A YEAR FROM NOW

The date for the next national election, in which the White House, the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, State legislatures, and many State governor seats are up for grabs is set for November 5, 2024. That is only a year from now. It is no hyperbole to label next year’s election ‘the election of the century’ even though many pundits named the 2020 election by the same label. Then, like again next year, the main issue was a popular referendum on Trump and Trumpism. Except that this time around it is even more clearly not so much a vote between nominees of the two parties as a vote between governance doctrines. 2024 is shaping up as the year in which the American voters must make up their mind if they are still intent on having a government of the People, by the People, and for the People, or if they are willing to be autocratically governed by an all-controlling executive branch.

Yes, there will also be elections this year, on the 7^th of November, but none of a national scope. Some may be bellwethers for how the 2024 elections may turn out. In my State of Ohio, for instance, the main issue, issue #1 on the ballot is a proposed constitutional amendment establishing “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety”. This popular driven initiative, which is opposed by the Republican DeWine administration, follows the defeat, in August, of an administration driven initiative to require a qualified majority of 60 percent and support in each of Ohio’s 80 counties for a vote to amend the Ohio Constitution. For the proposed constitutional amendment about Reproductive Freedom, a simple 51 percent of the popular vote will be enough to pass. This ballot initiative is a popular reaction to the passing in 2019 of a strict ‘heartbeat’ law by the heavily jerrymandered GOP controlled Ohio legislature (which law is currently suspended pending judicial review). In essence, the issue, in this election as in the big election of November 2024, is about the functioning of our democracy. Are we self-governing or subject to the tyranny of a controlling minority?

The campaign around Ohio issue 1 brings to the surface the frightening degree of dishonesty and deception condoned in political campaigns. Opponents of issue 1 want to make you believe that the amendment for Reproductive Freedom will lead to horrifying scenes of late term abortion butchering and unfettered access to abortion by juveniles, completely ignoring the provision in the proposed amendment that abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability and suspending belief in the high standards of conduct by medical professionals and the ethical values of the American people. On the other hand, the proponents of Ohio issue 1 are too easily papering over the legitimate rights to protection of the unborn, scaring the voters with an Orwellian ‘big brother’ government taking control of every aspect of our lives, conveniently ignoring the democratic and judicial checks on governmental excesses or abuses.

With the advent of A.I. and the dominance of social media in our lives, combined with the near boundless interpretation of our first amendment rights of free speech, it becomes very hard to determine who and what to believe anymore. Almost impossible to separate fact from fiction when all sides, enabled by previously non-existent information technology, are permitted to create their own alternative realities. How can we expect people to make the right choice at the voting booth when they can no longer determine what campaign rhetoric is false or mere propaganda and what is factually correct?

The November 2024 election will be held at the confluence of a legitimate policy debate about the management of the country’s business, its finances, its national security, its political agenda, and its role in the world and a fight for the soul of the nation fed by spurious identity politics: will it be increasingly democratic or increasingly autocratic? With a scarcity of unbiased, fact based, information on the choices on the ballot, people, particularly those who are only casually attentive to policy choices, are forced to rely on emotion, gut feel, and the voice of their preferred media channels when making their fateful ballot choices.

A year out from the election, we can only expect that control of the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate will be decided by extremely narrow margins. It is the nature of the beast: the population of the United States is hopelessly divided in its partisan allegiance and kept in place by its adherence to either Fox News or MSNBC. The stalemate this political reality creates in Congress, combined with the rules that pertain to the management of the agenda of the House and the Senate, means that there is no room or incentive for a meaningful policy debate and thus, the peoples’ choice is forced back to identity politics. And the world is watching in amazement and disbelief how one of its political parties is well on its way to place its bets on a failed former President, who is twice impeached and three times indicted for crimes committed in office and against the proper functioning of our democracy.

It is an outright depressing thought that, even if democracy wins over autocracy in the 2024 election and the person who belongs in prison is kept out of the White House, the chance for meaningful policy advancement will remain stymied by a stalemate in Congress. It is not clear if and how this impasse can be cleared. And the American people will be kept waiting for fiscal responsibility on the part of its government, for a comprehensive immigration policy, for climate protection, for gun safety regulation, and for diminished inequality in income and wellness between segments of our society.

Depressing as this may be, we are well advised to accept that we can win only one battle at a time. And, as former GOP congressman and member of the January 6 Commission Adam Kinzinger recently said on a PBS interview: “I consider there to be only one issue on the ballot for 2024, do you believe in democracy or not?”

That will indeed be the challenge the American voters will have to address a year from now.