These unhinged bullies are telling other Americans that it is not safe to defy them at the ballot box, whether you’re a top elected official or a rank-and-file volunteer—or even if you’re the vice president of the United States, as Mike Pence learned while hiding from the mob on January 6.
This is obscene. Americans, I think, have always understood that running for a high-profile or national office like the presidency entails some danger from unstable people; that’s why we think so highly of the men and women of the Secret Service who will put themselves in harm’s way even for candidates. But it is a long-standing tradition in American politics that serving as an election worker or a school-committee member or a local alderman is not a life-threatening proposition.
Trump and people like him want to destroy that sense of safety, and their efforts are having an effect: I was talking with a close friend recently who admitted to me that she might vote by mail for the next few elections because it could be risky to visit actual polling places. This is the future that Trump and his supporters want, in which only the loyalists show up either to work the polls or to cast a vote, while the rest of us put a stamp on an envelope, avoid public engagement, and retreat to the safety of our homes.
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