Will the United States survive the 2016 election (a continuing series)

I was struck last week in Philadelphia, in several conversations at the APSA convention, with the relative complacency about the prospect of a Trump victory.  To be clear, no one I spoke to doubted that he was dangerously narcissistic sociopath or otherwise came even close to finding him a reasonable choice for President.  And the general mood was certainly one of denial that Trump could in fact win; all of us were taking solace in the NYTimes' then-90% probability estimate (since lowered to "only" 80%) of a Clinton victory.  Rather, when asked what Clinton would/should do if the sociopath won, the answer seemed to be some version of "she should be a good sport--and presumably good American, like Al Gore--and concede graciously," whatever exactly that would mean.  When I demurred, suggesting that his election would simply be catastrophic and that there was no reason at all to accept it graciously, the reasonable question was asked of me:  what did I envision as the alternative? Taking up arms?  A military coup?  Or, as I have written several times, a secessionist movement led by Pacifica and New England (plus New York) that would reasonably state that they had no desire any longer to be part of a country that would place a sociopath in its highest office.  All, to be sure, sound either fanciful or out-and-out dangerous (or, to some, lunatic).  But exactly why is it less dangerous or lunatic to accept without question the legitimacy of a Trump presidency?  Especially if it is procured by voter suppression in North Carolina and Texas, to name only the two most rabidly Republican states that are determined to limit the participation of Democratic voters?


But, of course, most of us believe that Hillary will in fact win, as the current models predict, even if the margins are relatively narrow.  That then raises the question of whether Trump and his "deplorable" supporters--that is, the portion of the Trump constituency, whatever its actually percentage, accurately portrayed by Hillary Clinton as exemplar as the truly dark side of contemporary American politics, fascist, racist, and xenophobic, for starters.  The inestimable Thomas Edsall has a superb column in today's NYTimes about the extent to which Trump and his minions, including Roger Stone and the fascist bullies Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, are feeding what Richard Hofstadter called the "paranoid strain" in American politics.  Trump is repeatedly suggesting that he can't really lose unless the election is rigged--and any loss will prove that the election is rigged (particularly, of course, if if is a close election.)  So why in the world does anyone expect Trump to engage in any kind of graceful concession, especially when one adds to this the fact that he and his minions refer to their opponent only as a criminal who is also, according to them, suffering from near-dementia and is therefore totally unqualified to be President? It is, of course, absolutely true that I am engaging in the same basic portrayal of Clinton's opponent.  He is, by all accounts, a narcissistic sociopath who has literally no respect whatsoever for anything that might be described as the truth.  So what we have is mirror imaging, in which both sides feel only utter contempt for the opposition and are totally prepared to call into question any electoral victory if it is at all close.

It also appears to be the case that some recent calculations have increased the odds that the Republicans will hang on to the Senate, albeit by no more than 51-49.  Ironically enough, single-issue gun controllers now seem to be supporting Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, expressing total and compete indifference to the fact that he is fact in a conservative Republican who happens to have exhibited a modicum of political courage on that one issue.  So the question remains, if Clinton can do no better than eke out a relatively narrow victory over a narcissistic sociopath, while Congress remains Republican, why should we expect anything in the way of genuine "governance" over the next four years rather than an escalation of the gridlock that is wrecking the United States?  Under those circumstances, wouldn't the paralysis caused by divided government, whatever its "fit" with a certain demented model of Madisonianism (demented because Madison despised the idea of political parties, at least when writing Federalist 10 and warning us about "factions"), accurately be described as a type-2 "constitutional crisis" within the typology set out by Jack Balkin and myself some years ago?  That is, a type-one crisis is present when political leaders self-consciously violate constitutional norms in the name of some "emergency" or "exigency."  Think of Lincoln or, if you wish, more contemporary presidents of both political parties.  A type-2 crisis, though, is when political figures, realizing that the country is about to go over a cliff, proclaim there is nothing they can do about it because of constitutional limitations.  Think of James Buchanan, who proclaimed a) that secession was illegal, but b) that the Constitution gave the national government no power to attempt to stop it by the use of coercive force.  The argument is not, theoretically speaking, stupid; it simply had the consequence of generating governmental impotence in the face of secession by South Carolina and other states during the waning days of Buchanan's presidency.  Those who believe that it is an unfortunate truth that the President can do almost nothing to curb global warming without congressional backing are present-day Buchananites:  Better our children and grandchildren either fry to death or drown in massive floods along particularly the Atlantic coast than that we accept any further aggrandizement of executive power.  And so on.

So I continue to be scared to death of our future, even if the Times and other predictors are correct that the voters will ultimately save us from the narcissistic sociopath and his minions.  Perhaps I'm really an outlier in my level of anxiety, especially given that I am far too old really to have to worry, for example, about actually facing the consequences of the climate change that President Obama is warning us about.  But what I fear is that literally millions of people share the anxiety but believe that there is literally nothing that can be done.  We are indeed trapped within an iron cage of a radically defective Constitution that is killing us, with nothing to be done about it.

In Philadelphia I participated in a wonderful panel on the musical "Hamilton."  The central question, as I see it, is whether it's simply a remarkably imaginative recreation of the American past, with no lessons whatsoever for the American present, or whether the theme "Rise Up," is in fact a message being delivered to its contemporary audiences.  This, of course, is the central question raised by my widely unread book on The Federalist, most particularly by Federalist 1.  Do we today have any belief at all in the capacity of our fellow Americans to engage in genuine "reflection and choice" about the adequacy of our institutions, which Publius described in Federalist 15 as "imbecile," or do we think that Publius is a figure of exclusively historical interest with literally nothing to say to us today?  Alexander Hamilton and his friends were, to put it mildly, not passive figures in the face of what they deemed tyranny or imbecility.  Whether they were correct in labeling King George III a tyrant can surely be debated; as tyrants go, especially if we look at 20th and 21st century exemplars, he was small beer indeed, and one can wonder if it really would have been so awful if the "Patriots" had been defeated and if we had ultimately become a version of Canada.  But it is hard to escape the view that the Articles in fact did not create an adequate governmental structure and that radical reform, creating a far more "consolidated" government, was badly needed (and, perhaps, even worth paying terrible prices to achieve, such as the compromises over slavery and the Senate).   But we seem unable or unwilling to have the kinds of conversations generated by Publius or Brutus, the most able and prescient of the opponents of the Constitution.

There is the famous anecdote about Benjamin Franklin at the conclusion of the Convention, describing the new system as "a Republic, if you can keep it."  There was no guarantee we could.  In any event, will 2016 hearken the end of any real semblance of "the American Republic"?  And why shouldn't this be the central question raised at the forthcoming debates?