在世俗的民主国家中，选举是最接近公民圣礼的事物。它们代表着这样一个庄严时刻：民主的基本理念获得实际表达——人民真正掌管政府。
Elections are the closest thing to a civic sacrament in a secular, democratic state. They represent the solemn occasion when the essential idea of democracy gets practical expression: the demos, the people, taking literal charge of the kratos, the government.
如同圣礼一般，选举兼具象征意义与实质意义。一个国家齐聚一堂、选择自身道路的仪式，是激励自治的内在恩典的外在表现。
As with sacraments, there is symbolism and substance to elections. The ritual of a nation coming together to choose its path is an outward sign of the inward grace that animates self-government.
近年来，我们竭尽全力侵蚀这一仪式的神圣性。鉴于现代社交生活的自我中心本质和个人便利至上，我们不再在同一天聚集投票。我们大致按自己方便的时间和地点投票——邮寄、亲自到场、提前、推迟。愤世嫉俗者会说，选举日作为全国团结的场合在日历上被超级碗星期天所取代，这一事实传递了关于我们民主健康状况的重要信息。在公众意识中，我们相聚行使公民权利的日子，已被我们相聚被动地塞满食物、并由身着氨纶的大块头男人们取乐的日子所取代。
We have done our best in recent years to erode the sacral aspect of this ceremony. In keeping with the solipsistic nature of modern social life and the primacy of personal convenience, we no longer come together to vote on the same day. We vote more or less when and where we want—by mail, in person, early, late. Cynics will say it conveys something important about the health of our democracy that Election Day has been replaced in the calendar as the occasion for national togetherness by Super Bowl Sunday. The day we come together to exercise our rights as citizens has been superseded in the public consciousness by the day we come together to be passively fed piles of food and entertained by large men wearing spandex.
我们或许能够承受投票的象征性国家团结的退化。但我怀疑，我们能否承受选举本应促成的实际政治团结遭到系统性破坏。
We can survive the degradation of the symbolic national unity of voting. I’m doubtful we can survive the systematic undermining of the practical political unity elections are supposed to induce.
选举的本意是这样的：我们经历一场漫长的竞选，期间至少在象征意义上，我们就议题和候选人展开争斗。但这一切在选举日结束。结果赋予获胜者合法性，落败者也会承认这一点。当我们站错队时，可能会忍不住引用加州民主党人迪克·塔克的话。他在竞选州参议员失利时曾有名言：“人民已经发声了，这些混蛋。”但我们应当接受这一裁决，并做出必要的改变，以确保下次有不同结果。
Elections are meant to work like this: We have a long campaign in which we fight, figuratively at least, over the issues and candidates. But that ends on Election Day. The results confer legitimacy on the winners, acknowledged by the losers too. When we come out on the wrong side, we might be tempted to echo the words of Dick Tuck, the California Democrat who famously said, on losing an election to the state Senate: “The people have spoken, the bastards.”But we are supposed to accept the verdict and make the changes we need to ensure a different result next time.
这种耐心，作为一种典型的民主美德，几乎已荡然无存。如今，争斗在选举日便已拉开帷幕。在修辞上、法律上、程序上，有时甚至以暴力手段，我们否认胜选者的合法性。
This patience, a quintessential democratic virtue, is almost gone. Now the fighting starts on Election Day. Rhetorically, legally, procedurally, sometimes violently, we deny the winners’ legitimacy.
最大的原因在于，当修辞将每一次选举都描述为关乎国家生存的关键时刻时，失败在字面上就变得无法容忍。
The biggest reason is that when, as the rhetoric has it, every election is an existential moment for the nation, defeat is literally intolerable.
“这生平最重要的选举”这种说法几十年来一直是惯常的夸张。它已被“民主本身在接受检验”或“如果结果不对，这将是你最后一次投票”所取代。这种生死攸关的选举氛围，因胜选者倾向于将胜利解读为按其意愿精确施政的邀请，而不顾政治多元社会固有的多元主义，而进一步加剧。
“This is the most important election in my lifetime” was routine hyperbole for decades. It has been replaced by “Democracy itself is on the ballot” or “This will be the last election you vote in if it goes the wrong way.”This life-or-death quality of every election has been compounded by the tendency of winners to interpret their victory as an invitation to govern precisely how they want, with no deference to the pluralism inherent in a politically diverse society.
正如败选者必须学会接受选举结果，胜选者也必须如此。他们必须接受的是，他们的胜利——尤其是在美国如今常态化的势均力敌的选举中——并非是对他们所持每一个极端立场的授权。乔·拜登和民主党在2020年赢得了一场势均力敌的选举，却表现得如同1936年的富兰克林·罗斯福。唐纳德·特朗普和共和党在2024年赢得了一场势均力敌的选举，却表现得如同1984年的罗纳德·里根。
Just as losers must learn to accept the result of elections, so too must winners. What they have to accept is that their victory—especially in the close elections that are now routine in America—isn’t a mandate for every maximalist position they hold. Joe Biden and the Democrats won a close election in 2020 and acted like Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. Donald Trump and the Republicans won a close election in 2024 and acted like Ronald Reagan in 1984.
这不仅与宪法所依据的原则背道而驰。它不仅损害我们的公民健康，更是一种荒谬的施政合法性做法。
This is not only inconsistent with the principles that underpin the Constitution. It is not only damaging to our civic health, it is a nonsensical approach to governing legitimacy.
试想：如果如预期那样，民主党在周二夺得至少一院的控制权，这将是连续第七次联邦选举，也是过去11次选举中的第10次，出现众议院、参议院或总统职位的党派控制权易手。
Consider this: If, as expected, the Democrats take control of at least one chamber of Congress on Tuesday, it will be the seventh straight federal election, and the 10th in the past 11, in which party control of one house or the presidency has flipped.
除非你认为美国人突然集体患上了双相情感障碍，每两年就要求国家重塑一次，否则你不可能想象，在目前这种情况下，你的当选代表着对剧烈变革的授权。如果你确实这样解读你的当选，你的党派将在两年后再次被选民抛弃——就像两年前你们被抛弃一样。
Unless you think Americans have fallen victim to a sudden collective bipolarity that demands national reinvention every two years, you can’t possibly imagine that your election in these circumstances represents a mandate for a dramatic change. If you do interpret your election in that way, your party will be turfed out again in two years—as you were turfed out two years ago.
如果民主党周二获胜，我担心，就像一群陷入疯狂的人一样，我们将继续重复做同一件事，却期待不同的结果。特朗普总统和许多共和党人将谴责甚至可能质疑选举结果。民主党将坚称他们的胜利是一种授权，并着手做许多没人投过票支持的事情。与此同时，即使“蓝色浪潮”意义重大，国家也不会有太大不同。选民会对高物价感到不满，对总统的过度行为感到不安；他们投票并非为了重塑美国的资本主义制度，也非为了彻底改革宪法。
If the Democrats do win on Tuesday, I fear that, like a people in the grip of insanity, we are on course to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. President Trump and many Republicans will denounce and maybe even challenge the results. Democrats will insist their victory is a mandate and set about doing lots of things nobody voted for. Meanwhile, even if the blue wave is meaningful, the country won’t be that different. Voters will be dissatisfied with high prices and uneasy with the excesses of the president; they won’t be voting to reinvent America’s capitalist system or to overhaul the Constitution.
在一个理智的世界里，明智的政客会如实解读选举结果。共和党人会倾听并反思本党的轨迹。民主党人会倾听，并严格限制自己在制衡政府、监督问责方面的行动。
In a sane world, wise politicians would interpret the results for what they are. Republicans would listen and rethink their party’s trajectory. Democrats would listen and stick narrowly to counterbalancing the administration and holding it accountable.
这要求过高吗？几乎可以肯定是的。卡尔·冯·克劳塞维茨曾说，战争是政治通过其他手段的延续。我们还要多久才能停止试图颠倒这句箴言，把选举变成战场？
Is that too much to ask? Almost certainly. War is the continuation of politics by other means, Carl von Clausewitz said. How much longer can we go on trying to invert that wisdom by turning elections into battlefields?
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