These Days Before the Vote: 'We have it in our power to begin the world over again'

Whitewater, Wis. — It's a gray and rainy morning in Wisconsin. Over the next thirty-four days, all the world will watch as our people, having endured nearly two years of authoritarian populism, vote in elections across this continent to choose federal and state officials. In These Days Before the Vote, this libertarian blogger will consider one principle each day from our history in support of the American liberal democratic tradition — and its possibility for an American renaissance.

Every school child has read, often with a teacher's skepticism (if not outright derision), Paine's claim that "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." For those instructors who'd prefer to leave their charges with a little optimism, they might mollify those children by saying perhaps renewal was 'possible many years ago, in a simpler time.' (Candidly: These are not those simpler times; then again, Paine's were not truly simpler times, either.)

My own outlook, best described as tragic optimism, is surely not given to irrational exuberance.

We do have — now, in our time — a capacity for renewal that would come close enough to beginning anew to astonish those who thought it impossible.

Today, across fifty states, thousands of counties, and myriad cities and towns, Americans have organized to speak, debate, protest, and to vote against Trumpism. These Americans number many millions, and inspire millions more. People ask, for example, what the highly visible No Kings Protests have done against extreme populism. They have done much as an expression of free assembly, a reminder of our tradition of protest, and a catalyst for further lawful action in opposition to authoritarianism. The high-water mark of Trumpism was long ago. See David Wallace-Wells, The Vibe Has Shifted Back, New York Times, June 29, 2026 ("It’s been a while since anyone talked in such triumphalist terms about MAGA’s cultural victory — maybe since the time that the people of Minneapolis essentially repelled the Immigration and Customs Enforcement units that had descended on their city.")

We will elect a new Congress, directly selecting all of the members of the House and a third of the Senate. In thousands of state and local elections, those who have opposed this nation's slide into bigotry, corruption, violence at home, and war abroad openly and proudly campaign on that opposition. A new House and even a portion of a new Senate will change the political direction. Our elections will not replace Trump, but they will constrain him. Renewal is a process, not a moment. Trump's veto will limit legislation, but congressional oversight and a new federal budget will limit presidential power.

There's also the ever-present caution that new federal, state, and local elections do not assure constitutional changes. And yet, and yet, constitutional amendments follow opinion as much as shape it. A majority chooses its preferred reforms, and then enshrines them thereafter. We of the liberal democratic majority will choose and enact tomorrow's amendments.

Paine's observation two hundred fifty years ago was a claim about possibility and agency. It proved true enough in his time, and it can prove true enough in our time.

More pertinently: there is no better path forward for us than to believe it can again be so.