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It sometimes seems that partisans from both parties increasingly see elections as structurally unwinnable for their side—yet the turnout numbers this year suggest that far from despairing and giving up, they are participating now more than ever. How can this be?/1
The familiar version of this, from the Democratic side, is to claim the electoral college, apportionment of Senate seats, gerrymandering, and voter suppression give the GOP a lick on power that can only be partly and occasionally broken./2
On the right, you have the same demographic trends long seen as the key to the future by Democrats treated as a time bomb that will eventually seal Democratic dominance and have already partly done so. So weirdly, both parties think their situation is impossible./3
The weird twist I’ve seen lately with the fraud claims is people claiming that there are no real blue states: Democratic “machine” cities and West coast states with mail-in ballots mean that all blue states are really just the product of fraud./4
(As an aside, if you combine this with the not uncommon Democratic claim that many states are only red because of gerrymandering and voter suppression, you get the hilarious result that blue states are actually red and red states are actually blue...)/5
I’ve made two arguments lately that relate to this scenario. One is that the hyperpoliticization of identity means that one’s side’s failures are too wounding to the fragile; narcissistic self to be acknowledged, and must therefore be projected outward./6 https://twitter.com/daily_barbarian/status/1326584105547534337
The other is that the apparent arbitrariness of the political system’s determinations (its dependence on factors beyond the immanent popular will), rather than delegitimizing it, is the hidden source of its transcendence./7 http://im1776.com/2020/11/06/counting-votes-and-drawing-lots/
Both of these might help account for why, at a moment of what often seems like cynical exhaustion with democracy, as least as measured by participation (turnout), we are at an unexpected high point of legitimation for the system./8
