10/30/2028
As I write this (evening, Friday, October 30, 2026) the polls and predictions for the election coming up this Tuesday suggest a good night for the Democrats, possibly a very good night. Of course the polls have been wrong, sometimes very wrong, before. We will see on Tuesday night. Already however, the belief that American politics, and America itself, are returning to normal is becoming prevalent. Before we begin popping champagne corks and celebrating American democracy, however, I want to talk bit about the election of 2024, the election where the United States of America reelected a man who had tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. In the aftermath of the election of 2020, Donald Trump did everything in his power to cast doubt on the results of the election. Then President Donald Trump leaned on officials to alter vote tallies in his favor, encouraged the submission of false lists of electors, put pressure on his Vice President to stop the regular tallying of electoral votes and whipped up a mob that erected a gallows while threatening to lynch the Vice President and who preceded to stormed the Capital and in that process injured many police officers who had to fight a pitch battle against the insurrectionists — some legislators literally had to flee for their lives, and this is only a partial list of Trump’s crimes. The Confederacy during the Civil War was never able to carry the Confederate Battle Flag into the Capital, but the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021 did. Donald Trump was the principal cause and leader of this attempt to overturn the results of the election of 2020 and the insurrection that resulted.
This is the criminal, Donald J.Trump, that a plurality of Americans returned to office four years later in the election of 2024. Leaving aside the disasters that Trump has inflicted on the United States of America and the world in his second term, a horrible precedent was set in 2024, and it is almost impossible to believe that this precedent will not be followed. By returning trump to the presidency a plurality of Americans voters have said the following: Attempting to overturn the results of an election by illegal means is OK. Pressuring election officials to change the results is OK. Trying to assemble false slates of electors is OK. Filing false lawsuits alleging non-existent fraud is OK. And worst of all, whipping up violent mobs is OK then pardoning the members of that mob is OK. And it is the voters who returned Trump to office in the election of 2024 who have sanctioned these actions and said they are OK. Prediction is hard, so the saying goes, especially about the future, but I will venture one that seems a certainty — there will be many attempts to overthrow the results of future election and some of these attempts will be violent and at some point some will succeed — because the voters who voted for Trump in 2024 said that January 6, 2021 was OK.
For the last two years we have heard the apologists for these Trump 2024 voters come with for excuses for their votes. These vote we are constantly told were “low propensity, low information voters.” They were only voting their pocket books and want a return to the economic conditions of 2018. They were reacting to out-of-touch elites. We are told that the Democrats were too strident, that Joe Biden was too old, that Kamal Harris was a weak candidate. Appeals to democracy, we are told, were too abstract for voters focused on pocket book issues. Democrats and Liberals, we are constantly told, should not look back to the past and re-litigate January 6, 2021. We should not reproach, or reprove, criticize, or otherwise discomfit those who voted for Donald Trump in 2024. We should gently and politely overlook their actions and allow them to return and participate in the political process and hopefully vote more wisely in the future. Whatever we do, we should not suggest that their action have immense done damage to the United States. A curtain should be dropped over the election of 2024 and no awkward questions asked.
The problem is that voting for Trump in 2024 was not like voting for Ronald Reagan in 1984, or for George W. Bush in 2004, or for Barack Obama in 2012, or even for Donald Trump in 2016. It very much was not OK. Those elections were a matter of judgment that every American voter is allowed to make. Are you conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, do you prefer Trump or Clinton 2016? Those were all legitimate choices that every citizen was allowed to answer in his or her own way (though the decision to vote for Trump win 2016 show an almost unbelievable level of bad judgment). Voting for Trump in 2024 however, was different, it was not like other election. Voting for Trump in 2024 was just flat wrong — and in fact amounted to a betrayal, and yes and use the word advisedly.
The one thing that makes a republic work is that everyone, everyone, agree to accept the result of an election and does not, under any circumstances, use illegal means to overturn the election — and especially does not whip-up violent mobs to overthrow the election. Anyone who triers this is unfit to hold any office, especially, the presidency ever again. Period. Full stop. End of discussion. And every American citizen is obligated, not encourage, not allowed, not even expected, obligated. Every citizen was obligated to reject that person, and especially to not vote for them again. Ever. Period, full stop, end gf discussion. In a very real sense those who voted for Trump in 2024 betrayed the United States of America and their fellow citizen. It is that simple, if everyone does not accept the results of an election, every time, our republic, or any republic does not work. It is that clear-cut and that simple.
Well, in the real world there is little that can be done about these traitorous, yes I use that word advisedly, traitorous voters who violated the bedrock idea that allows our nation to function. Votes are secret and we cannot find out who voted for Trump in 2024 and ban them from ever voting ever again. There is no practical way to force accountability on those who voted for Trump in 2024 — their votes were disastrous and we will be living with the results of their illegitimate, yes I use that word advisedly, illegitimate voted for decades to come. But there is one thing we can do: We can continue to call out that vote and those who voted that, and we can trumped its catastrophic results. We can never let it be forgotten and we cannot allow those who voted for Trump in 2024 to rest easily and allow the results of their actions to fade into some vague, unidentified “mistakes were made.” We can continue to say that voting for Trump in 2024, was wrong, in fact treasonous, and that those who voted for Trump in 2024 betrayed their fellow citizens and did grievous harm to the United States of America. To reach for some overworked cliches: Never forget, never again.
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