This weekend’s New York Times interview of Nancy Pelosi contains the jaw-dropping news that the House Speaker is worried Donald Trump will refuse to recognize any 2020 Democratic presidential win short of a decisive margin of victory. She uses this menacing and all-too-believable threat to back her argument that the Democrats’ chance of such a victory will be to “own the center left, own the mainstream,” rather than to push more fundamental reforms backed by some of the party’s presidential candidates.
Pelosi’s concern that Trump isn’t going to leave office unless defeated by a big enough margin raises troubling questions. If Pelosi’s assessment of the man is correct, then there is likely no margin of victory he would accept as legitimate. Indeed, a larger victory could conceivably lead the president to accelerate arguments that the vote was rigged or that millions voted illegally, because otherwise how could the loser Democrats have won so big? This isn’t crazy speculation: this is exactly what he did in 2016 to explain away his massive popular vote loss.
Pelosi’s argument also signals to Trump that he has veto power on what might constitute a Democratic victory. Will his majesty find a 2% victory margin by the Democratic candidate insufficient? Will 3% do? I understand Pelosi’s message that he must be repudiated thoroughly and unambiguously, and agree with it, but to say that an overwhelming victory is necessary in order to secure Trump’s assent to yield power is a step too far. The Democrats need to win under the current rules; they cannot assent to new rules imposed by an authoritarian-minded president, and must call such a possibility what it is: a coup by a tyrant that the great majority of the American people would reject.
(The NYT piece notes that Pelosi was worried about such a delegitimization effort had the Democrats not won a resounding victory in the 2018 Congressional elections. It’s worth noting that the Democrats indeed had to win a tremendous margin in the popular vote in order to take back the House with the size victory they did; via gerrymandering and voter suppression, Republicans have already enacted the new set of rules for Democratic victory that she fears Trump will impose via Twitter incitement.)
Pelosi’s remarks also elide the counterpart issue to any worries about Trump’s refusal to leave office: what the Republican Party would do in such a situation. But her concern about a Trump refusal scenario necessarily involves broader GOP backing of such an anti-democratic move; otherwise, Trump’s theoretical refusal to leave office could simply be laughed off, with the man bodily carted out of the Oval Office and remanded to the swank, sleazy halls of Trump Tower.
Speaker Pelosi’s diagnosis of the need for an overwhelming Democratic victory in 2020 leads her to prescribe an electoral strategy that appeals to moderate voters; “Own the center left, own the mainstream,” she says in the NYT interview. Pelosi has previously made clear her interest in protecting newly-elected representatives from swing and more middle-of-the-road districts, and her strategy is of a piece with that — essentially, repeat the successful strategies of 2018 in the 2020 race. Yet the specter of the Democrats appearing to be the party of the status quo, against Donald Trump’s resonant message that he will tear that status quo down — if only to move the country backwards — leaves me with a queasy feeling. In the 2018 election, candidates could fit their pitches to individual districts; in 2020, the Democratic presidential candidate won’t be able to hedge his or her stands in such a way.
Nancy Pelosi and other long-time leaders of the Democratic Party have yet to fully grasp the reality of our situation: that with one party having abandoned its adherence to democracy, the only way forward is for the Democrats not simply to beat Trump, but to discredit and delegitimize the contemporary GOP. Not work with it, and find middle ground; but to name it for the authoritarian, white-supremacist coddling, inequality-embracing monster it has become. This will necessarily involve re-setting the terms of debate decisively in favor of democracy and equality. The GOP has basically embraced the terms of absolute destruction, with their complicity with Trump’s obstruction of the Mueller report and apparent determination to back Trump’s use of the Justice Department to go after his political opponents. The Democrats cannot reciprocate by calling their opponents criminals, and threatening to prosecute them, but they also cannot hold back from condemning the GOP’s breaking of faith with the Constitution and American democracy. This is the high road, and it’s the right political road.
In this sense, Pelosi’s prescription is correct, but for broader reasons than she gives: the Democrats need a large margin of victory in 2020 not in order to placate Trump, but to repudiate the entire rotten project of the GOP. In this sense, Pelosi’s note of defensiveness and caution again strikes me as the wrong one. Against Trump and the GOP’s dour vision of an America closed to immigrants, beholden to the wealthy, and inciting hatred against everyone from journalists to Muslims, the Democrats can’t hesitate to talk not only about everyday issues like health care and a living wage, but the larger vision of America such policies enable.
I suspect Pelosi’s contradictory comments are her way of threading the needle of this upset and upsetting political epoch. Acknowledging Trump’s likely willingness to contest presidential election results lets the left wing of the party know she understands their concerns; her strategy for dealing with this pins the party’s hopes on the politics-as-usual-but-on-steroids that won the Democrats the House in 2020, reflecting a belief that Americans as a whole are not yet in the mood for massive progressive change but need to be casting votes for something positive, not simply against Trump. But with a possible presidential candidate like Biden, who is enacting a variation of Pelosi’s strategy in his appeal to middle-of-the-road voters and refusal to condemn the GOP for Trump’s sins, would the Democrats be able to convince enough Americans that moving past Trump is enough to earn their votes?