I have a newly published essay in the NYU Law Democracy Project’s “100 Ideas” series: Preserve Democracy by Lowering the Stakes. Here is the introduction:
Democracy depends on the losers. When Thomas Jefferson lost the close race for President to John Adams in 1796, Jefferson accepted the largely ceremonial role of Vice-President and (relatively) quietly prepared for a rematch four years later. Of even greater consequence, Adams narrowly lost that rematch in 1800 and quietly handed the presidency to Jefferson. The foundation of American democracy substantially rests on Jefferson, and then Adams, accepting electoral defeat.
American democracy has only broken down once, in 1860 when Southern elites refused to accept their defeat by Abraham Lincoln and thus precipitated the Civil War. For them, the stakes were too high – as they saw it, the threat to their slave-dependent way of life permitted them no alternative to victory.
Today there is no single issue that, like slavery, is so encompassing as to make losing unacceptable. But increasingly each side in our political struggle is convincing itself that it cannot afford to lose. In part, this may be a function of inflamed rhetoric, amplified by social media, casting the other side as communists, fascists, Nazis, or haters of America. But behind the vulgar, incendiary discourse of our political class, it may also be that the stakes in national politics are indeed becoming too high. There is simply too much power to be won and lost in our national elections…
It’s not really about originalism although there is a bit of originalism at the end.
Posted at 6:09 AM