1 week Ago
In the few days since we learned the outcome of the 2024 Presidential elections, much has already been written about the reasons that Donald Trump won and that Kamala Harris lost. Political analysts talked about Trump’s ability to galvanize white men as well as make inroads with Latinos, Asians, and other voter constituencies. Other pundits pointed out that Trump’s message of fear , grievance, and bigotry apparently resonated with many voters who were dissatisfied with the direction they perceived the country to be heading.
The evaluation of Harris’s loss was also varied and pointed to issues like her inability to distance herself from Joe Biden or to articulate a coherent economic vision for the future. In a more nuanced assessment of why the Democrats were so vulnerable in this election, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni argued that most Americans were not voting against Harris, but simply reacting to their perceptions of the state of the world around them like food prices and the cost to rent a home. A thorough investigation of the 2024 elections is important to conduct in order to provide us an accurate understanding of exactly what led to Trump’s victory so that lessons can be learned for the future.
Such assessments will certainly go on for weeks, months, if not years. However, what we also need to do is to consider what the 2024 election results say about us as Americans. If it is the case that elections are about upholding freedom, equality, civility, and other pillars of a democratic society, then what do the results of this election imply about Americans’ commitment to these values? Sadly, an honest appraisal of this question suggests that these days Americans’ devotion to the underlying tenets of democracy is tenuous and fragile.
How else can we account for the fact that tens of millions of American citizens supported a candidate for President that talked about wanting to be a dictator on day one, that speculated about terminating the United States’ Constitution, and that referred to the press as the “enemy of the people?” The majority of Americans that voted in the 2024 elections also chose to support a candidate who attacked immigrants for “poisoning the blood of our country,” rhetoric that is reminiscent of twentieth-century dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini. They opted to vote for someone who used racist tropes to attack the city of Detroit while campaigning there and endorsed the view that American citizens in Puerto Rico are living in an “island of garbage.” In short, when faced with a genuine choice between civility and decency versus vulgarity and indecency, most Americans who voted in the 2024 elections opted for the latter.
Republican voters are not solely to blame for tenuous commitment to the pillars of democracy; Americans who identify as Democrats or Independents also share in the responsibility. Days before the 2024 elections, many pundits and political activists predicted that female voters would be motivated like never before to turn out and vote against Trump since he bragged about being responsible for overturning the 1973 Supreme Court decision (Rowe) that guaranteed a woman’s right to choose an abortion. We now know that this prediction never materialized, suggesting that many women—mothers and daughters—opted to vote for Trump or stay at home rather than make their voices heard to protect the freedom that they enjoyed in this country for five decades.
Perhaps the most disturbing lesson about Americans that can be gleaned from the results of the 2024 elections is that so many citizens of this country are apathetic and disengaged from politics. Comparing the total votes cast for the Democratic ticket in 2020 to the 2024 projections indicates that Harris will likely end up with millions of fewer votes than Biden received. In addition, preliminary data shows that, as in 2020, in 2024 only about 65% of eligible voters participated in the election.
Such data suggests that more than a third of eligible voters in the past two elections simply did not care enough about the state of our democracy to take the time to vote. They could be bothered with whether the next president will uphold the Constitution and respect the rule of law or work to punish his adversaries and investigate those that speak out against him. A sober analysis on the state of American citizenry following the 2024 elections does not paint a pretty picture.
If millions of citizens can turn out enthusiastically to vote for a man who denied the results of the 2020 election, refused to guarantee a peaceful transition of power, and even incited a violent insurrection of the United States Capitol in 2021, then it is hard to argue that Americans are a people that love democracy and are willing to work to preserve it. Mordechai Gordon is a professor of Education in the School of Education at Quinnipiac University.
