Connect the Dots 101

The wave of self-congratulation that followed the certification of the 2024 presidential election on Monday was premature in the extreme.

“Today, America’s democracy stood,” Vice President Kamala Harris declared, after she presided over the session that certified her defeat by Donald Trump in November. The previous vice president, Mike Pence, said, similarly, that he welcomed “the return of order and civility to these historic proceedings.” Trump, of course, said it was, “A BIG MOMENT IN HISTORY.”

But we don’t actually know if we have restored the American tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. The catalyst for Jan. 6, 2021, was that Trump lost the presidential election. If he had won, there would have been no rally, no mob, no riot, no attempt to overturn the foundations of constitutional government in the United States.

Imagine if Trump had lost the 2024 presidential election. Having laid the groundwork for it throughout the presidential race, he would have immediately accused Democrats of fraud. We all know that his allies in the Republican Party (which is to say, the Republican Party) would have immediately moved to try to question, undermine and even invalidate the results. And we all know that a raging, vengeful Trump would have tried, again, to overturn the results after the fact.

The peaceful transfer of power is an agreement between rival political factions that the voters have the final say about who they want to lead them and that each side is entitled to govern for as long as it has a legitimate grant of power.

We have no evidence that Trump would have honored this agreement had he lost.

It is not enough for Democrats, alone, to follow the rules. The peaceful transfer of power works only when both sides abide the results of an election. The only way to know if the tradition truly endures, then, is to wait for the next presidential contest. If Democrats win that race, then we’ll have a chance to see if Trump and the Republican Party are committed to this bedrock of democratic government.

Until then, all we can say about the integrity of the peaceful transfer of power in the United States is that it’s an open question.