Historians cannot predict the future. That’s what I kept telling my fall HIS-295 students all throughout the eight weeks of our course on the history of “Contested U.S. Presidential Elections,” which ended on October 18. I pointed out frequently that historians could provide a lot of tools and information for understanding the present — how and why people have made decisions in certain circumstances over time, strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. political system, meanings of American democracy in a country that has simultaneously enshrined inequality, how power has always been challenged and contested. But, I assured them, any historian who says they can tell you who’s going to win an election is likely to be wrong (paging Allan Lichtman).
I designed the course on the history of contested elections in the U.S. because I expressly wanted students to be able to build historical skills that could help them think about the 2024 presidential election and social conflicts surrounding it. I also wanted students to build skills in public communication, and I designed a series of assignments in which students practiced helping public audiences contextualize the election with historical facts and interpretations. As Grinnell students do, they really dug in, writing blogs, op-eds, websites and even political recipes that were really illuminating and inspiring.
I was convinced that it would be important for students to understand how many times the results of a U.S. presidential election had been contested, either within the Constitutional system or outside of it. Surely, in 2024, students and the public would all need to understand the electoral college and the consequences of the many ways elections have been contested over the years. We studied the six major elections whose results were challenged in all sorts of ways: 1800, 1824, 1860, 1876, 2000 and 2020.
When the 2024 results came pouring in and Trump appeared to win the popular and electoral vote count to ensure his election, I admit I was, at first, a bit surprised that the results would likely not be contested this year, as I had suspected they might be. Kamala Harris conceded on the day after the election, November 6.
But with a few more days of thinking, I am still convinced that we are living in the aftermath of the contested election of 2020 and that Trump’s 2024 election is part of the denouncement of his manufactured rage over the supposedly “corrupt” 2020 election. When the events of January 6, 2021 happened, I thought Trump would forever be barred from office, but I can now see that January 6 probably helped him win the election again.
Historical precedent is important, just not in the ways I expected before November 5. As many of my students were fond of pointing out, Trump patterns himself after Andrew Jackson, who lost the presidency in the contested election of 1824, only to come roaring back and win an overwhelming election in 1828. Jackson, a strong-willed, demagogic slaveholder, won the electoral vote in 1824 and likely won the popular vote — such as it was in that year — but because there were multiple candidates, he failed to win a majority of the electoral vote, and the election was decided by the House of Representatives. Jackson’s opponent Henry Clay was Speaker of the House, and Jackson accused Clay of concluding a “corrupt bargain” to throw the election to John Quincy Adams. Adams did subsequently appoint Clay as Secretary of State, but no evidence of Jackson’s accused “corrupt bargain” has ever emerged. No matter, Jackson harnessed popular rage against “elites,” joined up with professionals who created modern campaigning and crushed Adams in the following election in 1828.
Rage and the perception of corruption proved to be politically potent, and they also helped power Jackson through two terms in which he yielded strong executive authority. That seems to have played some part in Trump’s election, too. Jackson also benefited from his championing of American democracy as an institution meant for white men, a theme in much of Trump’s rhetoric this year.
History provides little comfort, and it can’t tell us what will happen next. Jackson enacted the Trail of Tears, killed central banking in the U.S. and used the veto a record number of times. But his actions also spawned a new opposing political party and the organizing of social justice movements like abolitionism and the Black convention movement.
What’s next for American politics and the contested presidential election system? Only time will tell.
