After the presidential election of 1800, Alexander Hamilton, the former Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington, faced a dilemma. President John Adams, a fellow member of the Federalist party, had lost his re-election bid. Hamilton and Adams had never much liked one another, and had always been rivals, but Hamilton, despite his dislike of Adams and reservations about his character and competence, had reluctantly supported him simply because the alternatives were, in his mind, infinitely worse.
Unfortunately, despite Hamilton’s attempts to sway electors
(some of which were highly dubious, both legally and constitutionally), the
Electoral College ended up with a four-way split in its vote. As a result, Adams
didn’t just lose the election; he came in third place, with just 65 votes, five
short of the 70 needed to win at the time. His running mate, Charles Pinckney,
came in just behind him at 64 votes.
Running against Adams was Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican who had served as the Secretary of State under Washington, and, due to a quirk in the electoral process that was later rectified with the 12th Amendment, was also Adams’ own Vice President, despite being from opposing parties. Jefferson and Hamilton had long been bitter rivals, and had a mutual, strong disdain for each other. Hamilton’s tepid endorsement of Adams was borne out of his hatred for Jefferson, as well as fears that Jefferson might do great damage to the republic if elected. However, though Jefferson fared better in the electoral vote than Adams, with 73 votes, he hadn’t technically won the election; rather he had tied with his own running mate, Aaron Burr, another bitter political rival of Hamilton’s.
To the average person, this wouldn’t seem to make sense; if
70 votes out of 138 total votes were needed to win, then how could *two* people
get 73, while two others got 65 and 64 respectively? After all, that’s *twice*
the number of electoral votes cast, right? The answer is due to the
aforementioned quirk that allowed Jefferson to be Adams’ Vice President,
despite both men hating each other and being from opposing political parties.
Under the original Electoral College system, laid out in
Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution, each Elector cast two
votes: one for President, and one for Vice President. But there was no
distinction between what offices the votes were actually for; instead, the
overall winner of the electoral vote would be President, while the “runner up”
would be Vice President. This system was modified in 1804 with the 12th
Amendment, which laid out the process we’re familiar with (though it was
slightly amended again with the 20th Amendment in 1933).
It was because of this bizarre design that Jefferson and
Burr could both get enough votes to win the election, but still tie, leaving no
clear winner when Congress met to certify the electoral results. Many
politicians on both sides, including Hamilton, tried to sway both state
legislatures and members of Congress to either not certify the electoral votes,
or to find some way to not certify a handful of votes (Hamilton even tried to
pressure John Jay, the governor of New York, into taking part in a DANGEROUSLY
anti-democratic scheme to change the way in which the state’s electors were
selected so that pro-Federalist electors could be appointed, thereby robbing
Jefferson of victory; fortunately, Jay never responded to Hamilton’s letter on
the subject, and the plan was never implemented).
Because the election ended with a tied vote in the Electoral
college, Congress was unable to certify either a President or Vice President. A
full-blown constitutional crisis erupted, and the only solution was to use
another part of the same clause that dictated the function of the Electoral College,
requiring that the House of Representatives hold a contingent election among
its members, to decide the election. But this had never been done before, and
there was no shortage of debate and disagreement on how to proceed.
Complicating things further, due to the way in which the
House was required to vote, there was a nearly even split between the parties.
Unlike most votes in the House, contingent presidential elections are not voted
on individually; rather, the vote is conducted by state delegations. Each state
is assigned a single vote, and their group of representatives discusses the
issue amongst themselves to decide how their state will vote. In order to win
this vote, a candidate must get an absolute majority of votes, meaning 50% plus
one vote; for this election, there were 16 votes in total (one for each of the
16 states in the union), and a candidate had to get at least 9 votes to win.
Both parties began an intense pressure campaign on members
of the House in an attempt to sway the election. Democratic-Republicans
supported Jefferson, as he had been their nominee for President (and even they
weren’t particularly fond of Burr), but the Federalists were bitterly divided.
They didn’t want either Jefferson or Burr, as they severely disliked and
distrusted both men, but nonetheless had to choose one, and they couldn’t agree
on which one. Some preferred Jefferson, as they felt he was a better leader,
but some wanted Burr because they saw him as someone they could control. They
didn’t want either one of these candidates to become President, but due to the
even split among state delegations in the House (Federalists controlled eight,
Democratic-Republicans controlled seven, and one district was evenly split,
with no party controlling it), their votes were the deciding factor.
It was here that Hamilton faced his dilemma: his words
carried great weight among his fellow Federalists, and if he spoke, he was
likely to change at least a couple of votes, meaning he essentially had the
power to pick the next President. But he despised both Jefferson and Burr;
they’d both been his bitter political rivals for decades, and as previously
mentioned, Hamilton had even engineered an anti-democratic scheme to steal
victory away from Jefferson. He found both choices repulsive, and worried that
allowing either man to become president was a direct threat to the republic.
As it became obvious, by the end of 1800, that the election
was a tie (largely due to attempts by both parties to rig the electoral vote)
and that it would have to be decided by the House, Hamilton saw that there may
be another, potentially greater threat looming: the threat of a civil war. Many
Democratic-Republicans were outraged that Federalists were considering choosing
Burr over Jefferson, and some were even openly threatening violent retaliation
if that happened. Some militias even began performing drills in preparation for
possible attacks.
Realizing that this very real danger was looming, and
feeling concern over which of the candidates was best suited for the office,
Hamilton concluded that Jefferson, who he loathed, was the better choice. He
wrote numerous letters to his fellow Federalists, both those in the House and
those in other positions of power, urging them to support Jefferson. To James
A. Bayard, he stated that Jefferson was preferable because Burr was “a man of
extreme & irregular ambition – that he is selfish to a degree which excludes
all social affections & that he is decidedly profligate.” In a letter to
Oliver Wolcott, he was even more pointed in his criticism of Burr, stating that
“He is bankrupt beyond redemption except by the plunder of his country. His
public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandisement [sic]
per fas et nefas [Latin phrase meaning “by means fair or foul”]. If he can, he
will certainly disturb our institutions to secure to himself permanent power
and with it wealth.”
Hamilton wrote many such letters to people at every level of
the Federalist Party, clearly stating that while Jefferson was loathsome, he
was a far superior choice to Burr, who he considered to have no principles or
morals. His perspective was that while he hated Jefferson, he at least had the
experience and the decency to adhere to political norms and rules, while Burr
was willing to do anything necessary to achieve his goals, which all seemed to
be a variation of enriching himself. Many Federalists appeared to sympathize
with Hamilton’s views, but publicly, they seemed intractable in their own
positions.
After more than two months of efforts to sway votes, the
House convened on February 11, 1801, and, after they were unable to certify a
winner due to the tied vote, began holding votes for the contingent election.
The first vote ended in a deadlock, with Jefferson getting 8 votes to Burr’s 6,
and 2 states casting blank ballots due to being unable to come to a consensus. Over
the next week, they held dozens of additional votes, all ending in an identical
deadlock, all while partisan actors from both parties tried to sway
representatives into switching their votes.
It wasn’t until the thirty-sixth ballot, six days later,
that the House was able to break the deadlock and formally select a President.
After intense pressure from Hamilton and others, as well as some policy
promises from Democratic-Republicans, two Federalist states switched their
votes to Jefferson, while a third switched to a blank ballot. Thomas Jefferson
won ten votes, making him the third President of the United States, and Aaron
Burr, getting six votes, became his Vice President.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Or is it?
I’ve found myself thinking about this election a lot
recently, as there are some glaring parallels, both good and bad, between it
and what’s been happening in our country in the last few years. Many saw
connections between this election, particularly Hamilton’s plan to illegally
rig New York’s electoral vote, and various attempts by Trump and his allies to
illegally overturn his 2020 election. I concur that there’s a strong connection
here, and it shows how easy it is for even ancient history to repeat itself.
But I also see a parallel between the fact that so many
people, in both elections, feel stuck in a horrific Sophie’s Choice because all
of the candidates are undesirable.
In this year’s election, we’re facing a rematch of the
contentious 2020 election (which is yet another parallel between this and the
election of 1800, which was a rematch of the 1796 election), which was wanted
by absolutely no one (seriously; every single poll on the subject shows that
something like 75 to 80% of the people didn’t want this rematch). There are
numerous candidates running, but it’s clearly going to be a binary contest
between two candidates, neither of whom is held in high regard by the majority
of the electorate. There are concerns over the ages of both candidates (Biden
is 82, and Trump is 78), specifically on whether they’re physically and/or
mentally fit to be president (and regardless of whether there is *evidence* of
any such issues, it isn’t unreasonable to be concerned about these things;
however, in the event a President is unfit to carry out their duties, they can
be removed under the terms of the 25th Amendment). Both are also
deeply unpopular, as are many of their policies (both those they enacted and
those they have promised to enact).
Most people are rightfully repulsed by Trump, even if they
supported his last presidency, because he has since been found liable for
hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of fraud and sexual assault, and was
also recently convicted on 34 felony charges for trying to hide “hush money”
payments made to cover up an affair with an adult film star. Outside of his
most rabid supporters, few people think he’s fit to hold office ever again, and
find it difficult to even CONSIDER voting for a convicted felon (and rightfully
so; someone with this record of criminal activity would be unable to join the
military, pass *any* kind of background check for a security clearance, and
would frankly even have trouble getting a job flipping burgers at McDonald’s).
And this is to say nothing of the fact that most people disagree with the
policies he implemented in his first term and with those he’s proposing should
he be re-elected.
Under normal circumstances, such a candidate would never
have even made it through the nomination process. But these are sadly FAR from
being normal circumstances. Joe Biden has been hated by the Republican Party
for years, due largely to him being Vice President under Barack Obama (one of
their most hated political rivals, second only to Hillary Clinton), and a lot
of Independents aren’t fond of him (I count myself as one of them, but I
digress); even support among Democrats is somewhat tepid. Biden is widely
viewed as weak and ineffectual, and there are valid reasons to STRONGLY
disagree with some of his policies, such as the withdraw from Afghanistan and
his handling of the wars in Ukraine and Palestine. Many also feel that his
economic policies have been weak, and even harmful, citing high prices for food
and groceries and high interest rates for loans. This alone is driving a lot of
reticence to supporting Biden, despite the fact that, by nearly every metric,
the economy is strong and running quite well; many people are feeling economic
hardship, and as George H.W. Bush once quipped to explain his failed
re-election bid, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
One other factor driving dislike of Biden is, ironically,
Trump’s many criminal and civil trials. While they have decreased Trump’s
support, they’ve also paradoxically decreased Biden’s support because of the
inescapable veil of politicization that has loomed over these cases. There is,
of course, absolutely no evidence that Biden or those close to him were
involved in *any* of these cases in *any* capacity, nor that politics played
*any* factor in *any* of his civil or criminal cases, but when the Department
of Justice is prosecuting a former president *and* current political rival of
the current president, it’s impossible to avoid things appearing at least
somewhat politicized. This perception is compounded by the fact that so many of
these prosecutions are taking place during an election year, which makes it
feel even more politically motivated (though this timing is purely
coincidental; it took time for the cases to get to trial due to the way the
legal system works, and Trump has also worked feverishly to delay these cases
as long as possible in the hopes that he can be re-elected to the presidency,
where he’d have the power to defuse these cases). But despite there being zero
factual evidence of any political motivations, and there also being no evidence
that Trump’s due process rights have been denied or abridged in the slightest,
even the *appearance* of such things seems highly suspect and inappropriate to
many, and as a result, Biden’s popularity has suffered.
Neither of these candidates are particularly desirable. The
policies of both can be reasonably questioned, and many of the concerns people
feel about both candidates are valid and viable. To make it worse, every one of
these concerns also applies to Robert Kennedy Jr., the only third-party
candidate with any measurable support (though not nearly enough to be a viable
contender in this election), meaning there truly is no particularly good choice
in this election. And I agree with this. I don’t like either of these
candidates much, and would much rather have practically anyone else.
But that’s not the choice we have. Furthermore, these
candidates are NOT the same, and thinking that they are is DANGEROUSLY myopic.
The choice we have goes far beyond mere policy disagreements
or how we feel about the candidates. It’s not about what we feel the candidates
will do to help us or our pocketbooks. Believe it or not, it’s not even about
the mental ability of the candidates. This election is about something far more
basic: it is quite literally a choice about whether our republic survives, and
that’s exactly the choice that Hamilton faced after the election of 1800. He
felt great concern, shared by many colleagues, that Aaron Burr was simply not
principled and moral enough to lead the country, that his self-interest
outweighed his fealty to the Constitution. Whether these concerns were
justified or merited is beyond the scope of this essay (and isn’t even a
settled matter; historians continue to debate this); the point is that Hamilton
decided that, in order to insure the continued survival of the republic, he had
to look beyond parties and ideologies and even his personal animosity towards
the candidates, which is what ultimately led him to endorse Jefferson, despite
a vociferous hatred of the man.
That’s the same thing we must do now, but unlike Hamilton,
we have the entirety of human knowledge at our fingertips. We have all the
facts and evidence that exist about both candidates, and it is that which must
guide us in this difficult and unpalatable choice. And when you look at the
facts, the conclusion that Trump is beyond being unfit and unqualified to lead,
that he is in fact a direct threat to the survival of our republic, is as
inescapable as it is incontrovertible. His own words and actions prove this.
He has no moral compass; this is a man who was found liable
for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of fraud, sexual assault, repeated
defamation, and who was convicted on 34 felony charges for paying off an adult
film star to cover up an extramarital affair. He was also found in contempt of
court *ten times* for attacking the judge and the prosecution (and their
families), witnesses, and even jurors with vicious lies, which were violations
of a gag order put in place to *protect* them.
This is a man who has cheated on every spouse he’s had, and
has been accused by dozens of women of sexual assault, and is even on tape
*bragging* about assaulting women.
This is a man with a documented history of racism and
misogyny. He has been sued by the federal government multiple times for
racially discriminatory renting policies in his properties, is known to use
racial slurs and racist jokes, and regularly attacks women with truly vicious
insults, most of which involve their physical appearance.
This is a man who is pathologically incapable of telling the
truth. He told over 30,000 lies during his first term, and the number of lies
he told increased by the day; by the end of his term, he was telling nearly 50
a day, and HALF of the total came during his last year in office. His lies
about the 2020 election incited a violent insurrection, and he has only
continued to spew lies at an increasing rate since leaving office.
The utter lack of a moral compass is by itself
disqualifying, but even more troubling is Trump’s utter contempt for the
Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy itself. This is a man who has
literally called for the “termination” of the Constitution simply because it
prevented him from staying in power after losing the 2020 election.
This is a man who put in place multiple illegal and
unconstitutional schemes, including a violent insurrection, in order to
illegally stay in power. He has been criminally indicted on multiple felonies
in Georgia, as have many of his allies, for a scheme to falsely certify him as
the state’s winner. Many of his allies have been charged in other states as
well, as have numerous people who either signed and submitted fake elector
slates (which were forgeries) or who acted as fake electors.
This is a man who has vowed to pardon those who carried out
his violent insurrection, calling them “hostages” and “patriots” instead of the
criminals and traitors that they are.
This is a man who is under criminal indictment for stealing
hundreds of HIGHLY classified documents (including war plans and, reportedly,
some marked “Five Eyes Only”, which means there are literally only five people
*on the planet* cleared to look at them), lying about having them in sworn
statements, refusing to give them back when asked, then moving them around to
hide them when federal agents executed a valid, lawful search warrant to get
them back.
This is a man who wants to be president again not out of a
desire to help the country, but to keep himself out of prison and to prosecute
his political opponents. He has not only called for de-funding every single
agency that has investigated him (from law enforcement to the IRS), but also to
prosecute those people for *treason*, meaning he wants them jailed and
*executed*.
This is a man who quite literally has promised to be a
dictator (and anyone who thinks he’ll only be a dictator “on day one” doesn’t
understand how dictatorships work).
This is a man who wants to fire tens of thousands of civil
servants, *without cause*, so he can replace them with sycophantic “yes-men”
who will rubber stamp his agenda, allowing him to freely violate the
Constitution and federal law with little pushback; rules and norms, and even
the Constitution, mean nothing if there’s no one willing to enforce them.
This is a man who consistently and openly brags about
overturning Roe v. Wade and taking away a woman’s right to choose. This ruling
marked the first time in history that the Supreme Court has *taken away* a
Constitutional right and has widely been decried as being as corrupt as it is
legally and morally wrong.
This is a man with nothing even *resembling* a coherent
governing agenda. Instead, he’s making promises to billionaires to do whatever
they want him to do in exchange for eye-popping campaign contributions (such as
Timothy Mellon’s recent $50 MILLION contribution to one of Trump’s super PACs).
This is a man who regularly spews the rhetoric of Christian
nationalists who seek to destroy our republic and replace it with a
Christofascist state. Multiple experts and scholars who have studied various
forms of fascism and authoritarianism for decades have noted that some of his
rhetoric directly quotes fascists, such as when he accused migrants of
“poisoning the blood of our country” (this is a nearly VERBATIM quote from
Adolf Hitler’s biography).
Finally, this is a man who, along with his allies, is
already laying plans to contest *this* year’s election, which shows how much
contempt they have for the democratic process. He does not care about
respecting the voice of the people; all that matters to him is getting power,
and there is *no* depth to which he won’t sink, no norm he won’t ignore, and no
rule, law, or Constitutional provision he won’t violate to accomplish this.
By any objective measure, Donald Trump is the *least* fit
and *least* qualified major-party candidate to ever seek the presidency. That
the Republican Party, which was founded by Lincoln, one of the most stalwart
defenders of our Constitution and our republic, has coalesced behind him and
continues to defend and support such an indefensible, anti-democratic,
anti-Constitutional man, is shameful as it is repulsive and infuriating, and it
shows that they’ve become *exactly* what they claim to hate.
But this election, as I said above, isn’t about Republicans
versus Democrats or right versus left. This isn’t about demonization or hatred
of one candidate. This choice transcends all normal politics and political
questions, and distills down to the most basic of questions: under which
candidate is our democracy most likely to survive?
Alexander Hamilton faced this question two-hundred and four
years ago, and decided that he needed to support a man who he *loathed* simply
because the alternative was too unprincipled to trust with the reins of power.
I am not comparing Trump to Aaron Burr, as these elections were quite
different, and many questions still remain about Burr’s character. But I *am*
saying that we can, and MUST, learn from Hamilton’s example, as the threat
Trump represents to our republic is objectively, and INFINITELY, worse than
that from Burr.
Trump is a greater danger to democracy than anything we’ve
faced in several generations; the last threat that even comes close was the
homegrown-attempt to replace our government with a Nazi government in the
1930s. If we want our republic to survive, then voting for Joe Biden, no matter
how much we might dislike him or disagree with his policies, is the only viable
answer; the odds of surviving another Trump presidency are incalculably low.
I don’t like the choice any more than anyone else. But given
the choice between a dubious, or even bad, status quo and losing everything we
hold dear, I’ll take the bad status quo every time. This choice may not be very
palatable, but if you want this republic to survive, then it should be among
the *easiest* choices you’ve ever made. Voting for Biden doesn’t mean you like
him or that you endorse him at all; it simply means you’ve voted for the
continued survival of democracy, whereas voting for Trump (or voting for a
third-party candidate, which is a de facto vote for Trump) sends the inverse
signal.
I don’t like Biden much, and never have, but I will gladly
vote to re-elect him in November because my love for this country transcends
and exceeds my political ideology and desires. I want to protect my country,
and the people I love, and my personal politics and views be damned. I’m voting
for Biden because I’m following the example Hamilton set in 1804, and I urge
everyone, in the strongest possible terms, to do the same.
Set aside your party affiliations, your ideologies, your
policy preferences, and your views of the candidates. Those aren’t relevant to
this choice. What’s on the ballot in November isn’t a choice between candidates
or parties; it’s quite literally between the survival of democracy or the
descent into Christofascism, and the *only* way our survival is assured, and
the specter of fascism staved off, is by re-electing Joe Biden.
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