Mark W. Schwiebert: The central question this election year
America has a long and storied tradition of political parties posing alternatives for voters in election years. Parties provide a means for defining core values, and then serve as a useful tool for organizing and funding campaigns to get people elected who share those values.
Over time, political parties have come and gone. Since the Civil War, we've had just two dominant parties: the Democrats and the Republicans.
These parties themselves have, over time, shifted their priorities. In the mid to late 19th century, the Democratic Party opposed strong central government, favored states' rights, and even (particularly in the South) defended slavery. The Republicans, the other hand, stood for a strong central government, empowered to hold the nation together during the Civil War. It upheld human rights, including the abolition of slavery and favored extension of voting rights to citizens regardless of color. Because of its dominance after the Civil War, the Republican Party also emerged as the party of big business.
Then during the Great Depression, sides shifted. Under FDR, the Democratic Party became the champion of working men and women, defending the right to unionize, and enforcing curbs on business abuses - all through a strong central government. The Republican Party largely remained the party of big business and strong national defense – at least after the attack on Pearl Harbor chastened "America First" isolationists in the GOP who opposed getting involved in World War II because "it didn't affect us."
In recent years, however, the Republican Party has undergone another change, due to the presence of Donald Trump.
Favoring withdrawal from longstanding alliances that have kept democracy strong since World War II, Trump openly admires dictators like Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un – who hold democracy in contempt.
Hostile to traditional Republican support of free trade, Trump promotes instead very high tariffs almost certain to fuel inflation and cost American jobs.
But most concerning is Donald Trump's hostility toward democracy itself. Having lost the 2020 election by over 7 million votes, he has repeatedly denied the result. Then he sought to violently disrupt the peaceful transfer of power by inciting a violent attack our nation's capital.
Beyond calling his followers "basement dwellers" and our nation's heroes "suckers and losers," Trump has loudly promised to "weaponize" the Justice Department if he's elected, to go after political foes. And he's promised that if elected "You'll never need to vote again" (as if this is a burden and not a privilege): a not-so-veiled threat to obstruct future fair elections.
Meanwhile, he's repeatedly sought to undermine confidence in elections by falsely alleging widespread voter fraud. This, despite study after study suggesting an infinitesimally small incidence of actual voter fraud. (Ironically, one such instance involved Trump's own Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, who at one point recently was registered to vote in three different states!)
What all this suggests is that the election this year is chiefly not about the economy, or immigration, or climate change, or women's reproductive rights - though all these are clearly important. It's not even about traditional Republican vs. Democrat.
Rather, it is about the survival of democracy itself. For, if elected, Donald Trump has made very clear he will do everything in his power - and beyond his legitimate power - to destroy it. His partially handpicked Supreme Court has already indicated - by its careless decision granting broad presidential immunity in Trump vs United States - that it won't stand in the way.
So, it is up to us.
Ben Franklin, when asked what sort of government the Constitutional Congress had come up with in Philadelphia in 1787, replied "A Republic – if you can keep it."
This year may well establish whether we can.
May we vote like the survival of democracy depends on us. For this year, it truly does.
Mark Schwiebert, a lawyer, is a former mayor of Rock Island.
