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We are three weeks out from the midterm elections and by all accounts many races are within the margin of error. It's pretty clear that the "red tsunami" everyone was expecting has not materialized. Republicans are still favored to win (at least in the House) but it's looking more and more as if it will be a very narrow victory if they do and there's a decent chance they won't.

So, of course, Democrats are going on television arguing that everyone is doing it wrong. It's just how they roll. The latest disagreements come from those who think candidates should focus on the old saw, "It's the economy, stupid," because inflation has people so spooked. Sen. Bernie Sanders appeared on "Meet the Press" over the weekend and gave his familiar spiel about income inequality and big corporations, suggesting that some Trump voters would be open to that argument. He begged Democrats to focus more intently on the economy and attack the Republican threats to Social Security and Medicare.

Others believe that the best issue for Democrats this fall is the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which has already been shown to motivate women of all demographics in the primaries and special elections. And some believe the fascist turn of the GOP and its assault on democracy is the most important issue and must be addressed head-on.

If only we were living in a world in which one could pick and choose issues of importance to the American people from an la carte menu. But that's just not where we are as a country. The Democrats have to be prepared to address all those things and more.

No doubt the economy is a difficult issue this year, even though Democrats have an excellent legislative record to run on and the best job market in 40 years. But there's simply no denying that inflation is a big problem for everyone.Democratic strategist Mike Lux has circulated a memobased on polling from Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake thatrecommends five economic points for candidates to emphasize. The first is to grab the Bernie Sanders complaints about multinational corporations Big Oil, Big Food, Big Shipping, etc. which are making record profits in this time of inflation by gouging consumers, and point out that the Republicans have nothing to offer to tame these abuses, which is true. (This reportin the Washington Post suggests that swing voters already understand this.)

Lux also suggests that candidates remind people that the Democrats are lowering drug prices and health insurance premiums, point out that Social Security recipients are going to get the biggest raise they've gotten in 40 years, inform voters that manufacturing is coming back to America (which they probably don't realize) and, finally, promise to fight for reinstating the child tax credit that has now expired. All of taht certainly beats the stale GOP talking points about cutting taxes and "entitlements."

The abortion issue is straightforward. In the wake of theDobbs decision, Republicans all over the country have raced to restrict abortion rights in the most draconian way possible, in some states banning abortion altogether. Stories of rape and incest survivors being denied care are everywhere. Women often can't get needed medication and procedures because ill-informed zealots have drafted sloppy laws that make it impossible for doctors to perform their duties without risking legal jeopardy. It's a mess, and Democrats are morally bound to talk about it.

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Meanwhile, on the other side we are seeing a full-fledged racist and antisemitic festival of hate used as the primary motivator to get their base out to vote. Take a look at this ad that has played throughout the Major League Baseball playoffs on Fox, which, according to Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer, is brought to you by a group run by Trump's "immigration czar" Stephen Miller:

That makes theinfamous Willie Horton ad which ran only briefly 34 years ago, because it was considered too blatantly racist look like child's play.

And now we have the former president of the United States blithely posting antisemitic tropes on his struggling social media platform, demanding that American Jews be grateful for everything he has supposedly done for them and suggesting they get with the program "before it's too late." Too late for what, he doesn't say.

So yes, Republicans have gone back to the deep well of racism once again, obviously believing that's what motivates their base. They aren't wrong.

When you see all of that laid out, you might think we were dealing with a standard issues-based election, more or less, however critical those issues are and however extreme the Republicans have become. Certainly, the media is trying to treat it that way. But this is an election like no other and it's got nothing to do with "issues" in the normal sense. The Republicans are intent upon electing hundreds of election deniers to office, and are bent on destroying our election system as we've known it for the last half-century or more.

Mainstream media is eager to treat this as a standard issues-based election, no matter how extreme the Republicans have become.But this is an election like no other and it's got nothing to do with "issues" in the normal sense.

Bolts Magazine has compiled a comprehensive analysis of the election deniers running for secretary of state around the country. Seventeen out of 35 Republican nominees have either denied the results of the 2020 election, sought to overturn them or refused to affirm the legitimacy of the outcome. Six of those 17 candidates are in crucial battleground states. There are hundreds of candidates in down-ballot races that feature similarly delusional or malicious candidates.

Plenty of big Republican names running on election denial as well, even if some of them are willing to modulate that just a little. When asked if they think Joe Biden won the 2020 election they'll respond by saying things like, "Joe Biden is the president," which I guess they think fools some people. But everyone knows what they mean. They are making it clear that, like their mentor Donald Trump, they will only accept election results if they win:

Donald Trumpplotted the Big Lie long before the 2020 election, and it had been on his mind since at least 2016. That was clear enough shown in real time and was recently laid out in detail by the House Jan. 6 committee. Any Republican officials who are not fully on board with this dangerous attack on the election system are seemingly paralyzed and unwilling to deny it.

The MAGA movement is openly assaulting democracy. Yet as we head into the final days of this campaign, mainstream media keeps trying to portray this as just another election. Gas prices are going up and down and Republicans are running scary ads with Black and brown people and threatening to cut Social Security, all of which is important and must be addressed. But none of that will matter if these authoritarian, anti-democratic election deniers win their races. There is nothing ordinary about any of this. I don't know whether the voters understand the true implications of this election, and I'm not sure the media does either.

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This election isn't about inflation or abortion. It's about whether democracy can survive - Salon

The recent riots in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, the twenty-two-year-old Kurdish woman murdered by the Islamic Republics chastity police, have unleashed a torrent of speculations about the regimes future.

Some observers have expressed hope that the widespread protests could result in a regime change. Others, pointing out the brutality of the theocracy and its successful history of suppressing previous unrest, are pessimistic. Some have claimed that even if the regime is repudiated, the future will not look any better because the Iranian people cannot sustain a democracy. The article Irans Empty Uprising, penned by Sohrab Ahmari, stands out in this context.

According to Ahmari, Iranians have a long history of unsuccessful attempts to implement democracy. He implies that much of this failure stems from a political culture where people need someone in authority to tell them what to do. As heput it, I fear what it might portend should it succeed because the Iranian society and political culture demands a living source of authority, making democracy unviable. Furthermore, Ahmari contends that Iran is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society where reaching a democratic consensus is impossible.

Ahmaris article is troublesome on different levels. First, it echoes Edward Saids claim that Western historians applied a Eurocentric perspective to the Middle East. This so-called Orientalist prism led them to believe that the region was too backward to nurture civilized values, including democracy. This view is doubly ironic because the author himself is from Iran.

Second, Ahmari seems to forget that the 1979 Islamic revolution was broad-based and produced a reasonably representative government under Mahdi Bazargan and then Abolhassan Banisadr. Sadly, the democratic impulse was snuffed by the Islamists who appropriated the revolution and brutally eliminated those who disagreed with them. As is well known, President Ebrahim Raisi was implicated in the murder of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. The highly respected international lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who investigated the massacre, found it to be the second-worst violation of prisoners rights since the end of World War II, superseded only by the mass killing in Srebrenica, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Despite the personal dangers, there was a pushback from ordinary people who rebelled against their authoritarian religious rulers. Today, Iran has seen flourishing civic groups, something that was manifested in significant protest movements like the Green Movement in 2009, the environmentalist movement, and the human rights and womens rights movements. Public and intellectual discourse on social and political issues, such as the relationship between religion and state, state and civil society, and Irans future ideological orientation and identity, have also proliferated.

Third, Ahmari seems to believe that Irans multiethnicity dooms the country to disintegration. Essentially, this echoes the argument of the government, which invariably portrayed ethnic minorities (Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Azeris) as separatists who threatened the integrity of the state. The reality has been very different. During the past four decades, not only have ethnic minorities been widely and grossly neglected, but they have suffered the brunt of the regimes repression. The governments discrimination in allocating public resources hit ethnic minorities particularly hard. It has massively diverted state resources away from Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and Azeris to the Persian Shiite population. The unequal distribution of resources resulted in deep poverty in provinces home to ethnic minorities, far more profound than the level of poverty among other Iranians.

Ethnic minorities are not allowed to operate schools in their native language. Instead, they are forced to use Persian in all formal settings. Ethnic minorities have regularly been subject to ridicule in the official media, state-sponsored programs, and school textbooks.

The minorities have struggled to persuade the rulers in Tehran to treat them equally and end state oppression. Unlike many other minorities around the world, they have never adopted secessionism. What is more, the current round of upheaval has brought different ethnic and religious groups closer together.

Given the civic maturation of the society and the non-secessionist sentiments among the non-Farsi populations, it can be expected that Iran will adopt a secular nationalist identity as the principle of unity. This Iran-centric vision is the most vital source of orientation that can tie Irans multi-ethnic, multi-religious society together to live in harmony. It is characterized by a belief in popular sovereignty, democracy, the rule of law, and prioritizing national interest rather than pan-Islamic aspirations. This assumption is based on an April 2022 survey of Iranians by GAMANN, a reputable research foundation. The poll indicates a preference for a modified British-style constitutional democracy under Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah, with 39 percent of the respondents expressing positive views about him. The survey also shows strong support for a democratically elected assembly, the parliament. The GAMANN opinion poll goes a long way toward answering Amaris question to the liberal opposition who would [you] have rule us. Ahmari knows that the prince is very popular but chooses to describe him as indolent and out of touch, apparently to press his theory that the uprising is empty.

The Iranian people desperately need the help of the international community, especially the United States, to continue their courageous fight. Expressing confidence in their ability to create a democracy would be the right step in this direction.

Moreover, Washington should have every incentive to support the Iranian people. For over four decades, the United States has been waiting for a moment when the population would cease to believe that America, the Great Satan, is their enemy. That moment is now; Iranian protesters are shouting, they are lying that our enemy is America; our enemy is right here. The Biden administration should seize the moment.

Farhad Rezaei is a Senior Fellow at Philos Project.

Image: Reuters.

Editors note: The original version of this piece incorrectly stated that 64 percent of respondents expressed positive views of the Prince Reza Pahlavi. The correct figure is 39 percent. We regret the error.

Originally posted here:
The Iranian People Are Ready to Seize Democracy - The National Interest Online

This is a piece by Stan Grant, Professor of Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University, and Jack Jacobs, Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University, following the launch of the Yindyamarra Pledge for democracy: a call to reimagine Australian democracy.

Democracy is under siege.

In every corner of the world, it faces external and domestic threats that challenge its standing relative to alternative political systems.

China rises, an authoritarian power to threaten the West.

Russia invades Ukraine, its democratic neighbour, as the West rallies in support.

Autocracy is also on the rise within democracies. The United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, India and several European democracies are or have recently been led by populists fuelled by the discontent of the dispossessed: those left behind by markets that have for decades prioritised profits over people.

All this is inflamed by tribalism and a public debate deranged by the worst aspects of social media.

Not long ago, political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared liberal democracy the end of history.

What went wrong?

One place to look for an explanation is in history, in the Enlightenment myth of progress that has shaped our world since the 18th century.

From the French Revolution of 1789 to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, many philosophical liberals have been motivated by the idea that history has a forward movement: that human societies, though infinitely complex and diverse, are to be experimented on and redesigned according to rational, liberal principles.

This illusion of destiny to invoke a striking phrase from Harvard University philosopher and economist Amartya Sen has left tragedy in its wake.

Perhaps the most pernicious form of progress myth has been colonialism.

Throughout the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, European powers struggled to subjugate once free peoples in Australia, the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

In her recent book, Legacy of Violence, Harvard historian Caroline Elkins reminds us that in the British case, liberalism was used as a coercive force:

[] violence was inherent to liberalism. It resided in liberalisms reformism, its claims to modernity, its promises of freedom, and its notion of the law exactly the opposite places where one normally associates violence.

In places like Australia and India from where these authors hail, respectively the British promised freedom but delivered submission.

What are we to do with liberal democracy, a tradition that makes a virtue of freedom yet has been imposed down the barrel of a gun?

To the colonised millions of the world, liberalism remains captured by Whiteness.

These people are speaking back to liberalism.

They have not always spoken the language of liberalism they have their own traditions of tolerance, dignity, sympathy and respect but have brought a powerful moral force to liberalism.

Edmund Burke, the 18th-century philosopher-statesman of Irish Catholic heritage, spoke back to liberalism when he impeached Warren Hastings, governor of Bengal, for betraying liberal ideals through colonialism in India.

Mahatma Gandhi, writing a century later in Hind Swaraj, spoke back to liberalism when he called on the English to honour their own scriptures and respect Indian freedom.

W.E.B. Du Bois spoke back to liberalism when he told a UN Peace Conference after the second world war that the West had conquered Germany [] but not their ideas by keeping illiberal practices alive through colonialism in Africa.

These people shamed liberalism.

Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a bus and inspired a movement.

Powerful voices like Martin Luther King junior may have appealed to liberalisms dream of character over colour, but he had no illusions about an America that he had also damned to hell.

In Australia, Yorta Yorta man William Cooper sent a petition to King George VI to remind him of his moral duty to a people whose lands were expropriated by the Crown and whom the Crown denied legal status. He called for black seats in parliament to prevent the extinction of the Aboriginal race.

And Pearl Gambayani Gibbs helped lead a day of mourning in 1938, proclaiming: I am more proud of my Aboriginal blood than of my white blood.

These figures implore us to remember that liberal democracy is but one way of living and being.

Wiradjuri people have our own philosophy, yindyamarra. It defies simple translation but it grounds respect in all we do.

How do we bring respect yindyamarra to Australian democracy? Is our liberalism even capable of respecting the sovereignty never ceded of First Nations peoples?

Australian liberalism has passed from extermination to exclusion to assimilation but has stopped short of recognition.

After two centuries of broken hearts and shattered dreams, it is little wonder hope can appear delusional.

As Munanjahli and South Sea Island writer and scholar Chelsea Watego has said: Hope is as passive as the social world we occupy insists we have to be.

Hope, or its absence, has been an enduring theme in talking back to history and political liberalism. Du Bois spoke of a hope not hopeless but unhopeful.

A constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice offers its own version of what Noel Pearson has spoken of as radical hope.

Proponents of the Voice say it is a pathway to justice to truth and treaty.

Political philosopher Duncan Ivison says it prefigures a possible refounding of Australia.

But its modesty a voice not a veto risks losing faith with First Nations people. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already said it is a voice nothing more, nothing less.

He says the parliament will set the composition of the Voice.

That begs the question: can the parliament meet the urgency of the demands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?

The challenge of the Constitutional Voice is to honour the unending struggle of those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander champions who have sought to prise open the locked door of Australian democracy.

With liberal democracy struggling under the weight of its racist and violent history, now is a time for our voices to add more weight to the scales: to demand liberal democracy is responsible, accountable, and fit for the 21st century.

Yindyamarra is a Wiradjuri voice; a voice for justice.

It is a voice inspired by Wiradjuri elders including my father, Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr, whose work has helped a new generation to speak Wiradjuri and speak back to power.

Yindyamarra is his gift to me, his son.

Yindyamarra winhanganha: calls us to build a world of respect grounded in our knowledge and being in a world worth living in

Yindyamarra is an antidote to Western nihilism and the worst of Western liberalism.

Yindyamarra is my fathers Wiradjuri hope; a hope to be earned.

Yindyamarra dares this nation to build a democracy worthy of that hope.

Excerpt from:
The power of yindyamarra: how we can bring respect to Australian democracy - The Conversation Indonesia

Peter Thiel is far from the first billionaire who has wielded his fortune to try to influence the course of American politics. But in an election year when democracy itself is said to be on the ballot, he stands out for assailing a longstanding governing system that he has described as deranged and in urgent need of course correction.

The German-born investor and tech entrepreneur, a Silicon Valley disrupter who helped found PayPal alongside Elon Musk and made his fortune as one of the earliest investors in Facebook, has catapulted himself into the top ranks of the mega-donor class by pouring close to $30m into this years midterm elections.

Hes not merely favoring one party over another, but is supporting candidates who deny the legitimacy of Joe Bidens election as president and have, in their different ways, called for the pillars of the American establishment to be toppled entirely.

Thiels priorities this midterm cycle have partly aligned with those of Donald Trump, with whom he has had an on-again, off-again relationship since writing him a $1.25m check during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Thiel, like Trump, has made it his business to end the careers of what he calls the traitorous 10, Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. Four of these members opted not to run for re-election at all, and four more, including Liz Cheney, the vice-chair of the House committee investigating January 6, went down in the primaries.

But there are also signs that Thiel is thinking around and beyond the former president. The lions share of his largesse $28m and counting has been directed towards two business proteges who, with his help, have established themselves as gadfly rightwing darlings: JD Vance, the best-selling author of the blue-collar memoir Hillbilly Elegy, who is running for Senate in Ohio, and Blake Masters, a self-styled anti-progressive and anti-globalist who is running for Senate in Arizona.

Over the past decade, ever since the supreme court dramatically loosened the rules of political campaign giving in its Citizens United decision, Thiel has placed sizable bets on candidates who are not only conservative but have sought to challenge longstanding institutional traditions and break the Republican partys own norms: Senator Ted Cruz in Texas and Senator Josh Hawley in Missouri as well as Trump himself.

Masters, who has campaigned on the notion that psychopaths are running the country right now and spoken approvingly of the anti-establishment philosophy of the 1990s Unabomber, and Vance, a frequent speaker on the university circuit during his book tour days who now says universities are the enemy, fit the same mould. They and Thiel all have ties to a branch of the New Right known as NatCon, whose adherents believe, broadly, that the establishment needs to be torn down, much as Thiel and his fellow Silicon Valley disrupters believed two decades ago that the future lay in destroying longstanding business models and practices.

Thiel himself opined as far back as 2009 that he no longer believed democracy to be compatible with freedom and expressed little hope that voting will make things better. While a member of Trumps presidential transition team in 2016, he flashed his institution-busting instincts by proposing that a leading climate change skeptic, William Happer, be appointed as White House science adviser. He also pushed for a libertarian bitcoin entrepreneur who did not believe in drug trials to head up the Food and Drug Administration.

Such proposals were too much even by Trumps iconoclastic standards. Steve Bannon, Trumps ultra-right campaign manager and political strategist, told a Thiel biographer: Peters idea of disrupting government is out there.

Thiel did not respond to a request for an interview, and his representatives did not respond to multiple invitations to comment.

Masters and Vance also did not respond to inquiries.

Thiel sat out the 2020 election but appears to have been re-energized by the Covid-19 pandemic, Trumps claims of a stolen presidential election and the January 6 insurrection. Addressing a NatCon convention this time last year, he denounced the incredible derangement of various forms of thought, political life, scientific life and the sense-making machinery generally in this country.

Liberal democracy, in his view, had turned the United States government into a dissent-squashing Ministry of Truth working toward a homogenizing, brain-dead, one-world state a problem to which only rightwing nationalism could provide an all-important corrective.

Were close to a Toto moment, a little dog pulling aside the curtain on the holy of holies only to find theres nobody there, he told the crowd. We always think of democracy as a good thing. But where do you shift from the wisdom of crowds to the madness of crowds? When does it become a mob, a racket, a totalitarian lie?

Such views might be easy to write off as the eccentricities of a wealthy man but for the money that Thiel has spent buying influence and supporting like-minded candidates thanks in large part to a campaign financing system that, while still capping contributions to individual campaigns, allows unlimited funding of nominally outside groups and political action committees.

Campaign finance experts see Thiel as a symptom of a much broader problem: a political environment in which a small group of mega-donors are growing ever bolder in the size of the checks they write and the erosion of any nominal firewall between the war chests run by candidates and the funds controlled by outside groups dedicated to their success.

It does seem to be getting worse, said Chisun Lee, an expert on campaign finance who directs the Brennan Centers Elections and Government program at New York University. Outside spending in this federal midterm cycle is more than double the last midterm cycle. Since Citizens United, just 12 mega-donors, eight of them billionaires, have paid one dollar out of every 13 spent in federal elections. And now were seeing a troubling new trend that some mega-donors are sponsoring campaigns that attack the fundamentals of democracy itself.

Thiels spending has been dwarfed this year by at least three other mega-donors Soros ($128m to the Democrats), shipping products tycoon Richard Uihlein ($53m to Republicans) and hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin ($50m to Republicans). And Thiel has some way to go to match the consistent giving, cycle after cycle, of the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, the late Las Vegas casino magnate.

Many experts also believe the attack on democracy began long before it became as explicit as Thiel has made it, because the whole point of funneling large amounts of money into the political system is to sway policy away from the will of the majority to the narrow interests of the donors and their friends.

This ability to control the policy agenda drives spending even more than the desire to see specific candidates win, says the Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, whose 2011 book Republic, Lost offers an enduringly devastating analysis of the relationship between money and political influence. And the spending is likely only to increase.

Youre going to see much, much bigger individual contributions and an acceleration of contributions to Super Pacs [like the ones established to support Vance and Masters], Lessig said. The candidates and the Super Pacs cant coordinate on spending, but that doesnt mean they cant coordinate on the fundraising. Since the Super Pacs are outspending candidates by orders of magnitude, its all a dance to flush money into Super Pacs They basically call the shots, and politicians cant get anything through that they oppose.

Less than a month from election day, both Vance and Masters are trailing their Democratic opponents in the polls (Vance by less than Masters). But, Lessig says, it would be wrong to conclude Thiel or any of the other mega-donors are wasting their money.

If youre a candidate and you know $10m is going to come in against you on a particular issue, he said, you are going to bend to avoid the effect of that money, whether or not its going to decide the race If youre someone who would otherwise be a strong climate activist, but you know that if you mention a carbon tax, a million dollars will drop from some anti-carbon tax Super Pac, you wont talk about it.

Thiels bid to overthrow the system, in other words, goes well beyond his ability to determine which party controls the Senate next year. The money will solidify the notion that the country is being run by psychopaths, at least among a hard core of Republican voters, analysts warn, and will further harden the ideological battle lines that have split the country in two and made common ground ever harder to find. It also brings the extreme opinions of NatCon further into the mainstream, making it easier for radical Republican candidates to run and win in future races, they say.

We are at a crisis point here, not so much because the ideas are hard to defeat but we dont have a context in which to defeat them, Lessig said. The fact that the same number of people believe the election was stolen as believed it on 6 January is a profound indictment of the information ecology in America.

The Brennan Center believes there are ways of improving the system, at least at the state and local level, and points to efforts in both red and blue states to close certain loopholes and introduce public financing models to rein in the influence of the mega-donors. Lee said she would also like to see federal legislation to build a meaningful firewall between campaign funds and Super Pacs.

The legislation exists, she said, and it would be a constitutional improvement even under [the] Citizens United [ruling]. All we need is the political will to act.

The rest is here:
Peter Thiels midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt Americas democracy - The Guardian

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We are facing a danger to democracy, as the media are constantly reminding us.

Its Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, says the press, the current president and the Democratic Party, who refused to accept the results of a fair election, are perpetrating the big lie and electing people to steal the next election.

For his part, Trump uses equally dramatic rhetoric, making unsubstantiated charges about the 2020 election and how he should be reinstated, and accusing his opponents of the big lie.

"For six straight years," he said at his Ohio rally over the weekend, "I've been harassed, investigated, defamed, slandered and persecuted like no other president. And probably like no one in American history These people are sick, sick."

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President Joe Biden, protected by bulletproof glass, delivers remarks on what he calls the "continued battle for the Soul of the Nation" in front of Independence Hall at Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, September 1, 2022. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

All this unfolds under the shadow of Jan. 6 Trump says he plans to pardon some of those convicted and the Justice Department probe of the former president, who took many top-secret, classified documents to Mar-a-Lago.

So were inundated with warnings about the threat to democracy as well as Trump, in a radio interview, saying there will be "big problems" in this country if hes indicted.

But whats increasingly happening is that this debate becomes conflated with ideological goals.

When President Biden gave his Philadelphia speech the one the White House insisted was not political he pivoted from attacking Trump World to saying that "MAGA forces" would take the country backwards "to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love."

In other words, youre an outlier if you dont agree with the Democratic agenda on abortion rights, birth control and same-sex marriage. But those, unlike the importance of democracy, are the subject of legitimate political debate.

I see the same two-step in a big front-page New York Times story titled "A Crisis Coming: The Twin Threats to American Democracy."

The first, "acute" threat is the familiar one: a growing movement inside one of the countrys two major parties the Republican Party to refuse to accept defeat in an election."

Then comes number two:

"The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion."

And what that means, according to the piece, is that Democratic goals, and the ability to elect Democrats, are being frustrated by our structure of government. The complaints here, some of which are familiar, are ultimately partisan, but smuggled in the Trojan horse of defending democracy.

The piece is by David Leonhardt, a former Washington bureau chief, a smart guy who makes some smart points. But he has to acknowledge that some of what hes complaining about is "written into the Constitution." So now the Constitution is a threat to democracy?

Facimile of The Constitution For The United States Of America Dated September 17, 1787. (Fotosearch/Getty Images)

Every schoolkid knows that America was created as a republic, and that the compromises that favor small states were adopted not just because they feared being overrun by the big states, but because it was the only way to pass the Constitution in 1787.

Thats why each state has two senators to offset the advantage for the big states in the House, where the number of seats is awarded by population.

The problem, the Times says, is that "in 1790, the largest state (Virginia) had about 13 times as many residents as the smallest (Delaware). Today, California has 68 times as many residents as Wyoming; 53 times as many as Alaska; and at least 20 times as many as another 11 states." So when Biden won California by 29% and New York by 23%, the huge margins are "wasted votes" from the Democratic point of view.

And that gives the Senate "a pro-Republican bias," the paper declares.

Well, as JFK said, life is unfair. And good luck amending the Constitution on the makeup of the Senate, given that two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states would never go for it.

The same goes for the Electoral College. I wouldnt be upset to see it abolished tomorrow, though then presidential candidates wouldnt waste time campaigning in smaller states.

"In seven of the past eight presidential elections, stretching back to Bill Clintons 1992 victory, the Democratic nominee has won the popular vote," says Leonhardt. And yet, "two of the past four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote" namely George W. Bush and Trump. So that, ipso facto, is unfair to Democrats.

Except everyone campaigns to get to 270. And again, good luck getting enough support to junk the Electoral College.

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Geographic trends have also contributed, with Democrats tending to cluster in urban states and metropolitan areas, limiting their impact in the winner-take-all Electoral College.

As for the House, gerrymandering is a factor, and both parties have shamelessly played that game. But Leonhardt says Republicans have been "more forceful about gerrymandering" than the other party. Really? In April, New Yorks top court in the state where the Times is published threw out the Democrats attempt at gerrymandering.

Then we get to the Supreme Court, so out of step with popular opinion that it threw out Roe v. Wade. "Every current justice has been appointed during one of the past nine presidential terms, and a Democrat has won the popular vote in seven of those nine and the presidency in five of the nine. Yet the court is now dominated by a conservative, six-member majority."

Theres one legitimate beef here: The Republican essentially hijacked a SCOTUS seat by refusing to give Merrick Garland a hearing, then rushed through Amy Coney Barrett at the end of Trumps term.

But luck is also involved: Jimmy Carter didnt get a high court appointment during his term. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to retire when Barack Obama could have named her successor. Ah, but if only "Senate seats were based on population," maybe none of Trumps three appointees would have been confirmed. Seriously?

Activists flocked to the Supreme Court following the overturn of Roe v. Wade on Friday, June 24, 2022. (Fox News Digital/Lisa Bennatan)

Whats more, the Supreme Court is periodically out of step with public opinion in ways that can be good. Did a majority of the country favor integrated schools at the time of the Brown v. Board of Ed in 1954? Of course not.

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In only one instance does Leonardt take a swipe at his own side: "Some on the left now consider widely held opinions among conservative and moderate Americans on abortion, policing, affirmative action, Covid-19 and other subjects to be so objectionable that they cannot be debated." That is stifling open debate and here comes the qualifier "in the view of many conservatives and some experts."

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So: If we awarded Senate seats based on population and threw out the Electoral College, Democrats would win more presidential elections and be able to appoint more Supreme Court justices the real agenda here. Too bad the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia were so misguided.

These are all points that have been debated for a very long time, and given that pesky Constitution, are not going to change. But does that kind of help-the-Democrats argument really constitute a threat to democracy?

Howard Kurtz is the host of FOX News Channel's MediaBuzz(Sundays 11 a.m.-12 p.m. ET).Based in Washington, D.C., he joined the network in July 2013 and regularly appears on Special Report with Bret Baierand other programs.

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The latest threat to democracy? The language of the Constitution is hurting Dems - Fox News