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This is an adapted excerpt from MSNBC’s special coverage on Wednesday.
If this was an election that was not just a choice between two candidates but a choice between keeping the American system of government or trading it in for a strongman authoritarian system instead, then Tuesday’s decisive result gives us a big to-do list.
If you are an American who doesn’t want to ash-can the American system of government, who doesn’t want a system where the whole government is one guy and everything else just exists to serve him, if that’s not the country you want, then that means you have more to do for your country now than you have ever done before. We don’t just flip a switch and the American democracy is gone. It doesn’t work like that.
We’re the only 248-year-old multiracial pluralistic democracy in the world. So, shall we keep it?
First, let’s get real: We’re now just another one of those countries that decided to try the strongman thing and see how it goes. Many more countries in the world are governed by that kind of system than are governed by ours. We’re the only 248-year-old multiracial pluralistic democracy in the world. So, shall we keep it? A lot of our fellow Americans say we shouldn’t. But a lot of Americans, tens of millions, say we should. Which means it’s time to fight for it.
Yes, Americans fought for it by working on this election, by trying to get the candidate who was both the Democrat and the small-D democrat across the finish line. She didn’t make it and the strongman candidate won instead.
We have the benefit of knowing how this has gone in every other country that has been through an authoritarian transition. We know the more ground they take, the harder it is to get it back. So you must stop them from taking any uncontested ground right from the outset.
We know from other countries’ experiences that they will soon test how far we will let them go without pushback, without protest. Part of that is because it’s psychologically advantageous for them to do this now. They’re counting on the half of the country that doesn’t want to give up our system of government to be despondent, to feel powerless, to check out and let them do what they want.
What they really don’t want is for the half of the country that voted against them to wake up tomorrow feeling scrappy as hell. Feeling, sure, regretful about the election outcome but also, frankly, freed up from having to spend all our time working on the election. Now we can work full time on being a thorn in the side to anyone who intends to turn this country into some tinpot tyranny.
History didn’t just end on Tuesday. Time didn’t just stop. We just got marching orders from the universe and the Electoral College so that American citizens who want to hold onto democracy know exactly what we’re going to spend the next days and weeks and years doing.
The work that has to be done now applies to every aspect of our society.
The U.S. military needs to give the people of this country binding assurances that they will not deploy military force against the civilian population.
The free press needs to give assurances that they will not become state TV — that they will stand and fight together as these guys, inevitably, start picking off individual journalists, individual publishers and individual news organizations.
If the Democrats take the House, expect Article I of the Constitution to come under attack, expect efforts to hollow out the power of Congress and make it a just-for-show institution that has had its powers taken over by the executive.
Depending on whether the courts can provide a check on the administration, expect Article III of the Constitution to come under attack as well. It’s already a fetish on the right to brag about how court orders mean nothing and that physical force and violence are what ultimately really decide what’s allowed.
We’re going to need plans and some steel spine inserts among elected officials in Washington and members of the judiciary to head them off. We’re going to need the whole country to recognize these risks in advance, call everything out for what it is, and actively resist it.
Civil society is one of the things that I think of as soft food for authoritarians: They often don’t even have to bite that hard to crush it. Everything in organized life and culture that is not business and the government is civil society. Authoritarians need to crush that because it’s not about them. Strongmen leaders have a tendency to become not just dictators but totalitarians because they can’t have anything going on in the country that isn’t about them or for them.
Civil society is one of the things that I think of as soft food for authoritarians: They often don’t even have to bite that hard to crush it.
A strong civil society gives people breathing room to think for themselves, to organize in their own interests, and to speak with the power of more than just one person.
We need assurances from civil society leaders that they’re not going anywhere and that they’ll fight for our democracy, too. We all need to participate in civil society more now than we have before. Join something, doesn’t really matter what it is, but you have to do it if you want to be connected to other Americans and not isolated on your own.
Got some burned bridges in your past? Un-burn them. Reconnect with people. Your family. Your block. Your town. Your old friends from school. That book club. Reconnect or connect for the first time.
If this election was about one candidate who stood for the American form of government and another one who stood for getting rid of it — because “I alone can fix it,” just give me all the power and I’ll do it — the aftermath of this election will be an effort on his side to put that into practice and an effort on the other side to let him know it’s not going to be easy.
Over these next few days and weeks, if they really are trying to dismantle American government, they’ll be testing to see what they can get away with without pushback. That’s where the American people come in. We don’t only work for our country and for our democracy in elections. We work for our country and our democracy against anyone, anywhere or anytime, who seeks to do it harm.
On Wednesday morning, millions of Americans woke up to the realization that although you worked as hard as you could to try to bring about the election outcome that you wanted, you did not get it. And so now, there’s a whole new raft of stuff to do. It’s time to save the country.