I anticipate that many Americans will experience nervousness and anxiety as we approach this year’s elections. Speaking personally, I have concerns ahead of what may well be the last elections conducted under a semblance of democracy.
But I’ve heard that facing your fears head-on is the best way to vanquish them. So rather than bottle up these concerns and stew over them for months, I think it’s worthwhile to lay them out here. My hope is that speaking about these concerns openly helps us all devise ways to combat them.
So let’s get to it. Here are my top five fears heading into the 2024 elections.
No. 1: Social media-focused campaigns
I fear that this campaign season will be extremely online, with candidates more reliant than ever on social media platforms to spread their messaging. And I fear this will make voters more vulnerable to malicious actors and power brokers in the tech industry, who rely on tech tools — such as social media algorithms and artificial intelligence-enabled deepfakes — that make it easy to manipulate the public. (We’ve already begun to see this in action, FYI — read more here and here.)
No. 2: False equivalencies
I fear an uninformed and/or impulsive public that is allowed — or encouraged — to make false equivalencies between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. I find few things more dubious these days than the suggestion that Republicans and Democrats are “two wings of the same bird,” “two sides of the same coin” or any other cliche that implies the two major parties are remotely alike. Democrats still support liberal democracy, which is a vehicle to change policies that the public dislikes. Republicans, on the other hand, support a man in Trump who’s vowing to quash the sort of dissent and discussion that Democrats currently harbor in their party. These two things are not the same.
No. 3: Voter suppression and intimidation
I fear that a raft of voter suppression laws and voter intimidation tactics will succeed in deterring people from heading to the polls and that the press corps will be largely disinterested in covering it. The idea that our elections are widely considered legitimate despite open evidence of voter suppression and intimidation — like armed poll watchers, for example — is infuriating. It shows that the United States is not the democracy we often proclaim ourselves to be. In fact, we lean more toward fascism than many of us would like to acknowledge.
No. 4: Third-party hucksters
I fear that voters will embrace dubious, purportedly liberal third-party candidates linked to to right-wing figures who want Republicans to win in 2024. Namely, Jill Stein, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West.
No. 5: Trump pawns in the Black community
I fear people of color who become willful pawns in Trump’s effort to portray himself as friendly to nonwhite people. I’ve written a lot over the past year about conservative efforts to use ostensibly Black media outlets and Black celebrities — rappers, in particular — to push pro-Trump talking points and conspiracy theories. These outlets and figures don’t speak for the Black community in any significant way, but their allegiance to Trump and right-wing ideals are often used as a way to downplay or dismiss the racism within the MAGA movement.
