On Friday, Nov. 15, the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative hosted its first talk, with the goal of analyzing the results and implications, both domestic and international, of the election.
The panel, hosted in collaboration with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, drew a crowd large enough to fill both the Hesburgh Center auditorium and an overflow room located nearby.
Host and director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative David Campbell began the panel on a lighter note.
“We are here to discuss the recent election in which the polls suggested things would be close, but then one party ended up winning handily — of course, I’m referring to the recent election in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan,” he said.
Before commencing, Campbell invited University President Fr. Bob Dowd to speak on the panel’s connection to this year’s Notre Dame forum, titled “What do we owe each other?” In his remarks, Dowd suggested the forum’s question lies at the core of any democracy.
“No democracy will survive without norms of mutual respect, norms of compromise in order to get things done, norms that help us to focus on the common good,” Dowd said. “We know that in any democracy, basic freedoms and rights are incredibly important, but there also needs to be a sense of community. There needs to be something that brings us all together.”
Campbell then introduced panelists law professor Derek Muller, chair of the Department of Political Science Geoffrey Layman and assistant professor of democracy and global affairs Laura Gamboa.
Campbell began by asking Layman whether or not he believed Democrats ever had a chance of winning the election. Layman suggested the election closely resembled typical referendum elections, where due to President Biden’s low approval ratings and a negative public perception of the economy, the result should not come as a surprise.
Layman added, though, the election was different in the sense that “the economy is doing great, inflation is way down, unemployment is low, and the Fed has good interest rates … what people think about the economy is really what’s going poorly.”
Additionally, he highlighted the unique nature of the winning candidate being someone who has been president before and “led an attack on the U.S. capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”
“It’s unusual in the sense that it seems people are choosing the economy and treating it as a referendum election, despite the fact that there are big implications for democracy,” Layman said.
When the topic of the narratives surrounding the election’s uniqueness later resurfaced, Lehman added, “Trump has violated many of our regular democratic norms like conceding when you lose, and the majority of Americans still voted for him. I don’t know that that sends us down a path to autocracy, we’ll have to wait and see, but it does confirm what many political scientists have known, which is that these abstract principles of democracy are actually not all that important to the ordinary American voter.”
He added, upon examining the exit polls, people who said they are concerned about the state of democracy in the United States voted about evenly for Trump, suggesting some view the Democratic party as the threat.
“Donald Trump is a great vessel for anger. He is a candidate of grievance. He will fight for you,” Lehman said.
Muller noted the things people are concerned about — such as fair and free elections — are not necessarily at risk in the next four years.
“We have a very robust Supreme Court that acts as a check from the executive in ways that other nations don’t experience,” Muller said, in conjunction with citing ways the Supreme Court kept Trump’s policies in check during the last administration.
However, he suggested democratic norms can be evaded even within this legal framework.
Gamboa noted the need for caution in a global context.
“Institutions are not immune just because they are strong or longstanding,” Gamboa said. “I think that Trump is a potential autocrat. I think he will disregard democratic institutions, understood as checks and balances, in order to achieve his goals.”
She noted the rise of a potential autocrat does not mean the end of democracy, as democratic backsliding takes a long time, so pro-democracy coalitions have time to figure out a plan.
Campbell asked Gamboa to put the result into international perspective, asking whether or not the result was reflective of an international pattern of incumbents losing altogether or losing voter share in national elections being held in democratic nations. Gamboa said she believes it follows the worldwide trend of anti-incumbent behavior, but she does not think the answer is that simple.
She suggested instead it also reflects a broader crisis of representation, which is something she sees in Latin America, her area of study. Whether or not it is the fault of the executive branch, she noted, the economy does seem terrible for construction workers in her home state of Utah when there is no way to find an affordable house in their city.
“The GOP solves this kind of disconnect with a populist approach … I don’t think this is good for this country or for democracy,” she said.
Campbell then asked Muller about the ballot counting process, describing how, despite concerns regarding legal fights or violence around the counting of ballots in 2024, things seemed to have gone smoothly.
Drawing on proactive strategies, Muller noted counties and states in 2024 knew they had problems with processing an influx of absentee ballots and securing drop boxes in 2020, and they “did as much as possible to shore up their election infrastructure ahead of 2024, so that things could move more smoothly.”
He emphasized these efforts were important, because besides guardrail legislation, the federal government does not have much control over elections. It is because of this lack of control that the states can make the decision as to whether they will have a fast election or count more ballots that come in for a more accurate tabulation.
“Does the nature of this election mean we’ve returned to what has been the norm of the widespread acceptance of free and fair elections in the US, or are other landmines yet to explode?” Campbell asked.
“Both sides kind of realized that [conspiracy theories and bomb threats] are a real problem, so there was a lot more transparency for conversation around what was happening in the election process,” Muller said, adding the election’s decisive margins helped the process go smoothly.
Towards the conclusion of Muller’s answer, a man in the audience stood up and exited while mumbling “waste of time.”
Pointing to Lehman, Campbell asked if the gains among almost every demographic observed for Trump in the exit polls had implications for the Democratic Party’s coalition, suggesting a realignment.
“I won’t say we have a realignment. However, something really important is going on with regards to education and socioeconomic status as well as race,” Lehman said.
In particular, after seeing a decrease votes from Latino men, “the Democratic Party is shaken to its core, because it has always assumed it’s the party of voters of color,” he said. Lehman suggested the Democratic Party is now “the party of college graduates and people with advanced degrees.”
“The big thing for Democrats is to decide if they really want to give up the working class and no longer be the party of the people, which I don’t think they want,” Lehman said, blaming the Democratic Party’s failure to help people recognize President Biden pursued policies to support the working class for the growing consensus that Trump has their back more.
On the impact of Trump’s election on America’s standing in the world, Gamboa spoke to the ways in which Trump “favors what will best serve him personally and domestically.”
“It’s hard to predict how he is going to behave, but he has shown no interest in helping Ukraine, no interest in helping Taiwan, who are both at the throats of authoritarian regimes, putting democracy at more risk than it is today,” Gamboa said. “I don’t think that Donald Trump will absolutely hurt democracy, but we cannot count on the United States anymore to support it.”
Gamboa provided examples of deals Trump made with Guatemalan and El Salvadorian leaders to withdraw support for pro-democratic, anti-corruption initiatives in order to stop immigration.
Campbell asked whether Trump’s recent Cabinet picks could provide insight into the future for his administration, especially his decision to prioritize loyalists over conventional candidates.
The group of panelists were in consensus that while some of the picks, such as Marco Rubio and Suzie Wiles, reflected typical selections of experienced leaders, the rest were unconventional and suggested he would push the limits for Republicans by creating a loyalty test with his picks. The panelists also emphasized how Trump is looking to evade the typical appointment process, a further test for Senate Republicans.
“Populists don’t usually like to have competent people around them in part because it threatens their own power,” Gamboa said. “I hope that this incompetence hinders the ability of the administration to damage democracy.”
Still, she expressed worry that other things — like Medicare or homeland security — will not be protected because of his incompetence. “These things rely on a normal functioning of these offices,” she said.
To conclude, Campbell asked the panelists to consider the forum question and offer insight into whether the nation is destined to remain polarized.
“We can reach out and figure out ways to have conversations across the political divide in time for Thanksgiving, because polarization only happens when the two camps are willing to engage in it,” Gamboa said.
Lehman added he sees hope because the Democratic Party realizes it lost and sees they need to work with the Republicans on things that are going to help working Americans.
“Log off sometimes and find human beings who disagree with you. Have those conversations, but not in an effort to persuade. Listen to and hear where they are … but remember that there are things greater in our lives than just thinking about politics,” suggested Muller.
“We are better off as a nation when we can agree upon the very principles that define us as a nation,” Campbell concluded.
