What are the signs that democracy is failing in the United States. Here's a comprehensive list:
- In 2020 Donald Trump tried to forcibly steal an election he lost.
This is true, and a substantial chunk of the Republican Party and Fox News eagerly helped him. That's about as anti-democratic as it gets. But also keep in mind that (a) they failed, (b) every court case went against them, and (c) all the folks involved have been indicted in state and federal courts, some of them multiple times.
Am I missing anything? I don't think so, but let me take on a few common arguments that are sure to come up:
The Electoral College is anti-democratic. It's not, really, but in any case it's been around since the beginning of the Republic. A liberal Democrat won the Electoral College in the most recent election.
The Senate is anti-democratic. Again, not really, but it's also been around since the beginning of the Republic. Democrats currently control it.
The Supreme Court is very conservative. True, but not because of any failure of democracy. It's partly due to happenstance and partly due to hardball politics.
The Dobbs decision rolled back abortion rights. This is bad, but not anti-democratic. Hell, even a lot of liberal legal experts thought Roe v. Wade was bad law.
A small rump of Republican extremists has gummed up Congress. They've tried to gum up Congress. For various reasons, they've mostly failed.
That same rump is trying to impeach Joe Biden for no particular reason. Yes, and it's nauseating. But they failed and mostly made laughingstocks of themselves in the process.
After the 2020 elections Republicans tried to undermine the voting process. This has a kernel of truth in some of the voting laws passed in red states, but it's been going on for decades. Most of it is fairly ordinary politics, and it's never succeeded.
Donald Trump will weaponize the Justice Department, the federal bureaucracy, and the military if he wins the White House in November. Maybe, maybe not, but corruption is different from anti-democratic. Anyway, he'll need help from Congress for most of this. And he has to win a democratically held election first.
Conservatives are very loud and annoying. Yes they are, and I'd add that they're unprincipled, paranoid, racist, and meanspirited. But that's a whole different kettle of fish than being anti-democratic.
Conservatives keep winning elections. Indeed they do, but in entirely democratic ways. This is more a failure of liberalism than anything else.
I know, I know: I'm being Pollyanna. Maybe so. But Republicans have had anti-democratic impulses for decades and it's never amounted to much. Mostly they're just infuriated at the fact that they keep losing. Women, minorities, atheists, gays, poor people, and the disabled have all made steady progress despite the best efforts of conservatives to stop them. Conservatives have little to show for their efforts of the past half century except tax cuts for the rich.¹ That's small solace for most of them.
Anyway, look around. Look at the country compared to ten or twenty or thirty years ago. Does it seem less democratic? More authoritarian? I'd say just the opposite. Daily life has become so democratic it almost hurts, and the heavy hand of the police state has been slowly but steadily reined in. That's why cops are so mad these days. It's true that we're more polarized and angry than usual, but that's got nothing to do with the amount of freedom or liberty we enjoy.² We are freer, richer, and, yes, more liberal than we've ever been.
¹And, more recently, abortion. But that's turning into a Pyrrhic victory which they don't seem to be taking much satisfaction in. Public opinion hasn't changed; the number of abortions hasn't changed; and politically the whole thing has been a disaster.
²It's largely because of Fox News, but that's a topic for another day.
I'll be the Eeyore who points out that somewhere around 45% of the electorate will vote for the fascist.
In 2016 the popular theory was "If only they knew who he really was!" which now just sounds like "If only the Tzar knew!" for its naivete.
Everyone knows exactly who Trump is, who DeSantis is, who Abbot is, and that the entire Republican Party from top to bottom is eagerly longing for the end of democracy.
and that the entire Republican Party from top to bottom is eagerly longing for the end of democracy.
Top to bottom? That's simply not so, and I write this as someone who believes Kevin Drum does tend to be a bit blithe about these things. Many Republicans would just as soon see Trump in a pine box, and be done with him. But they support him because they're afraid of their voters. Or they just want tax cuts or business-friendly environmental regulations. And some Republicans (say, low information ones) honestly don't associate Trump with the end of democracy (they're low information Republicans, and they exist in large numbers). Indeed, these people universally claim it is Democrats who are anti-democracy, anti-freedom. They're clearly stupid and wrong. They're also sincere. Also, it's clear to me from observing US conservatives for a long time that many of them genuinely believe that Democrats engage in widespread voter fraud, and hence they think what reasonable people regard as unfair curbs on voting are actually high-minded policies to protect the sanctity of our elections.
I do agree the hardcore Bannonite-Stephen MIller wing is contemptuous of democratic norms, sure. But they don't constitute the whole of the party. Nor, probably, even a particularly large portion of it.
Deliberately remaining ignorant while promoting anti-democratic policies isn't a get out jail free card. Their belief that Democrats are cheating, without a shred of evidence, indicts them.
Deliberately remaining ignorant while promoting anti-democratic policies isn't a get out jail free card.
I'm not claiming it's a get out of jail free card. Bad consequences are bad consequences. If we one day lose our democracy, the fact that ignorance played a large role won't be much consolation. Still, many on this thread seems to be of the opinion that we've already lost it. I don't think that's the case at all, hence my substantial agreement with Kevin on this. Also (again), enacting policies you or I find repugnant isn't the same as lack of democracy.
But I'm not sure your "deliberately" works here as an explanation. I have no doubt some MAGA folks are deliberate in their refusal to reckon with events, sure. But I believe it's abundantly clear many of them are, uh, sincere in their obtuseness. They're low information voters. Read H. L. Mencken some time.There's another version of this I associate with better educated rightists: they honestly believe Trump is largely a harmless blowhard who will give them the policies they desire. They don't, in the main, truly think he'll extinguish our democracy. Are they smugly stupid and complacent in this belief? Without a doubt! (I'd put John Roberts in this category, for instance). But again, they're sincere in their smug stupidity.
There are many genuinely nefarious players at the top of the GOP food chain who actively disdain democratic norms. Some even quite openly (eg, Yarvin, Bannon, etc). But this is a distinct minority. And yes, the anti-democracy forces have somehow managed to lose three elections in a row (many more if we count special elections).
"Their belief that Democrats are cheating, without a shred of evidence, indicts them."
Good point!
If the results are the same there’s no need to really nitpicks the reasons why. Fuck em all to hell and back.
Not every Republican is a Fascist. That's just ridiculous. And another example of why words like "Fascist", "Communist/Socialist", and "Fundamentalist" should be banned from all contemporary discourse other than where they are literally true (e.g., Mussolini's party, the CCP, etc.)
This latest obsessions with arresting and roughing up students and/or protestors does remind us that establishment forces focused on standard establishment priorities are still very much in play, and not only undemocratic in these particular cases but irrational (and borderline stupid in the "dense" usage of the word).
"Hysterical" also comes to mind...calling in the National Guard on student demonstrators lol?
It's reminiscent of propaganda op. The children aren't behaving, that's easy - beat them! Instead of dealing with what they are complaining about, because it's uncomfortable for those with levers.
Oh well, history doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme.
"Conservatives keep winning elections. Indeed they do, but in entirely democratic ways."
FALSE. Conservatives (aka GOP) won the presidency in 2000 and 2016 without the most votes Those elections weren't for a state assembly person or county sheriff, but for the highest office in the land.
Democracy does not always equal winning with the most votes by individual voters, as best evidenced by our democratic republic, which was designed to have different levels of "voters" for specifically sought out reasons (part of that great debate about potential dangers of majority rule, especially in regards to protecting rights and interests of those not in present majority).
Many may disagree with and want to reform this electoral college system now, which is the stuff of democracy and requires rallying the people to pass an amendment to that effect (which the people of this country have done time and again over the years to improve and strengthen our democracy).
Also interesting that a 2/3 majority was pretty much seen as the supermajority that was big enough to get it's way via constitutional amendment, while anything less than that was a more transient majority that should have much less power to change things.
“Democracy does not always equal winning with the most votes by individual voters…”
Um it kind of does though. Like I understand there are democracies out there where the ruling party sometimes didn’t quite get the highest number of votes. But they usually didn’t get the least number of votes either. And it’s usually not the case that a party can rule for decades without gaining a majority of votes in most elections. If you can consistently win without getting a majority of votes, I don’t think you can call yourself a democracy. So now we’re just haggling over “how many times can a party win power while also losing popular votes and still have people call them a democracy” which really isn’t a good defense of democracy. A system in which the majority has little to no say over what’s going on for multiple election cycles isn’t much different than a dictatorship. After all, North Koreans still have elections too, even as the majority there have had zero say in how their country is run for about 90 years now. Are they too a democracy?
the GOP did not get the least number of votes in Y2K or 2016 either. Small parties like the libertarians, the Greens etc, did.
You forget that senate misallocation is unamendable.
Conservatives (aka GOP) won the presidency in 2000 and 2016 without the most votes
I agree there's very strong evidence Bush stole the 2000 election courtesy of judicial corruption. However, the 2016 election was won fair and square by Donald Trump according to the rules of our system. It's true those rules don't consistently prioritize majoritarian outcomes as much as I'd like. Hell, I think we have the worst constitution of all rich countries, and would dearly like to see us switch to the Westminster model.
But some departure from purist majoritarianism doesn't automatically equate to a violation of democratic norms, and, needless to say, a process exists for modifying our constitution if we want to change the rules.
Thank you, no, no Westminster system. That has its own problems: caretaker governments that in some cases (Belgium, Nether lands) can last a year or more; grossly disproportionate influence of minor parties in coalitions (Otzma Yehudit, National Religious Party–Religious Zionism); instability (PM Liz Truss).
I’m for some serious reform — national popular vote, preferably by amendment, but I’ll take the Compact; national voting-rights legislation. Since the change to popular election of Senators, it’s clear that Senators represent the people of a state. So passage of a bill requiring a simple majority should require affirmative votes by Senators representing a majority of the national population; and similarly for supermajorities.
Remember that the Westminster system splits the roles of head of government and head of state. Such systems, especially Westminster itself, tend to have low turnover in the head of state and more frequent changes in head of government. This is not instability; it's democracy in action.
To the extent that the head of state has any responsibilities beyond the ceremonial and non-discretionary, that would itself be an undemocratic feature. And if the duties are purely ceremonial, it is hardly stabilizing.
The UK happens to be a monarchy, which is indeed undemocratic. However, many Western European countries, such as France and Germany, are republics with parliamentary systems, and their heads of state tend to be elected for fixed terms, whereas their heads of government hold office at the mercy of parliament and sometimes turnover can be quite rapid. That's democracy in action.
To the extent that the head of state has any responsibilities beyond the ceremonial and non-discretionary, that would itself be an undemocratic feature.
This seems a completely unsupported assertion. If enough voters think "Hey, it would be a good idea to limit our head of state's role to presiding over state banquets and ribbon-cutting ceremonies" why is that "undemocratic"? It's a departure from the US practice, to be sure, but it hardly seems undemocratic. It's just different, is all (and happens to be the model used by the vast majority of democracies, only a few of which have a head of state who commands political power or makes policy).
And if the duties are purely ceremonial, it is hardly stabilizing.
Another unsupported assertion. Are you seriously claiming Denmark or New Zealand are unstable compared to the US or France?
Thank you, no, no Westminster system. That has its own problems: caretaker governments that in some cases (Belgium, Nether lands) can last a year or more
Every system has its problems. But the evidence is pretty clear presidential systems are more problematic than the parliamentary model.
https://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/juan-linz
Also, I hear the example of Belgium brought up a lot. People say, "They didn't have a government for over two years!" But they did have a functioning government. They just needed a long time to form a new administration. And meanwhile taxes got collected, bills got paid, hospitals and supermarkets and public transport and the post office all operated just fine.
Hysterias are fascinating...at times they've resulted in burning innocent people at the stake as witches, clearly evil and dim-witted behavior no matter how you may rationalize it, but just as now some of them likely truly believed they were protecting the community, similar to how this is supposed to protect Jews in our schools and communities, which would be an admirable endeavor in a truly antisemitic environment (or one actually creeping with evil witches), but this is far from that as many Jewish students themselves explain...this is mostly overblown and the powers that be would never be this all-in to protect other minorities (so in this sense very aberrant behavior for them).
I think it's cover, because for the administration dealing with their complaints and demands is very uncomfortable. Are we in Israel's corner no matter what? Or are we on the side of never again, for anybody. Which, by the way, we have a poor record.
And it's shorthand for the Conservatives - look at these out of control kids! Get control, get control, get control.
Is this deliberate trolling on Kevin's part? The reasons why the electoral college and the Senate are anti-Democratic institutions (not to mention the Supreme Court) have been comprehensively explained many times, most recently in a series of essays at Outside the Beltway. Airily responding that "they're not, really", with no attempt to substantiate the denial,means Kevin can't be regarded as a serious commentator, on this issue at least.
Anti-democratic is the wrong term, what is really meant is non-majoritarian.
That seems to me to be a more precise formulation.
It’s not “democracy” that’s in trouble, it’s that, as someone said above, the country was formed with only a percentage of citizens even entitled to vote and we have never gotten near full turnout like many other first world countries.
As a mathematical result of that, it’s always possible to win elections or any particular election with less than 50% of eligible voters voting for a candidate.
I don’t know why that anyone on here, including Kevin, continues to throw up posts which deny the numbers of gun nuts, anti abortionists, know nothing anti regulation. types, racists, anti intellectuals and anti taxers in the United States. The above list ads up to 70 million, minus super dumb republicans who aren’t paying attention to anything due to senility.
It is not (come on!) that there are only 20 million of those people, and there is some fluke that if only we could discover it leads to progress. Trump is indeed, the absolute best candidate this group has ever seen and may ever see, as he gives them exactly what they want- which is also his greatest skill, if you can call it a skill.
For this coalition, democracy is only working for them if they get what they want. If they win an election.
Kevin, continues to throw up posts which deny the numbers of gun nuts, anti abortionists, know nothing anti regulation. types, racists, anti intellectuals and anti taxers in the United States.
He's not denying we have a lot of those. But they're not an example of "anti-democracy" as such. They're an example of "people with very bad policy preferences."
Democracy is not just limited to majority rule by individual votes, in fact we as the first modern democracy established a hybrid system of individual and state votes to protect against the tyranny of the majority (and to maintain individual state sovereignty where warranted), still very much a representative form of government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_republic
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism
The alternative to Tyranny of the Majority is Tyranny of the Minority, which is almost always worse, because minorities have to bend heaven and earth to retain power over the long term.
+1
"I know, I know: I'm being Pollyanna."
Gramsci said somewhere that the right attitude for political struggle is a combination of pessimism of intellect and optimism of will. I think you get closer to striking the right balance, most of the time, than do most pundits. Which is one of the reasons Cal Pundit is still one of my first reads, day in, day out.
That said, I do have a few quibbles:
1. The fact that a given institution has been around since the beginning of the Republic doesn't do much to exonerate it as not anti-democratic. We've had to do away with a number of original institutions, precisely because they proved, over time, to be quite anti-democratic. There's no particular reason to think that work is finished.
2. In politics, the practical meaning of certain institutional forms is subject to change as circumstances change. The Electoral College is a great example of this. For a century & a quarter, its anti-democratic potential lay dormant (meaning, it didn't cause the election result to diverge from what it would have been had the popular vote been decisive).
Then, for more-or-less accidental reasons of political geography, it overruled the clear popular vote outcome twice in five cycles, and it was not particularly close either time: Gore's margin over GW Bush was more than triple that of JFK's over Nixon, and HRC's margin over Trump was over 5x larger than Gore's.
This really can't keep happening without a grave loss of democratic legitimacy, and the 30 cycle stretch when it didn't happen, being a distant memory at this point, doesn't really change that.
3. The Senate is a similar case, except that its anti-democratic character is so notorious it was literally part of the reason the country fell into Civil War in 1860, and also part of the reason it failed to carry through a successful democratic reconstruction in the decades following that war, or reattempt such a thing, for a century thereafter. If the principle of "one person one vote" has any value in one's theory of democracy, then the Senate has to be regarded as an anti-democratic institution par excellence.
4. And so with respect to SCOTUS. And, again, this is no surprise. The Court, when an active participant in the political life of the nation, has been a bulwark of anti-democratic power far more often than it has been a force for liberal change.
Roughly speaking, it did nothing of any great consequence from the Founding until 1857, at which point it (too) helped precipitate the Civil War, via what is still probably the most arbitrary & undemocratic ruling in its history.
After the war, until 1937, it focused on vitiating the plain intent of the Reconstruction Amendments, and also twisting the 14th, in particular, into a spirited defense of industrial capitalism (against popular regulatory initiatives) worthy of the Executive Committee of the Bourgeoisie.
In short, the Court has almost always functioned as an anti-democratic force in our institutional framework, with the notable (and notably brief) exception of the Warren Court.
And so it goes.
You are wrong about #2. The first EC over popular vote victory was John Quincy Adams vs Andrew Jackson. The EC did give us a better president for four years, but it only delayed the inevitable as Jackson won the next two elections.
I have to disagree, Kevin
1: The Electoral College. It has defied democracy five times, only the first of which worked as intended, by replacing a demagogue with an egghead. But the demagogue won the next two elections, so it really didn't accomplish much. The next time it happened, Republicans sold out blacks for two generations to break the electoral logjam. The third was largely irrelevant, and the loser won four years later. The fourth was Bush/Gore, which was probably bad but we can pretend it was neutral. Trump was obviously bad. If we are going to betray our democratic ideals, we should be getting something amazing in return. Instead, the EC has given us worse presidents as often as not and never materially improved things.
The Senate: Republicans currently have a 3-4 seat advantage relative to the popular vote. Based on the last three cycles, Democrats would have a 53-47 advantage and Manchin and Sinema would be pissing into a hurricane for all their relevance. This matters, a lot.
SCOTUS: Republicans have held the court for FIFTY YEARS. If it wasn't for the two items above, only two of their current justices - Roberts and Alito - would be seated. I don't know how you can possibly dismiss this obvious and egregious affront to democracy.
Bush was definitely the worse choice, the single issue of climate change overrides anything else.
We do not know how political history would have played out if Gore had become president in 2000. A Republican might well have been appointing justices in 2008-16 or even 2008-20.
Just here for the ratio
Gerrymandering anyone? Sure the Dems do it too, but at the state level, it is grotesquely tilted by Republicans, for Republicans.
It would have been good to begin with some kind of standard as to what makes things anti-Democratic. Above there are things listed that give more power to some voters than others, and the claim is than made that they are not anti-Democratic.
Drum also writes as if almost everybody who tried to overturn the election has been punished for it. But more than half of the Republicans in Congress voted to disenfranchise the voters of the state of Pennsylvania. And they have not been punished at all, in fact they have since moved into the majority. The same is true of the majority of state attorneys general, they backed a clearly garbage suit to disenfranchise the voters of the state of Pennsylvania.
And the guy who led the assault on Democracy is leading polls (albeit barely) to be the next president of the US. It should go without saying that there is not much of a deterrence to stealing an election when the guy who steals the election has the support of almost half the country.
When 43% of the country supports a guy who tried to orchestrate a coup, democracy is under threat. And a not insignificant percent of people seem open to joining them.
+10
Kevin is being polyannish and he doesn't seem to get the meaning of many of the developments.
It's true that the US is becoming more liberal socially as women and non-whites gain rights (which they still don't fully have in practice), but the reaction has intensified as Republicans use bigotry to win elections. This is what has increased polarization, not economic factors or Trump. Trump has basically just jumped on the bandwagon of using race and religion - his "populist" promises are 95% fake. This could well be working toward an explosion of some sort, which could actually put an end to democracy as it has been known.
The de-factor tendency of the Supreme Court to legislate has increased. This is not just due to current Republicans on the Court. The Court re-interpreted the post-Civil War Amendments to establish "separate but equal". Then that was overturned in Brown v Board and other decisions. The temporarily liberal Court went on to decide Roe v Wade based on a reinterpretation of Search and Seizure - or something. Republican Justices upped their activism in response. Over a long period the usually right-leaning Court basically invented the idea of corporations as citizens, culminating so far in Citizens United. Republican Justices saw a chance to decide the 2000 election and took it - there is no reason to think they wouldn't do it again. As Congress becomes more disfunctional (itself a sign of deteriorating democracy) more decisions have devolved upon the Court. How is having the Court decide more things not a loss of democracy?
Donald Trump has basically said that he will "weaponize the Justice Department, the federal bureaucracy, and the military if he wins the White House in November". Has any candidate ever promised that before? And this time he will definitely have some real organized backing, which was lacking after his surprise victory in 2024.
And so on. A number of things have to happen besides just a Trump victory, but ending democracy is far more probable than it has been, maybe ever.
Republicans don't "have little to show for their efforts of the past half century" economically. By getting votes with bigotry, they caused a violent hard right in economic policy. There was a huge difference between the policies of the Johnson and Reagan administrations or even between Nixon and Reagan. This was probably the major factor in the increase in inequality and stagnation of wages in the last 50 years although other things were going on. As wealth has been concentrated the political power of the wealthy has increased - isn't that a decrease of democracy?
Republican dominance of the economy is still going on. With the aid of the MSM, which are actually corporatist economically, and who mischaracterize Trump as a "populist", Democrats are getting blamed for the inequality and other real economic problems caused by Republican policies, not to mention the totally fake perceptions about the economy that are propagated by the right-wing media.
+10
You didn't mention:
* 45% of the electorate is voting for the anti-democratic party.
* gerrymandering
* Citizens United
The simple test for how things are getting worse:
Goldwater didn't get elected. Trump did.
The Senate is anti-democratic by design, and it will get worse. By 2040, 15 states with 30 Senators will contain 70 percent of the population. The other 70 Senators will be elected from states that are on average more rural, older, and whiter than the rest of the country. And the filibuster is still there for most things, too.
Even with the filibuster eliminated, is any Democratic President ever again going to be able to get anything other than a right of center nominee on the Supreme Court if the other side decides to play "hardball", as you put it?
"(a) they failed, (b) every court case went against them, and (c) all the folks involved have been indicted in state and federal courts, some of them multiple times."
The court cases were never meant to be won. They were meant to create an appearance of a case. Donnie's fallback with any lawyer. "If you won't investigate, then just say you're investigating."
The folks were only indicted because the coup failed.
All you're left with is they failed.
Meanwhile, we're back to a very close election with the same people, and there's no illusion any more that Congress will impeach Donnie if he wins.
Unless you invoke conterfactuals like a Mike Pence on board with Trump's coup and Larry Hogan not sending in the National Guard from Maryland, there was no way that the Jan 6 fracas could have ended up with Trump retaining the presidency. As "coups" go this was the Bay of Pigs and the Beerhall Putsch: a ludicrous failure.
Kevin is right if we are talking about today and--maybe--tomorrow. But he leaves out a few "details".
1. While the senate and electoral college are not strictly undemocratic they are far from perfectly designed and, importantly these and several other factors all favor the same party.
2. This is compounded by the two party system which is of course particularly tenuous when the situation is polarized.
3. While none of our institutions are strictly undemocratic the GOP is hostile to democracy and business elites are also right along with the GOP. Which means a GOP president right how, let alone the one we are going to get if the GOP wins in November, will put the whole democracy in real peril.
4. The Supreme Court is corrupt and its majority is clearly anti-democratic.
Paul Weyrich in 1980: "I don't want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
https://twitter.com/ariberman/status/1245702562092908546?lang=en
Sounds like a healthy democracy to me!
No connection between this strategy working and anti-democratic features in the constitution, because there are none.
A few things you missed (some have been mentioned in other comments):
1) Gerrymandering
Some states (like Michigan) have passed redistricting amendments to lessen this. It's still hitting some states. Is it worse than historical gerrymandering? Probably not, but historically, we weren't all that democratic. Is it worse than gerrymandering in the recent past (last 50 years)? I don't know. Seems to have gotten worse lately, but it's hard to gauge.
2) States changing election laws to make it easier for states to manipulate vote counting/electors (and thus help with the next 1/6)
Reporting has dropped off on this. I'm not sure what's been passed where. I know Georgia was changing their laws. It's probably worth looking into.
3) Florida attacking free speech
This seems to be fizzling out (yay) but it is something you have to count. You can't have a democracy if the state can prohibit or punish political speech. People sometimes overreact on free speech issues, but this one's like 1/6: extremely serious, but mitigated by the fact that it seems to be failing.
All in all things don't appear to be going too badly at the moment, but I'd rather not wait until a successful 1/6 to start worrying about the subversion of democracy.