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This is the idea that’s behind both Trump and Brexit, the two great disasters of the English-speaking world right now.
In both cases a single election result is being treated as the inalterable expression of national will. The election winners are saying this to argue that they hold an unimpeachable mandate. And because both results were so unexpected, many others are grudgingly acquiescing.
One way to see how the votes for Trump and Brexit have been assigned so much symbolic importance is to look at the bizarre behavior among the opposition to both.
Among a certain class of person, both 2016 results are being treated as referenda - not on narrow political questions, but on whether the broad ideas embodied by Trump and Brexit are good or bad. Or at least, contestable or incontestable, which is, practically speaking, the same.
Thus we see real hesitance to make the strongest case against Trump or Brexit, to attack obvious wrongdoing, exploit obvious weaknesses, or otherwise seek to undo the unwanted result. It’s as if the losers, having lost, think they must now understand the world as the winners do.
I think some people have convinced themselves this is how democracy works, and forgotten that the point of democracy isn’t just voting on things, but voting on things AGAIN AND AGAIN, because elections can’t resolve moral or ideological questions and people change their mind.
In the end anyone who treats any election as a referendum on the undivided soul of the nation is lying, to you if not themselves.
We have elections all the time. The results change. They have consequences, but not that many.
We have elections all the time. The results change. They have consequences, but not that many.
