Preliminary Thoughts About the 2024 Election

I wish this was too soon to contemplate

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Two years ago today a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and tried to use extralegal means to overturn a lawful election. They were egged on by the President of the United States at the time who welcomed the idea of violence as a means of coercing elected officials to acquiesce to his demands. Two months ago many members of that president’s party ran for office on the explicitly-said-out-loud platform of ensuring that their party would never lose another election again by rigging the rules in an illiberal fashion.

My concern, as an American, is that the country never comes that close again to eviscerating small-l liberal democracy. Which means, unfortunately, that it’s time to start thinking about 2024.

In the run-up to the 2022 midterms I was pessimistic about how things would turn out. The prospect of Republicans sweeping to power after mostly whitewashing January 6th, with some active election deniers attaining office, seemed all too real. Worse, it all presaged Donald Trump making a serious run at reclaiming the presidency in 2024.

Things turned out differently. The election deniers in swing states lost. The Republicans badly underperformed. After being castigated for much of the fall for focusing on defending democracy, Joe Biden looks savvy for leaning on that line of attack. The January 6th Commission turned out to be damning for Donald Trump. For fans of small-d democracy and the rule of law, 2022 was a pretty good year.

This raises a super-awkward question, however: is that optimism justified for 2024? Or could the illiberal forces that were barely kept at bay in 2021 and 2022 break through during a presidential year?