Welcome to a High-stakes Election Year

As the 2024 election season bears down like a Cat 5 hurricane, here’s a collective New Year’s citizens’ resolution worth a shot: Keep our heads. Get to work. Stay on it. Be strategic.

Democracy is on the line. This applies locally, statewide and nationally. And I’m inviting you to dig deeper into the psychology of approaching this season of elections with a cold-eyed view of the stakes at hand, leading with these three points: Embrace your inner stoic, embrace your inner juror, embrace the collective.

In short, this means keeping your game face, being open to contrary views and not doing this alone.

Elections matter and so do you. Off-year or special elections in South Florida might produce 11-17% turnout. The good news is that regular elections like the national one on Nov. 5 will likely garner 65-70% of voters, thus increasing local participation.

Local elections come first, as they relate to our safety, our traffic, our pipes, our trash collection and that planned development down the street from your house. State elections affect your schools and teachers, the limits of our reproductive rights, the state of our roads and more.

The Stoic Approach

Stoicism means more than keeping cool through trouble. The stoic way is informed by a dark but compassionate view of human nature and leading a virtuous life while accepting suffering. It was embraced by the Founding Fathers who gathered in a sweltering room in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 and emerged with an imperfect but lasting constitution. When a woman asked gout-stricken Benjamin Franklin, then 80 and barely able to speak, whether the group had created a monarchy or republic, he answered: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Keeping that republic means facing the truth. Any journalist, lawyer or ChatGPT app can tell the same story 700 or 7,000 different ways and be correct in every detail. We can start our voting question by asking: What produces the greatest good for the greatest number?

We can act as if we’re sleepwalking – or even barreling – toward a Trump dictatorship that will render this country unrecognizable and the world more chaotic. It’s a distinct possibility but it’s by no means inevitable.

As former Washington Post editor Martin Baron says – we are not at war; we are at work. Democracy doesn’t just happen. It takes clinical and strategic effort and shifting alliances.

The Inner Juror

When we are summoned to jury service, we are asked to go to work, to suspend prejudices and biases, and to examine the evidence. It’s a big job and a privilege. The financial and even physical fate of a defendant or respondent is in our hands.

It’s the same at the voting booth. Who has the most positive, constructive message to do the greatest good for the greatest number?

If prejudice is one enemy – maybe the only enemy – cynicism and gullibility follow closely. In 1951, political philosopher Hannah Arendt cited those traits as foundations to any totalitarian movement, with the belief that nothing is true and anything is possible. Nostalgia is another siren song. Trumpism deftly embraces these flaws, starting with the position that the game is rigged unless he wins.

Embrace the Collective

Is this a “me” culture or a “we” culture? Or is that question rhetorical?

Here in flashy, preening South Florida, we are in this crazy boat together. Greater Miami is a singular paella of immigrants in self-contained worlds, with outsized inequality and contradictions. Hyper-Cuban and Republican Hialeah delivered strongly for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and recently named Palm Avenue for him. It also has the nation’s highest rate of participation in Obamacare, which Trump has vowed to repeal.

Even more reason for us to connect in random ways and find any common ground.

The Stakes: Local

Most of Miami’s 34 municipalities have elections this year, all the way up to the county’s first sheriff since 1976, its first supervisor of elections – ever – and the reelection of county Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. Former Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado is inexplicably interested in the property appraiser’s job and ballot initiatives are almost sure to come up as well.

In voting, consider who would best promote a responsible, professional, thrifty city management, as cities do not print money. Competence matters more than loyalty and visibility at events in keeping the place running. When city finances go south and reserves fall, the credit rating deteriorates and your town needs more time to self-correct, which means higher interest rates and fewer ways to pay for those bursting pipes.

The Stakes: Statewide

Ron DeSantis, 45, is governor until 2027. Sen. Rick Scott, 71, is up for reelection this year and former Rep. Debbie Jessika Mucarsel-Powell announced in August that she would oppose him. If DeSantis slinks back from the presidential contest, he’ll still be a young man of ambition.

Florida now has 500,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats, versus 200,000 voters in Democrats’ favor in 2019. There are some signs of legislative peeling away from DeSantis, as some pragmatic Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature are conferencing on certain common efforts.

Expect a referendum on reproductive rights in Florida, like the ones that passed in Kansas and Ohio. Recreational marijuana may be on the table, too. The insurance mess will stay high on the agenda. That and real estate prices are why South Florida has both the nation’s highest inflation rate at 9% yet remains one of the world’s most desirable communities. Again, contradictions.

The Stakes: National

This presidential election will likely be close. If you’re concerned about it, consider pouring attention and resources to exurban counties in six to eight states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and maybe North Carolina and Minnesota. Last time, Biden beat Trump by 7 million votes, but less than 44,000 votes would have made the Electoral College difference, without fake electors or riots.

We are in new territory, especially since Jan. 6, 2021. For the first time, representatives of a major political party are physically afraid of their own voters, and violence is part of the Trump message. When Mitt Romney says he needs to spend $5,000 a day on security, that’s $1.825 million a year. Consider Congress members and senators who cannot afford that, and it’s little wonder they’re retiring or lock-stepping into the MAGA line.

This year’s presidential election is not a referendum on Biden, but on democracy here and elsewhere. And Biden – blemishes and all – has accomplished much, with infrastructure, painstaking restoration of alliances, low unemployment, high employment growth and a successful COVID vaccine rollout, among much else. He is knowledgeable, likes people and has wisdom. While some of us might prefer, say, Gretchen Whitmer, Biden, like it or not, is the finger in the dike against MAGA populist authoritarianism.

Any vote for Cornel West, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein or No Labels should be considered a vote for Trump or autocracy. Nader in 2000 and Stein in 2016 tipped the scales, and Trump’s percentages went up in 2020 in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin without a serious third-party challenge.

Give Trump credit: He can read a room. In his emails and at his rallies, he offers excitement, danger, a sense of belonging. He sells swag, invites you to the Platinum level and makes you feel you belong, that you matter, that you – not “they” – are the true elite. Fascism can be fun, a point DeSantis misses.

Pro-democracy champions on all fronts – Democrat, Republican, independent – need more swagger, spine and satire. The coalition cannot afford to break. It is past time to buckle down. The world is watching.

Your 2024 Election Calendar

February 16

• Indian Creek Village General Election

o Candidate qualifying deadline: Jan. 13

o Voter registration closes: Jan. 18

March 19

• Presidential preference primary elections

• Surfside general municipal election

For both, voter registration closes: Feb. 20; early voting: March 9-16

April 2

• Bay Harbor Islands general election

o Candidate qualifying dates: Feb. 22 – March 3

• Surfside runoff election

For both, voter registration closes: March 4

May 2

• Bay Harbor Islands runoff election

o Voter registration closes: April 3

August 20

• County primary election

o Deadline to qualify: June 14; deadline to submit resolution or charter amendment: May 24; early voting: Aug. 10-17

o Voter registration closes: July 22

November 5

• General election

o Voter registration closes: Oct. 7

• Aventura general election

o Candidate qualifying dates: Aug. 12-16

• Bal Harbour Village general election

o Candidate qualifying dates: Aug. 12-16

• Biscayne Park general municipal election

o Candidate qualifying dates: Aug. 5-16

• El Portal general election

o Candidate qualifying dates: Aug. 5-15

• Key Biscayne municipal election

o Candidate qualifying dates: Aug. 12-22

• Miami Beach special election

• North Bay Village general election

o Candidate qualifying dates: TBD

• North Miami regular election

o Candidate qualifying dates: Aug. 12-22

• North Miami Beach general election

o Candidate qualifying dates: Aug. 26-31

• Sunny Isles Beach general election

o Candidate qualifying dates: Aug. 13-16

For all, county deadline for ballot issue or charter amendment: July 26; early voting: Oct. 25 – Nov. 2

November 19

• Bal Harbour Village runoff election

• Biscayne Park runoff election

• El Portal runoff election

• North Bay Village runoff election

• North Miami Beach runoff election

For all, voter registration closes: Oct. 21

December 3

• Sunny Isles Beach runoff election

o Voter registration closes: Nov. 4