When Americans go to the polls in November, they will be choosing a president — and, depending on the results of the election, setting up a replay of 2020’s post-election chaos. We need to face that fact now and acknowledge the likelihood that we will be in for another national trauma in about six months.
Some people, like Georgetown Professor Rosa Books, are less worried about what may happen in 2024 than about what happened in 2020, when Donald Trump was in the White House. As Brooks puts it, “an incumbent has a level of coercive power that a candidate (like Trump) just does not have.”
Brooks expects this year, “with Biden still in office, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security would be successful in keeping any political violence from getting out of control.”
Or, as an analysis in The Washington Post says, if Trump loses “he won’t be the incumbent president he was in 2020, debating about the federal government seizing voting machines, reportedly entertaining conversations about imposing martial law, using the presidential megaphone to convince his supporters that rampant voter fraud stole a second term from him.”
But even the Post concedes that Trump “will still have an unusually strong bond with his followers. Some of the 2021 rioters said he motivated them, raising questions of what he might do if defeated in 2024.”
In fact, Trump is leaving little to the imagination about what he might do after the election, and Americans cannot afford to be complacent about what might unfold.
Trump has made clear that 2024 will be a high-stakes election. “This is the final battle. … Either they win, or we win.”
He has ominously predicted that “If we don’t win this election, I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country,”
And more than a year ago, Trump refused to commit to accept the results of the 2024 presidential election. At that time, the former president said he would only accept the 2024 results if he believes no voter fraud occurred. “If I think it’s an honest election,” he said, “I would be honored to.”
In the last few days, Donald Trump again has signaled that, whatever the results of the election, he will not go down without a fight.
In an interview with Time published last Tuesday, Trump tried to sidestep the question about what he would do if he lost while reciting his familiar litany of complaints about 2020.
“Well, I do think we’re gonna win. We’re way ahead. I don’t think they’ll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible. Absolutely horrible. So many, so many different things they did, which were in total violation of what was supposed to be happening. And you know that, and everybody knows that. We can recite them, go down a list that would be an arm’s long. But I don’t think we’re going to have that. I think we’re going to win.”
He then acknowledged that he might not concede if he lost. As he put it, “And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
This is a reminder that in Trump’s world there seem to be only two possible election results. If he wins, the election is fair. If he loses, it is rigged.
On May 1, Trump again refused to promise he would accept the results of the 2024 presidential election. “If everything’s honest,” Trump said, “I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that. If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
As the New York Times observes, “Mr. Trump’s vow to ‘fight for the right of the country’ also echoes his speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, where he told his supporters that ‘if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,’ before urging his supporters to march to the Capitol.”
Over the last several months, as the Times puts it, Trump “has repeatedly tried to sow doubt about the integrity of the fall election, while repeating many of the same lies he used to assail the integrity of the 2020 election. Months before any voting has taken place, Mr. Trump has regularly made the baseless claim that Democrats are likely to cheat to win.”
Trump has repeatedly called his criminal trial now underway in New York “election interference.” “I’m here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania, Georgia and lots of other places, campaigning, and it’s very unfair.”
His lawyers have reiterated these election interference arguments as well: “The Special Counsel,” they told the Supreme Court in a brief in the presidential immunity case, “seeks urgently to force President Trump into a months-long criminal trial at the height of campaign season, effectively sidelining him and preventing him from campaigning against the current President.”
A CNN poll now shows that “Nearly three-quarters of Americans, 74 percent, believe former President Trump will refuse to concede if he loses the 2024 election.” That poll noted that this “a significant increase from similar surveys in 2020.”
President Biden has voiced similar concerns. According to Biden, “Losers who are losers are never graceful. I just think that he’ll do anything to try to win. If − and when − I win, I think he’ll contest it. No matter what the result is.”
Biden is clearly right. The question is what he — and we — will do between now and November.
State election officials and the Biden administration need to put in place plans to ensure the fairness of the 2024 election and to defend the election results. The national news media will have a big part to play in that effort.
But voters must play their part as well.
The CNN poll found that “an overwhelming majority of survey respondents, about 86 percent, said the losing candidate in a presidential election has an obligation to concede.” That is a reassuring finding. But it won’t do much good unless the people who feel that way turn their commitment into a voting issue.
Over the next several months, voters need to make clear that they do not want a repeat of 2020. And in November, Americans need to go to the polls and vote against anyone who refuses to discharge his “obligation to concede.”
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College.
