This Election is America’s Greatest Test

Talk of this being the most important election in our lifetime is no exaggeration.

Just consider all that is not well in America. A worsening plague was under control until it wasn’t. Science and politics continue to diverge with competing priorities. The election is as much a referendum on mask-wearing as it is about the economy and America’s standing in the world — a world, by the way, with its own COVID-19 anxieties.

The public health demands of social distancing have conflicted with racial unrest from several recent police shootings. Black Lives Matter instantly morphed from hashtag to national anthem. Mass gatherings somehow became immune from dire warnings about airborne coronavirus droplets. Meanwhile, some peaceful protests devolved into violence and vandalism. Police cars and precincts were torched, and businesses ransacked. Chickens weren’t coming home to roost, but to roast.

A national conversation about race looked more like a shouting match, one in which the exercise of free speech was, at times, charged with racism all its own. The cancel culture established new moral criteria. Our Founding Fathers lost custody of America’s origins. And, not to be forgotten, #MeToo forever reshaped cultural attitudes about sexual harassment and assault.

That’s a lot of social upheaval to cram into one election. It’s especially true given the chaos of Donald Trump’s presidency, with its Falstaffian fixations and aversion to dull moments: the Mueller Report, Senate Impeachment Trial, trail of political pink slips, Supreme Court appointments, Middle East realignments, entangled tax-returns, and the most porous Chinese wall between private business and public life ever constructed.

Adding further drama to this election isn’t even possible. Bunkered sides have long been taken among a traumatized electorate unable to avoid so many overlapping hatreds — Democrats versus Republicans, red versus blue states, urban versus suburban citizens, immigrants versus nativists, Antifa versus the Alt-right, mainstream media versus social media.

Hatfields and McCoys have spread throughout the land, pitting families and friends against one another. And it seems like it has all come down to one gigantic disagreement — all centering around Donald Trump.

And this president wouldn’t have it any other way. Trump Derangement Syndrome metastasized and colonized all forms of thinking. The news cycle was Trump all the time. Even a global pandemic needed a Trump hook to become truly newsworthy.

Looking back on the past four years, it is apparent that everyone underestimated Donald Trump. He was no mere reality TV star. He spoke to — and for — a portion of the American public that many didn’t realize existed or simply ignored. You all know the gross stereotypes: beer cans, NASCAR, “Deliverance,” red meat, country music. and megachurches. The smug superiority of the coastal, culture-driven, liberal elite is boundless.

The media missed the story, and ferocity, of the president’s core supporters, too, never bothering to understand them. Even now, anyone with a red MAGA cap is dismissively written off as  preternaturally deplorable.

It still comes as a surprise to many that not everyone is impressed with a subscription to the New Yorker.

For those who live in blue states and urban areas, their molars worn down after four years of teeth-grinding over Donald Trump, the stakes of this election has the epic quality of ending a national nightmare.

Yet, for another segment of the American populace, the end of the Trump administration would be devastating. Donald Trump has been the one president, if not the one elected official of any stripe, who actually speaks to ordinary non-college educated white voters — in uncensored and, often, politically incorrect language. He is, for them, the president who won’t mock them, who honors the jobs they perform and wars they send their children to fight in ways that parents in Manhattan, Brentwood, and Boca Raton would find unsuitable for their own.

And you can’t convince them otherwise, the white working class (and unemployed) who refuse to accept that they have been “privileged” by the color of their skin. Moreover, American patriotism and exceptionalism is not something that they will apologize or atone for.

Yes, QAnon and the Alt-right lurks in the shadows of Trump rallies, waiting like puppies for the dog whistles the president blows their way. But the vast crowds defiantly without masks know that the extreme right are few in number, and that the majority in attendance are not white supremacists. If Donald Trump is re-elected, the continued libeling of his base will surely be one of the reasons why.

It has taken a Trump presidency for Americans to realize that they’re living in two different countries in an undeclared civil war.

This election will test our solidarity as citizens of united rather than splintered states, of consensual American values rather than bitter grievances.

This election will test our solidarity as citizens of united rather than splintered states, of consensual American values rather than bitter grievances.

A perfect storm of post-election chaos may be upon us, endangering the integrity of the outcome and of our democracy. COVID-19 changed the burdens of civic duty on election day. A record number of Americans have been availing themselves of early voting through opened polling centers and mail-in ballots. The swelling electorate and arrival of postmarked ballots after the election — along with varying election procedures and legal skirmishes already underway in a number of states — will provide an excuse to challenge the legitimacy of the election.

President Trump has already cast doubt on the integrity of any outcome where he is not re-elected. And far worse, his supporters may believe that four-years of media bashing of their man makes a fixed election a real possibility. Joe Biden, leading in nearly all polls, has remained silent.

The world is watching. We are, after all, its oldest representative, constitutional democracy. Elections decide the transitions between governments. Peaceful transitions has never been an American problem. We might soon face a crisis where Bush v. Gore will look like a friendly game of badminton by comparison.

George Washington, as close as we have ever come to a king, stepped down after two terms and established a model for future presidents to follow. Coup d’état is Greek in the United States. We don’t know anything about it, and we don’t want to know anything about it.

Despite all the national infighting, the better angels of our nature, wings clipped as of late, must be called upon to guide us once again.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro College, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself.”