2024 election: Cheer up, Americans — you’ve got this

Opinion editor’s note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here. This article was written by Al Zdon of Mounds View.

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There is a fear in the land.

I know people who are ready to move to Canada or Greenland for the next 10 months rather than endure the presidential race besetting the nation. Has the nation ever gone through a time when people are so divided? Abortion, fading U.S. prestige, immigration, foreign wars, stolen elections, old age and a dozen other issues seem to have no middle ground.

Has it ever been so bad?

Well, actually, this is pretty normal for America. Democracy isn’t pretty. From the earliest days, opinions on which way the nation should go have caused grand canyons of division, often culminating in a tumultuous presidential election.

In our third national election in 1800, electors were tied 73-73 for Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Alexander Hamilton (see the musical of the same name) swung the election by convincing his opposition party to support Jefferson. Three years later, Burr killed Hamilton.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote in the nation, but with four candidates running in the same party, none had enough electoral votes. Old Hickory was incensed when Henry Clay threw his support to John Quincy Adams, giving Adams enough votes to live in the White House. A month later, Adams named Clay his secretary of state in what Jackson called a “corrupt bargain,” and the hero of the War of 1812 vowed revenge. He got it when he was elected over Adams in 1828.

The election of 1860 was probably the most traumatic in U.S. history, with the long simmering fight over slavery and states’ rights coming to a head. Lincoln led the fledgling Republican Party to victory, partly on an anti-slavery plank, and the Democratic vote was split between Stephen Douglas and a splinter southern Democratic nominee Samuel Breckinridge. Lincoln only got 40% of the popular vote in winning, and two weeks later South Carolina voted to secede from the Union. The bloodiest event in our nation’s history ensued.

In 2000, in a race between Al Gore and George W. Bush, the election was still not settled five weeks later as the politicians waged war over the votes in Florida. The Supreme Court finally intervened (more politics?) and Bush was judged the winner in Florida and in the Electoral College by five votes. He took office even though Gore had racked up 500,000 more popular votes in the nation.

Perhaps the classic of them all, though, may have been the 1876 contest between the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and the Democrat Samuel Tilden. Hayes, the Ohio governor, was described by historian Henry Adams as “a third-rate nonentity whose only recommendations are that he is obnoxious to no one.” Tilden, on the other hand, had earned a national reputation as reform candidate and had even put the legendary New York City’s Boss Tweed in the hoosegow. Many thought a reformer was just what was needed with the corruption so prominent in the departing Grant administration. The Democrats were also boosted by a good midterm election in which the party captured the U.S. House for the first time in many years.

The South was key to the Democrats, where they were finally regaining power in the wake of the Civil War. The strategy was horrendous, however, and relied in part on paramilitary gangs disrupting Republican meetings with violence and terror.

The Democrats carried most of the South, but every state election was marked with voter fraud and intimidation. In South Carolina, an amazing 101% of eligible voters cast (and recast) their ballots. One estimate said that 150 Black Republicans were murdered on Election Day in the state. The Republican-controlled state electoral commissions eventually awarded the state’s seven electoral votes to Hayes.

Colorado had just become a state that year, and the state’s legislature, and not the vote of the people, named the electors — who all voted for Hayes. In Oregon, the Democratic governor declared one of the Republican electors ineligible and named a Democrat to replace him. The Democrat voted for Tilden despite Hayes winning the state.

When the smoke cleared, Tilden had won the popular vote by a quarter-million ballots, but Hayes was ahead in the electoral vote 185-184. The Democrats controlled the House and the Republicans the Senate. All kind of machinations were afoot to swing one electoral vote. A constitutional crisis was feared. President Grant quietly increased the number of troops around Washington, D.C.

The Congress was flummoxed through November, December and January, and finally on Jan. 29 established an election commission that would contain five House members, five Senate members and five Supreme Court members. Of the court representatives, two were Republicans and two were Democrats, and those four were to choose the fifth. The problem was that all the remaining justices were Republicans. That was crucial.

Four state elections — Florida, Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina — were disputed. The commission, with an 8-7 vote thanks to the extra Republican justice, voted in Hayes’ favor in all four states. A week later he was president.

But wait, there’s more. The Democrats knew they were giving the election to Hayes because there would be eight Republicans on the electoral commission. In exchange, called the Compromise of 1877, the Democrats asked for the removal of last remaining federal troops from the conquered South. Some see this and other measures as ending the Reconstruction, an effort to integrate Black Americans into the society and the voting booth.

Tilden later said posterity would remember him as having won the election, but he was blessed with never having to bear the responsibilities or burdens of the office. Hayes served one term and was regarded as an average president.

So the 2024 election lies before us. It’s going to be a doozy. There is a sense that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. And when the election is over, there will still be two gigantic sides with nothing in the middle. One of those sides will be catastrophically unhappy. Once again, democracy will be put to the test.

But you know what? This is America. We’ll figure it out.

Al Zdon is a writer in Mounds View.