The Republican base’s fundamental belief, the one that Trump used to win them over in the first place, the one that ties the election conspiracy to birtherism and to Trump’s sneering attack on the Squad’s citizenship, is that Democratic victories do not count, because Democatic voters are not truly American. It’s no accident that the Trump campaign’s claims have focused almost entirely on jurisdictions with high Black populations.
“Detroit and Philadelphia—known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country, easily—cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a presidential race,” Trump said on November 5. Since then, Trump’s legal challenges have targeted citieswith large Black populations—not just Philadelphia and Detroit, but also Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Atlanta. Trump improved his vote margin slightly in these places, while getting destroyed in nearby suburbs. But because the outdated popular perception of suburbs is that they are white, they lack the assumption of illegitimacy that Trumpists attach to cities.
The absence of not only evidence of any systemic fraud, but even compelling anecdotes that might be misleadingly trumpeted throughout right-wing media, has not deterred the president or his supporters. Republican legislators are already scheming to put new restrictions on the franchise, justified by claims of fraud so baseless that not even their handpicked judges can find a foothold to sustain them. The necessary ingredient is not actual voter fraud, but Democratic victory at the ballot box, real or potential.
According to a 2020 survey by the political scientist Larry Bartels, three-quarters of Republican voters believe that “it is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.” Because Republicans believe, as Mitt Romney put it after his defeat in 2012, that Black people vote for Democrats only because they are offered “free stuff,” Black votes are considered illegitimate even if they are legally cast. Those votes could be legitimate if more of them were cast for Republicans, the party of true Americans, but as long as they are cast for Democrats, they can be dismissed as the result of Democratic brainwashing. Demanding that Black votes be tossed out is not antidemocratic, because they should not have counted in the first place.
That this racist belief has a partisan valence makes it no less racist. If one’s fundamental rights are contingent on adhering to the political beliefs of the ruling clique, they are not rights at all.
In the early days of Reconstruction, Democrats hoped that Black men, if enfranchised, would vote for those who had fought to keep them enslaved, understanding that their subordinate position in southern society was in the best interests of both races. Some northern Republicans similarly feared that Black men would vote as their former masters demanded. But when the emancipated chose their own path based on their own interests, Democrats concluded that they had to be excised from the polity, by force.
From the October 2020 issue: The new Reconstruction
In that era, Democrats and their paramilitary allies used their claims of fraud and conviction that Black participation had fatally corrupted democracy to justify a campaign of murder and terrorism. They overthrew their local governments on behalf of white men, who were the only ones capable of granting a government legitimacy. The fact that armed crowds menacing elected officials in swing states today are thankfully rare indicates that Republicans professing their belief that the election was stolen are aware, on some level, that Trump simply lost.
The conviction that the rival political constituency cannot, under any circumstances, legitimately hold power has not yet resulted in widespread violence. But it remains incompatible with democracy, which requires the assent of its losers and the peaceful transfer of power between factions. Enough local Republican officials in 2020 have recognized that their civic obligations outweigh their partisan identities. But if Republicans continue to believe, and assert as a matter of their partisan identity, that the rival party’s victories are fraudulent, their claim to power illegitimate, and their holding office an existential threat, at some point, the tension between partisan identity and democratic function will become irreconcilable. Next time a president seeks to stay in power after losing an election, there may not be enough Republicans who place duty above party to make a difference.
When they say the 2020 election was stolen, Trumpists are expressing their view that the votes of rival constituencies should not count, even though they understand, on some level, that they do. They are declaring that the nation belongs to them and them alone, whether or not they actually comprise a majority, because they are the only real Americans to begin with.
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