Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election are not unprecedented.
Republicans have already won twice this century without getting the most votes. Gore outpolled Bush. Clinton outpolled Trump. If just 45,000 votes in a few states had gone the other way, Trump would have won again.
But this isn’t new. Twice in the 19th century Republicans won the White House while losing the popular vote. The 1888 election, with Benjamin Harrison beating Grover Cleveland, was like 2016.
It’s the 1876 election that is the Republicans’ original sin.
After 8 years of Reconstruction, with the South occupied, Wall Street was tired of it. New York had never been behind Lincoln’s War. The Panic of 1873, caused by New York greed, was still laid entirely at the feet of Washington. Mark Twain’s least successful book, The Gilded Age, is also the one he didn’t write by himself. Charles Dudley Warner, an essayist, was co-author. It’s as if Mozart wrote an opera with Salieri. It's the very definition of gilded, and history isn't fooled.
But the book’s name became that of the era. The late 19th century was truly gilded. Wealth was designed to impress, but it was all show. There was nothing behind it. Speculation ran rampant, and big railroad owners were like wolves. I’m considered out of step for saying this but the Progressive Era’s reforms were driven by Wall Street, by men like J.P. Morgan, forced to personally step in and stop the Panic of 1893, acting again in 1907. The only solution for the excesses of the market, it would turn out, was the firm hand of government. When everyone is a crook, civilization requires cops.
But in 1876 this was in the distant future. Wall Street’s role in causing the mid-decade’s depression was already in the memory hole three years later. It’s still there. Like Trump, Wall Street still firmly believes that its shit doesn’t stink, and America continues to pay for that.
Back to our story. Democrats, even then, had morphed into a party of reform. They were led that year by Samuel Tilden, the popular governor of New York. After a fractious convention Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, an Ohio pol who had been a colonel in Grant’s army.
The results were clear. Thanks to the “Solid South,” and the KKK, Democrats dominated.
But then the Republicans made a fateful deal. They threw President U.S. Grant under the bus, from which his reputation is only now emerging. They threw black people under the bus. They threw America under the bus. They agreed to end Reconstruction, endorsing Jim Crow and the KKK, in exchange for southern electors. The result: 185 votes for Hayes, 184 for Tilden. Having lost the popular vote by 3%, Hayes won the election by 1 vote.
When Union troops left the South, the stain of slavery became the stain of Jim Crow. Blacks could no longer vote and every kind of oppression that can happen to a people were visited upon them. For four generations.
If there were a haven in the North, things might have been different. But Wall Street, having decided to throw the black race over, was no longer interested. In 1901, new President Theodore Roosevelt asked the most moderate of black leaders from that era, Booker T. Washington, to dinner at the White House. As described in Deborah Davis’ book Guest of Honor, the backlash was so extreme that no Republican could move toward racial reconciliation, ever again. Black voters remained tied to the GOP for a generation, lacking any alternative. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt was unable to make a law against lynching, despite Eleanor’s protests. Think about that for a moment. No law against the violent killing of a man (or a woman) because of the color of their skin, or even because they associated with such people.
Democrats changed, slowly. The party nearly broke up in 1948, when Hubert Humphrey spoke at their convention for Civil Rights. Southerners walked out, forming a Dixiecrat Party. The Civil Rights movement was bipartisan, to a degree, but after Nixon’s loss in 1960 there was a profound change. The “conservative movement” was born.
While nominally built around issues of economics and culture, the conservative movement was racist to its core. I know. I was in it, as a teenager. (I guess that was my rebellion.) Conservatives referred to Dr. King as “Martin Luther Coon.” A KKK cross was burned into the lawn of the first black family that moved into my hometown. Long Island became a haven for racists after real estate agents “block-busted” Roosevelt and Hempstead, moving a few black families in at high prices, then convincing white families to leave at lower-and-lower prices.
Under Nixon, conservative government was an alliance between pro-business interests he led, and southern racists under George Wallace. But Wall Street was firmly in control when Nixon beat McGovern 2-1.
Ronald Reagan gave his first speech, as the 1980 GOP nominee, in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. It was no accident.
But when you let the devil in the door, the devil will take your soul. The devil is also patient. When you enter a criminal conspiracy, you become a criminal. That’s what has happened to the Republican Party. It’s not Trump. It’s not even Murdoch. It’s Wall Street.
When their power was threatened, over the last 40 years, Republicans have responded with racism. When Jesse Helms was challenged by Harvey Gantt, he ran an ad of two white hands ripping up a job rejection. When George H.W. Bush was challenged by Michael Dukakis, Lee Atwater (of South Carolina) ordered up the Willie Horton ad. Bill Clinton was called “the first black President” because he admired black culture and talked up a “New South” where race didn’t matter. Barack Obama’s election was met by the “Tea Party,” the racism only thinly disguised.
With Trump, the bark has come entirely off. As Trumpism has been challenged, the racism has become obvious. Nixon is no longer driving the Republican Party. George Wallace is. Lester Maddox is. Orval Faubus is. Any group that finds common cause with black folks is going to be scapegoated. Latinos avoid this by becoming George Zimmerman. They see politics as an all-or-nothing battle between fascist conformity and communist liberalism. Those knees can be made to jerk. Even black men can be misogynists, as white women are racist, and they find themselves playing for the same team.
The Republican Party is now the KKK party. The Republican Party is now devoted, heart and soul, to overturning the Civil Rights era, to complete white, male, straight supremacy. As a white straight male, I should be happy. But I have black friends, I have gay friends, I have a wife who’s better than I am, and I know that.
Industries that rely on talent have their blinders off. Entertainment is one. Sports is one. Technology is supposed to be one. But there are racists in technology as there are everywhere else, and the rising tide lifts their boats just like everyone else’s.
Businesses have made a big deal, as part of the anti-Trump culture, about getting rid of racism. Fortune 500 CEOs say black lives matter. But do they? Facing the backlash, facing the full fury of the KKK, they will still find common cause. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are the fullest expressions of what’s possible. She says she doesn’t “have a racist bone in my body.” That means she’s a racist.
Georgia is a poor ground on which to fight this battle. It won’t be won based on debates or Twitter condemnations. It will be won, or lost, through organization, and the willingness of business to stand up against the KKK. All those Fortune 500 companies that have moved to Georgia since 1960, when Alabama and Georgia had about the same population, until today, when Georgia has 10 million citizens and Alabama just 4 million, need to stand up now.
You’re being counted. All the progress made since Atlanta dubbed itself the “city too busy to hate” is on the line. Does the agreement between business and black folks made then still hold? Or will you run away again, as your ancestors did in 1876? You won’t just be leaving Georgia to the wolves in that case. You’ll be leaving America to the wolves. You’ll be leaving the whole world to the wolves.
The Civil War didn’t end. It is still going on. It can still be lost.
