The most favorable gloss you could give to Donald Trump’s effort to “Stop the Steal” is that it was an attempt to deal with real discrepancies in the 2020 presidential race as well as to satisfy those voters angry about the conduct of the election.
This, in fact, was the argument made by Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio in a recent interview with my colleague Ross Douthat. Vance defended the conduct of the former president and his allies, and condemned the political class for its attempt to “try to take this very legitimate grievance over our most fundamental democratic act as a people, and completely suppress concerns about it.”
Vance briefly analogized Trump’s attempt to contest the election to that of the disputed election of 1876, describing the latter as an example of what should have been done in 2020. “Here’s what this would’ve looked like if you really wanted to do this. You would’ve actually tried to go to the states that had problems; you would try to marshal alternative slates of electors, like they did in the election of 1876. And then you have to actually prosecute that case; you have to make an argument to the American people.”
Let’s look at what happened in 1876. In that race, the Democrat, Gov. Samuel Tilden of New York, won a majority of the national popular vote but fell one vote short of a majority in the Electoral College. The Republican, Rutherford Hayes, was well behind in both. The trouble was 20 electoral votes in four states: Florida, Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina. In the three Southern states, where the elections were marred by fraud, violence and anti-Black intimidation, officials from both parties certified rival slates of electors.
Hayes believed, probably correctly, that had there been “a fair election in the South, our electoral vote would reach two hundred and that we should have a large popular majority.” As the historian Michael Fitzgibbon Holt noted in “By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876,” “Had blacks been allowed to vote freely, Hayes easily would have carried all three states in dispute, Mississippi, and perhaps Alabama as well.”
In the weeks following the election, Democrats and Republicans in those states would fight fierce legal battles on behalf of their respective candidates. In South Carolina, where an election for governor was in dispute as well, Democrats threatened to seize the statehouse by force. The predominantly Black Republican majority in the state legislature tried to certify the Republican candidate as the winner, and Democrats went as far as convening a separate legislature, where they crowned their candidate, Wade Hampton III, the victor.
It took a special 15-member electoral commission, convened by Congress, to resolve the presidential election crisis. Split along partisan lines, a narrow majority of the group voted to award all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, giving him the White House. To satisfy Tilden’s recalcitrant supporters — who, according to the historian Eric Foner, threatened “to paralyze deliberations in the House of Representatives and obstruct a final count of the electoral vote, thus preventing inauguration” — President-elect Hayes promised to pursue a policy of noninterference in Southern affairs and allow so-called home rule in the states of the former Confederacy.
The crisis of 1876 is one of the most interesting — and frankly convoluted — episodes in American political history. But it is strange for Senator Vance to cite it as an example of what should have been done in 2020. The big and most important reason is that there was actual fraud and violence and intimidation in the 1876 presidential election cycle. In one incident in Hamburg, S.C., a paramilitary death squad of white Democrats — called Red Shirts for their attire — stormed a local armory and kidnapped more than two dozen Black citizens, executing several men on the spot. A ringleader of the attack and massacre, a prominent young landowner by the name of Benjamin Tillman, would go on to serve four years as governor and 23 years as a United States senator, from 1895 until his death in 1918.
If Trump voters had been attacked, intimidated and defrauded, then there might be reason to make the comparison with 1876 and demand serious investigation into the integrity of the vote. But as we know from actual litigation carried out over two months, there was no fraud to speak of. The 2020 presidential election was arguably the most secure — and among the most scrutinized — in American history.
What Vance calls the “legitimate grievances” of the Jan. 6 rioters were actually sour grapes. They lost, they did not like it, and they were determined to change the outcome by any means necessary. There’s no reason any of us should respect their tantrum.
What I Wrote
My Tuesday column was on the Wall Street executives and Silicon Valley billionaires who would rather have low taxes than a democratic system of government.
The irony of capitalist discontent with democracy is that capitalist democracy has been a very good deal for capitalists. Roosevelt understood, as he spearheaded his defense of the constitutional order, that a measure of modest egalitarianism — facilitated through the formal institutions of democracy — is a small price to pay for stability and the rule of law.
My Friday column was on one of the fundamental conflicts in American political life, inspired by a comment made by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
[T]here is a fundamental conflict in this country. But it’s not the one Alito imagines. Instead, it is a conflict between those who hope to preserve and expand American democracy and those who aim to suffocate it.
And in the latest episode of my podcast with John Ganz (whose new book is coming out soon), we discussed the 1996 war drama “Courage Under Fire.”
Now Reading
Arvin Alaigh on Frantz Fanon for Dissent magazine.
Isabella Hammad on the suppression of pro-Palestinian speech for the New York Review of Books.
Rachel Monroe on the Rio Grande for The New Yorker.
Eric Herschthal reviews Manisha Sinha’s “The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic” for The New Republic.
David Roth on the Alitos for Defector.
Photo of the Week
My eye is drawn toward bold, bright, primary colors and so I could not resist this storefront I saw in Savannah, Ga., a few months ago.
Now Eating: Chicken Teriyaki
This was close to a perfect meal for my kids. They ate it without complaint and asked for seconds. What more could you recommend? The recipe for this marinade does not call for mirin, a Japanese rice wine, but if you have some on hand, go ahead and add it. Serve with steamed rice and a vegetable. Recipe comes from NYT Cooking.
Ingredients
1 cup soy sauce
1 cup granulated sugar
1½ teaspoons brown sugar
6 garlic cloves, crushed in a press
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
¼ teaspoon black pepper
13-inch cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon pineapple juice
8 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Directions
In a small saucepan, combine all ingredients except cornstarch and chicken. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low and stir until sugar is dissolved, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Discard cinnamon stick and mix in ½ cup water.
Place chicken in a heavy-duty resealable plastic bag. Add soy sauce mixture, seal bag, and turn to coat chicken. Refrigerate for at least an hour, ideally overnight.
Remove chicken and set aside. Pour mixture into a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat to low. Mix cornstarch with 2 tablespoons water and add to pan. Stir until mixture begins to thicken, and gradually stir in enough water (about ½ cup) until sauce is the consistency of heavy cream. Remove from heat and set aside.
Heat a broiler or grill. Lightly brush chicken pieces on all sides with sauce, and broil or grill about 3 minutes per side. While chicken is cooking, place sauce over high heat and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a bare simmer, adding water a bit at a time to keep mixture at a pourable consistency. To serve, slice chicken into strips, arrange on plates, and drizzle with sauce.
The post J.D. Vance’s Strange Turn to 1876 appeared first on New York Times.