What if the stakes of the election aren’t as high as everyone thinks?

No country lasts forever in its present state. Governments fall, constitutions are altered or abolished, boundaries are redrawn, and wars, famines, natural disasters and shifting demographics constantly change the nature of what a country is. Thus, in any country that gives itself over to the great experiment in self-government, at some point, there’s a risk that people will have voted in their last free and fair election or they have put their country in such a state of terminal decline that it will never recover.
The election in the U.S. in 2024 is almost certainly not such an election.
Saying this is necessary because a certain mindset seems to have taken root in the collective mindset of both Trump and Harris supporters that if their candidate does not win, all is lost. Indeed, this mindset even stretches to certain “double haters” that refuse to identify with any candidate for president.
This argument, the first version of which was touted in 2016 by Trump supporter Michael Anton in his infamous, and sadly influential article, “The Flight 93 Election,” currently goes something like this: “America is in terminal cultural decline, with top colleges that are training our next generation of leaders by teaching illiberal ideologies that respect neither individual rights nor freedom of speech, and even call basic biological facts into question. The left wants to use illegal immigrants to fundamentally change the nature of our country, and want to pack or otherwise neuter the Supreme Court and are in favor of removing checks and balances on their power. Vice President Kamala Harris is a stooge or a sympathizer and not stop or accelerate these trends.”
Alternatively, “Donald Trump is a dangerous fascist who unconstitutionally tried to overturn a legitimate election. He’s floating using the military against his political opponents and has his toadies running the Supreme Court, keeping him from being held accountable for his crimes. He’s in cahoots with Vladimir Putin and will sell out our allies. If he’s given power again, our allies won’t stick by us, and we’ll never have another free and fair election.”
I think some of the concerns of both sides have a degree of merit, even as I believe most are overblown. But the conclusions reached are not just wrong, they are toxic and destructive.
First, it is ironic that these kinds of arguments are being made now. America’s economy is, by far, the best in the world, and it has recovered far faster, even than other peer nations, growing 10% a year since the end of the pandemic. Per The Economist, “Mississippi may be America’s poorest state, but its hard-working residents earn, on average, more than Brits, Canadians or Germans.” Indeed, the debacle of our immigration policy is significant in part due to the fact that the demand to get here is so great, due to America’s economic resilience.
This is a very different situation than, say, the election of 1800, the first transition of power from one party to another, or the election of 1860, the outcome of which people knew could (and did) lead to the Civil War. It’s also different from 1960, at the height of the Cold War and the beginning of the most intense period of the Civil Rights Movement, when our problems seemed so large one could plausibly have said we could reach a point of no return. Yet, in each case, the U.S. Constitution prevailed, because both the winning and losing candidates, and most of their supporters, prioritized it.
The American Constitution presupposes that voters have a choice and, should they choose wrong, that they’ll be able to choose again in the next election. Thus, if there is only one option that will ruin the country, in the span of one election, then what makes America’s system work is already broken beyond any reasonable chance of repair. What makes democratic systems work is their ability to self-correct over time by booting leaders that refuse to, or are incapable of, fixing any given problem.
If one option will wreck the country, the other will inevitably fail, because this dynamic becomes inoperative. By the time you’re there, no election can save it — you’ve already passed the point of no return. But this mindset remains deeply dangerous. This is because acting as if these arguments are true makes the unlikely event that the “correct” outcome of this election must happen or “America is over,” more likely, particularly over time.
The stakes of this election, on paper, are actually quite low. No party is likely to have large majorities in Congress, making it hard for any president to pass much of anything, Americans do not have any boots on the ground in any major war, the economy is doing fine (even if inflation is still an issue), and so on. The election only becomes highly consequential if people react excessively as if there is no “next time.”
So vote, and make the best choice possible. Whatever happens, don’t panic. It’s (probably) going to be all right.
Cliff Smith is a lawyer and a former congressional staffer. He lives in Washington, D.C., where he works on national security related issues. His views are his own.