power marginalizing Congress to the point of making it a vestigial institution-- as it currently is-- puts the current arrangement of checks and balances so far out of historical experience that the country is now just in a fundamentally different political system.
Or... is it? And that's the point of the 2020 question. Is the 2020 election an election in which we decide whether or not the political system will revert to one in which the power of the executive is checked by Congress, or whether we remain a system in which the president can "do whatever I want?"
Thought experiment time. First, suppose Donald Trump wins. How likely is this? According to Moody's-- the motivating piece behind Stu Rothenberg's article-- pretty likely. According to me and my Magic 8-ball? Ask me again in about six months, but it'll come down mostly to the economy, 'n stuff. If Trump wins, we know what happens. More of the same.
What if Trump loses? And here's where the thought experiment gets interesting.
If the economy falters, or something like that, it's conceivable. Will the impeachment help the Democrats? Historically unlikely, but not mathematically impossible. Trump could lose.
In 2016, Donald Trump's rhetoric about elections being "rigged" went so far that journalists had to press him about whether or not he would accept the results if he lost. He never said "yes."
If Donald Trump loses in 2020, he will not accept that loss, and we know exactly what kind of conspiracy theories he will propose, which will then be amplified by Fox News, talk radio, and his congressional allies. What we don't know is how the rest of the political system will respond, because that dictates the result. Donald Trump losing would still be among the ugliest political battles in modern American history-- just responding to Trump's refusal to accept that election result, and I wouldn't even place a bet on how that turns out because it relies not only on him, but on his party, courts stacked with his own appointments, a deeply polarized country and circumstances that I cannot predict.
So either Trump wins, or we have an ugly and unpredictable fight to get him to recognize a loss, with the stakes being, among many other things, the concept of unchecked executive power, as articulated by Donald Trump when he claims that Article II of the Constitution gives him the power to "do whatever I want."
2016 was the most important election of our lifetimes. By far. That wasn't close. I'm not a fan of the long-debunked theory of "critical elections," or, "realignment," first proposed by V.O. Key. David Mayhew did the discipline of political science a great service by ripping that nonsense to shreds, but there really is something to the observation that some elections stand out as more important than others. 1996 didn't matter, in the scheme of things. 1860 did. 1932 did. (1896 was always the asterisk in the "theory of critical elections.")
2016? Not a "critical election." Not by the technical definitions. Sorry, Valdimir. (Yes, that's what the "V" abbreviated.) However, it really was important, and far more important than 2020. It put the country on a path that is not deterministic, but the stakes were just far higher because of what the paths were.
How important is 2020? Meh. More important than 1996, but way less important than 2016. Way less important.
*Google auto-complete allowed me to spell-check that without actually searching and doing something weird to my browser history. Yay for auto-complete! And pick and damned spelling, people!
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