As They Barricade D.C. and Prepare for Civil Unrest, Thoughts on the Day After

There’s a nervous vibe in the air, especially in D.C.

“America locked and loaded: White House is barricaded, stores board up and there’s a chilling warning as election tensions soar,” is the headline of the lead story today in the Daily Mail (DM).

“Americans are braced for civil unrest amid scary predictions of ‘blood’ during Tuesday’s knife’s-edge presidential election that appears to hinge on the results in just seven swing states,” the DM reported.

Already, they are reporting that “fights have broken out at polling stations and election workers have prepared for gun attacks, amid a flurry of threats to blow up political offices and other sensitive sites ahead of election day.”

The potent mix of fear and anger that has marked this election season has reached a peak on Election Day. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, if it feels as if a civic volcano is about to erupt.

I felt only slightly better when my friend historian Gil Troy shared some historical perspective. Writing in The Hill, he notes that The New York Mirror called the 1852 campaign “disgraceful to the country.”

And a century ago, “Republicans accused liberal Democrats, especially Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, of imposing a dictatorship. And when Martin Van Buren lost his reelection bid to the inexperienced William Henry Harrison in 1840, one Democrat, Dillon Jordan, wrote: “Truth and justice and our sacred Constitution lay prostrate and bleeding at the foots of fraud and falsehood.”

Like I said, this made me feel only slightly better, because I do think there is something uniquely dangerous about civil strife in the age of social media, especially with candidates as deeply polarizing as Trump and Harris.

So, what to do?

If street riots are in the cards, that will be in the hands of our leaders and law enforcement, not us. And legal challenges will be in the hands of the lawyers.

What we can do is minimize any turmoil in our own little worlds, whether in our communities or families. Winners need not gloat; the pain of losing is sharp enough.

One of my fondest memories of presidential elections is from 2008. At the time, I was following the blog of a hard right-winger who kept warning his readers of the danger of an Obama presidency. As I opened his blog on the day after Obama won, I was expecting a dark and bitter post-mortem.

Instead, I was stunned by what I read. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like this: “Congratulations to our new president. He wasn’t my choice, but he’s my president now.”

How far we’ve come. It’s hard to imagine many “losing” voters feeling this way in the next few days.

In any case, regardless of who wins, I will carry with me my personal mantra about politicians and politics: However great or bad or powerful they may be, they don’t have the power to make me happy.

Good luck tonight.

This article has been updated to remove mention of Beverly Hills stores being boarded up. We regret the error.