Trump’s New Voter I.D. Threat Is His Gravest Attack on Democracy Yet

Trying to prevent or subvert or
nullify an election, I would argue, is on another level. We’ve had presidents
and other political leaders who tried to get their foes thrown in the clink.
We’ve had loads of corrupt pols, though never anyone near Trump’s operatic
scale. And we have, alas, treated a lot of people very badly, from the 400,000-plus
African people brought over as slaves to the millions of Native Americans we
drove from their lands or herded onto reservations to the patriotic Japanese
Americans during World War II.

But through all those moral
calamities, we’ve had elections. A federal election has never been postponed or
cancelled in the history of the United States. If ever one was going to be
postponed, it obviously would have been in 1864. But Abraham Lincoln refused
even to consider delaying it. And he was convinced he was going to lose! On
August 23, 1864, he wrote
this memo to his Cabinet members: “This morning, as for some days past, it
seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected.
Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save
the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured
his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.”

He put it in an envelope and asked
his Cabinet officers to sign the envelope without reading the memo. Note how
there was no question in his mind that the election would be held—even though
he was sure he was going to lose. That’s how a small-d democrat behaves. Can
you imagine Donald Trump doing that? Never in a jillion years, and it’s
precisely that difference that explains why Lincoln is our greatest president
and Trump our worst.