Election: Will It Work?

 Yuval Noah Harari (again - my favorite author) writes this passage, almost as an aside, in the amazing book "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow". And I think it captures a worry I have.

People feel bound by democratic elections only when they share a basic bond with most other voters. If the experience of other voters is alien to me, and if I believe they don't understand my feelings and don't care about my vital interests, then even if I am outvoted one hundred to one I have absolutely no reason to accept the verdict. Democratic elections usually work only within populations that have some prior common bond, such as a shared religious beliefs or national myths. They are a method to settle disagreements among people who already agree on the basics.

He was discussing voters in Germany deciding if they would accept more immigrants from Syria. He said that the vote was only among interested people that currently lived in Germany. If Syrian or Afghanistan refugees who wanted to move were allowed to vote, it would be overwhelming to take in more. But then it would not be accepted as a reasonable result.

We saw the same thing, historically, with the Civil War in America. The vote to elect Abraham Lincoln was free and fair, but not accepted by the South as legitimate.

Now my worries.

1. The President has already been denigrating the vote, setting it up as unfair. So will his voters accept any outcome where he doesn't win? Will they believe it legitimate?

2. Since he has shattered the norms of the American Myth (see my post here), do we Americans have a common language to even discuss the outcome? If Trump wins, even with a minority of the actual votes, Democrats would accept it. After all, Democratic candidates won the popular vote with Hillary over Trump in 2016 and Gore over George W Bush in 200, but we accepted the outcome that was based on the Electoral College. But Trump is already setting up the language and perception among his voters that a lost as the outcome would be due to voter fraud. Will his supporters accept a lose?