The Y2K Election

Back in September I posted this tweet about the Y2K election.

I don’t claim any prescience, but it seemed obvious at the time that all the forces involved in the election had the need to preserve the notion that we were heading for some sore of democratic apocalypse. The media’s rationale was obvious and self serving — the need to sell more advertising. As the New York Times reported, “spending on cable news last month was up 60 percent from the equivalent period four years ago.” For the Republicans, the notion that Mail balloting was some kind of massive fraud scheme allowed them to put in place the most punitive vote suppression scheme since the late 1950’s when Southern States used the poll tax and “guess the number of jelly beans in the jar” to prevent black voters from fulfilling their democratic desires. And for the Democrats, the complacency of 2016 was their enemy, so they were happy to ride the apocalypse train right up until poll closing time yesterday.

The reasons the apocalypse didn’t arrive are myriad, but three stand out.

Federalism-There are just too many individual election boards and districts in America for either a malign President like Trump or a foreign power to engage in a coordinated effort to rig the vote. The decentralization of our democracy both saved the election and has also saved the country from the worst excesses of Trumpism. Even…