Will the Election of 2020 Prove To Be the End or a New Beginning?

Abstract

Ordinarily, campaign strategies are designed solely to win elections. We argue that the partisan strategies of 2020 should take account of the prospect of defeat, because the way parties lose can have as much significance as what they can accomplish when they win. This election is extraordinary because Trump’s presidency is not merely disruptive but also destabilizing; it stresses and perhaps threatens democratic institutions such as political parties as well as foundational democratic practices such as the peaceful turnover of power after an incumbent’s defeat. For these reasons, partisans of both parties should look beyond the short-term strategies of the election season to the public philosophies that endure through victory or defeat, and that vie to define the soul not only of the parties but of the constitutional order itself.