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In the popular imagination, successful coups require the participation of the military. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, in their latest book on the Trump presidency, I Alone Can Fix It, paint Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in heroic colors. During the runup to the 2020 election, Milley, worried about a Reichstag moment, resolved with his colleagues to thwart whatever the former president might try.

The truth is, the biggest threat to American democracy isnt a military coup, as Milleys laudable behavior tends to show. The more probable danger is much less dramatic and much more terrifying: a horrible decision from the final arbiter of our constitutional system the Supreme Court of the United States.

A constitutional theory is gaining ground at the court that could theoretically have awarded the 2020 election to Donald Trump, despite his having been swamped at the polls. Its basis is an obscure and muddled argument that first surfaced when the Supreme Court stepped into the George W. Bush-Al Gore 2000 presidential contest and stopped a state-court ordered recount in Florida.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, straining to explain why the U.S. Supreme Court should meddle in the matter, seized on Article I, Section 4 and Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution, which specify that state legislatures may establish rules for the Manner in which federal elections are conducted (unless Congress sets a contradictory national rule). In a separate opinion in Bush vs. Gore, joined by Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, Rehnquist discerned from these provisions that a significant departure from [a state] legislative scheme for appointing Presidential electors presents a federal constitutional question.

In other words, if in the judgment of the Supreme Court, a state court decision about state election law seems to strain the state legislatures intent, the federal high court can strike it down as a violation of the Constitution.

This is a wholly wild-eyed theory. Its chief flaw (there are others) is that it ignores the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court had neither the authority nor the expertise to pronounce a state court ruling a significant departure from a state legislative scheme. The Supreme Court interprets federal law, not state law. Anything else runs roughshod over core constitutional principles of federalism.

It also clears a path for making mischief with free and fair elections.

Rehnquists dubious theory has not yet commanded a majority of the court, but sad to say, it has struck the fancy of several justices. In the last two years, Thomas, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Samuel Alito have all cozied up to Rehnquists opinion in their own writings.

Thomas weighed in in February, in a case that challenged Joe Bidens victory in Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court ultimately denied it a hearing, but Thomas penned a dissent.

With the pandemic raging before the 2020 election, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had ruled, based on the state constitution, in favor of a three-day extension of the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots. Thomas argued that the added days represented a federal constitutional violation: The Pennsylvania justices had changed an election law, coopting the role the U.S. Constitution reserved for state legislatures.

If the court had agreed to hear the case and had Thomas view of the facts prevailed, the likely remedy would have been to toss the Pennsylvania election back to the state and into the Legislature for a do-over. At an extreme, the partisan Republicans that dominate the Pennsylvania Legislature might have tried to declare a new set of electors for Trump, not Biden and the voters be damned.

This is the kind of legal coup Trump conjured when he tweeted on the morning of Jan. 6, All Mike Pence has to do is send them the election results back to the States, AND WE WIN. It would also have been the endgame of the attempt by a Trump loyalist to strongarm the Department of Justice into disparaging the election results in Georgia.

A wave of lawsuits would have followed, and the Trump forces could have dressed up their treachery with the Rehnquist argument, potentially empowering state legislatures in the presidents thrall to defeat democratic rule.

It should be unthinkable that the Supreme Court would be party to such a cataclysmic outcome as overturning the clear will of voters on the basis of a lawless theory. As the aphorism goes, The Constitution is not a suicide pact. At the same time, it was beyond belief for many legal scholars that a bare conservative majority of the court would bulldoze the law in Bush vs. Gore, all but handing the White House to the GOP.

That notorious decision played out amid extreme partisan fervor on all sides. The passions that would accompany another election-law showdown in the Supreme Court in, say, 2024 could make the Florida frenzy look like a school board squabble. Its conceivable that the partisan instincts of a majority of the court would again override their legal judgment about both constitutional provisions and the courts proper role.

The bullet that American democracy dodged in 2020 was not boots in the street but jurisprudence in the Supreme Court. It remains a remote threat, but thats still where a death-blow to the republic lies.

@HarryLitman

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Why the Supreme Court is a threat to American democracy - Los Angeles Times

What the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes report confirmed this month is that the stable climate many of us grew up with is gone and has been replaced by a fundamentally unstable one. Sea levels will almost certainly rise and storms will get more intense. Amid a drumbeat of depressing news and decades of inaction, theres a sort of folk wisdom emerging that liberal democracy might just be too slow to tackle a problem as urgent and massive as the climate crisis. Its an enticing vision: that governments can forgo the messy, deliberative work of politics in favour of a benign dictatorship of green technocrats who will get emissions down by brute force. With a punishingly tiny budget of just 400 gigatonnes of CO2 left to make a decent shot of staying below 1.5C of warming, is it time to give something less democratic a try?

It would be easy to look at the longstanding stalemate around climate policy in the US, the worlds second biggest emitter and embattled superpower, as evidence that something more top-down is needed. Yet the failure isnt one of too much democracy but too little. The US Senate empowers West Virginias Joe Manchin a man elected by fewer than 300,000 people to block the agenda of a president elected by more than 80 million. Climate-sceptical Republicans, backed by corporate interests, have attempted to gerrymander their way to electoral dominance, halting progressive climate action in its tracks. The fossil fuel industry can engulf lawmakers with lobbyists and virtually unlimited campaign donations to sway their votes. And as the Republican partys leading lights flirt with authoritarians like Hungarys prime minister, Viktor Orbn, comprehensive bipartisan climate action remains a pipe dream.

If a less democratic world is needed to deal with the climate, who are the people whod like to bring a less democratic world into being? Take Spains far-right party Vox, the third largest in the countrys parliament. Having tried climate denial and taken regular jabs at environmental movements and policy, it has unveiled a set of proposals for how to deal with rising temperatures. As Lluis de Nadal wrote for openDemocracy recently, the partys true ecology platform aims to create a national energy autarchy and mobilise a green manufacturing renaissance. In France, the far-right National Rally formerly the Front National has made ecological politics a key part of its rebrand away from Holocaust denial. Jordan Bardella, the partys vice-president, has called borders the environments greatest ally, casting foreigners as rootless cosmopolitans divorced from the land. The aim is not to reach net zero faster neither party has laid out workable plans to do so but to endear climate-conscious voters to an ethno-nationalist cause.

Its not just the right, however, that has considered a turn away from democracy for the planets sake. Back in 2010, the influential climate scientist James Lovelock suggested that it may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while to curb emissions. More recently, centrists such as Michael Bloomberg have started to see corporations as more reliable engines of climate progress. As much as US and UK liberals have talked up the promise of spreading democracy throughout the world this century, though, many centrists as the Progressive Internationals David Adler wrote in 2018 are pretty down on democracy itself. Analysing the World Values and the European Values surveys, Adler found that centrists in wealthy countries were less supportive of democracy than their counterparts on either the left or the far right. Less than half of centrists in the US thought elections were essential; only 25% saw civil rights as a critical feature of democracy.

Actually existing centrist politicians, meanwhile, such as Emmanuel Macron in France, havent shown any willingness to address the climate crisis at the speed or scale it demands. They share a basic weariness about enthusiastic uses of state power to plan out what it is an economy ought to be doing, and cower in the face of major polluters like carmakers and the fossil fuel industry. There are still plenty of austerians hanging around, too, weary of the deficit spending necessary for decarbonisation.

Openly authoritarian governments hardly fare better. China has rolled out an impressive array of green technologies over the last decade with massive industrial policy. Yet still it continues to prioritise fossil-fuelled growth, with its 14th five-year plan pledging to reduce emissions intensity by just 18% through 2025, and the planned opening of 43 new coal-fuelled power stations not to mention the atrocities that government routinely commits against its own people. In India, now the worlds third biggest emitter, Narendra Modis far-right government has balked at setting a mid-century carbon cutting target. Like China, India has missed the deadline to update its emissions reduction plan in advance of UN climate talks in Glasgow this November.

There is simply no class of enlightened technocrats in powerful governments waiting in the wings to save the day. No authoritarians are gunning to decarbonise at the breakneck speed required to avert catastrophe. And no billionaire saviour in the form of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos will rescue our dying planet theyre both more interested in getting off it than improving it.

The answer, stubbornly, is more democracy both within and beyond our borders. Countless millions will be displaced as temperatures soar, meaning national boundaries are bound to become more porous. Our conceptions of democracy should too, to see those living downstream from the wests massive historical emissions as deserving of citizenship and a say in how and how quickly decarbonisation happens. A proposal for curbing emissions from the developed world so that the billion individuals who live without electricity can enjoy its benefits would probably pass in a landslide in a world referendum, the writer and filmmaker Astra Taylor has argued, but it would likely fail if the vote were limited to people in the wealthiest countries.

A best-case scenario detailed in their report by IPCC scientists, Shared Socioeconomic Economic Pathway 1, involves more inclusive development and unprecedented collaboration among the worlds governments to manage the global commons. In the less upbeat SSP3, resurgent nationalism and concerns about competitiveness and security start to emerge as countries go their own way in trying to adapt to and (more rarely) mitigate rising temperatures.

Roads away from democracy all lead to climate chaos. Theres no easy alternative on offer of course. The illiberal right is ascending much faster than the socialist left that has long sought to extend democracy into political systems, homes, and workplaces. The best hope in the short term is for a popular front to browbeat the middling centrists who claim to believe science into actually acting on it, and beating back the illiberal right accordingly.

Kate Aronoff is a writing fellow at In These Times

This article was amended on 26 August 2021. An earlier version said incorrectly that Modis government had pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

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Is democracy getting in the way of saving the planet? - The Guardian

Yet when many Americans think of democracy, they think less of themselves than of politicians, less of community and lifestyle than of government and elections. Our narrow concept needs widening, our democracy needs learning and community. There is no better place to start than at the grassroots level by forming democracy learning communities all across America.

We come to this conclusion from long careers, domestic and foreign. Paul is a political sociologist who has studied and engaged in grassroots citizen activism in the United States for over 30 years. Mike is a former State Department diplomat who worked for 35 years to support democracy abroad in countries ranging from Russia to Iraq to South Sudan.

From these different vantage points, we have learned that democracy is fragile and demands wide, constructive citizen engagement. This engagement can produce valuable public goods such as mutual trust, better health and lasting peace. In South Sudan's long civil war, Mike witnessed first-hand how stalled peace talks between the government and rebels advanced only after youth, women, and community and religious leaders were given a seat at the negotiating table. In Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia and Washington, D.C., Paul experienced how active citizens tend to be more informed and confident about their civic power. Research shows such citizen qualities can nurture more responsive government.

Citizens are not born, they are made. The best making is sustained, not episodic. Yet for most Americans, the practice of democracy is at best episodic and narrow: voting every few years, then watching in consternation from afar as paid activists, lobbyists, and elected officials run the show. All Americans are affected by democratic dysfunction, so we need sustained, inclusive ways for citizens to connect, learn and collaborate about democracy.

We can start by learning about human behavior and its interaction with larger forces shaping American life. First, abundant research shows humans tend to favor and gravitate toward people like themselves. Second, this tendency fuels a variety of cognitive biases that make it harder for humans to understand and get along with people unlike them. These include going along with our group to get along, seeking and trusting information that confirms our group's views, and seeing members of outside groups as more alike and those of our in-group as more diverse. Third, when these human biases face new conditions daily absorption in electronic media, media algorithms that feed us what we like and believe, and communities more segregated by class and political affiliation our biases are magnified in ways that aggravate democratic dysfunction.

How can Americans meet these social and structural challenges and strengthen our democracy? One way is to create democracy learning communities. DLCs enable us to tap into two powerful human traits that have helped us survive and thrive as a species: our capacity to learn, and our inclination toward sociability.

The concept of a learning community is most discussed and practiced in higher education, where structured, residential learning communities have been shown to improve student grades and graduation rates. Yet in our complex, interdependent and rapidly changing world, learning communities can and should be cultivated throughout society. This would help people intelligently, collaboratively tackle problems, and fulfill their needs for belonging and purpose.

Democracy learning communities can bring people together across political, class, race and religious divides to learn about their commonalities and differences as well as the complexities, challenges and possibilities of democracy. Further, when organized municipally or regionally, DLCs can bring people together in-person as well as online, on an on-going rather than episodic basis, to nurture greater trust and collaboration.

Clearly, bringing people together across lines of difference is not easy, and can spur conflict rather than collaboration. But effective learning communities uphold rules of engagement and foster long-term relationships through regular, curated activities like networking socials, issue deliberations, and collaboration workshops that engender learning and cooperation.

Democracy can and should be a lifestyle as much as a governance system. Municipal and regional DLCs can cultivate more good citizens and help Americans overcome political dysfunction. There is no better place to start than in your own town, city or region.

Paul Lachelier is the founder of Learning Life, a nonprofit lab devoted to innovating education and citizen engagement. Mike Morrow is a former U.S. diplomat and current senior democracy strategist with Learning Life.

2021 The Fulcrum. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Paul Lachelier and Mike Morrow: How can we build a better democracy? It starts here. - PostBulletin.com

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United States of AmericaUS Virgin IslandsUnited States Minor Outlying IslandsCanadaMexico, United Mexican StatesBahamas, Commonwealth of theCuba, Republic ofDominican RepublicHaiti, Republic ofJamaicaAfghanistanAlbania, People's Socialist Republic ofAlgeria, People's Democratic Republic ofAmerican SamoaAndorra, Principality ofAngola, Republic ofAnguillaAntarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S)Antigua and BarbudaArgentina, Argentine RepublicArmeniaArubaAustralia, Commonwealth ofAustria, Republic ofAzerbaijan, Republic ofBahrain, Kingdom ofBangladesh, People's Republic ofBarbadosBelarusBelgium, Kingdom ofBelizeBenin, People's Republic ofBermudaBhutan, Kingdom ofBolivia, Republic ofBosnia and HerzegovinaBotswana, Republic ofBouvet Island (Bouvetoya)Brazil, Federative Republic ofBritish Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago)British Virgin IslandsBrunei DarussalamBulgaria, People's Republic ofBurkina FasoBurundi, Republic ofCambodia, Kingdom ofCameroon, United Republic ofCape Verde, Republic ofCayman IslandsCentral African RepublicChad, Republic ofChile, Republic ofChina, People's Republic ofChristmas IslandCocos (Keeling) IslandsColombia, Republic ofComoros, Union of theCongo, Democratic Republic ofCongo, People's Republic ofCook IslandsCosta Rica, Republic ofCote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of theCyprus, Republic ofCzech RepublicDenmark, Kingdom ofDjibouti, Republic ofDominica, Commonwealth ofEcuador, Republic ofEgypt, Arab Republic ofEl Salvador, Republic ofEquatorial Guinea, Republic ofEritreaEstoniaEthiopiaFaeroe IslandsFalkland Islands (Malvinas)Fiji, Republic of the Fiji IslandsFinland, Republic ofFrance, French RepublicFrench GuianaFrench PolynesiaFrench Southern TerritoriesGabon, Gabonese RepublicGambia, Republic of theGeorgiaGermanyGhana, Republic ofGibraltarGreece, Hellenic RepublicGreenlandGrenadaGuadaloupeGuamGuatemala, Republic ofGuinea, RevolutionaryPeople's Rep'c ofGuinea-Bissau, Republic ofGuyana, Republic ofHeard and McDonald IslandsHoly See (Vatican City State)Honduras, Republic ofHong Kong, Special Administrative Region of ChinaHrvatska (Croatia)Hungary, Hungarian People's RepublicIceland, Republic ofIndia, Republic ofIndonesia, Republic ofIran, Islamic Republic ofIraq, Republic ofIrelandIsrael, State ofItaly, Italian RepublicJapanJordan, Hashemite Kingdom ofKazakhstan, Republic ofKenya, Republic ofKiribati, Republic ofKorea, Democratic People's Republic ofKorea, Republic ofKuwait, State ofKyrgyz RepublicLao People's Democratic RepublicLatviaLebanon, Lebanese RepublicLesotho, Kingdom ofLiberia, Republic ofLibyan Arab JamahiriyaLiechtenstein, Principality ofLithuaniaLuxembourg, Grand Duchy ofMacao, Special Administrative Region of ChinaMacedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic ofMadagascar, Republic ofMalawi, Republic ofMalaysiaMaldives, Republic ofMali, Republic ofMalta, Republic ofMarshall IslandsMartiniqueMauritania, Islamic Republic ofMauritiusMayotteMicronesia, Federated States ofMoldova, Republic ofMonaco, Principality ofMongolia, Mongolian People's RepublicMontserratMorocco, Kingdom ofMozambique, People's Republic ofMyanmarNamibiaNauru, Republic ofNepal, Kingdom ofNetherlands AntillesNetherlands, Kingdom of theNew CaledoniaNew ZealandNicaragua, Republic ofNiger, Republic of theNigeria, Federal Republic ofNiue, Republic ofNorfolk IslandNorthern Mariana IslandsNorway, Kingdom ofOman, Sultanate ofPakistan, Islamic Republic ofPalauPalestinian Territory, OccupiedPanama, Republic ofPapua New GuineaParaguay, Republic ofPeru, Republic ofPhilippines, Republic of thePitcairn IslandPoland, Polish People's RepublicPortugal, Portuguese RepublicPuerto RicoQatar, State ofReunionRomania, Socialist Republic ofRussian FederationRwanda, Rwandese RepublicSamoa, Independent State ofSan Marino, Republic ofSao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic ofSaudi Arabia, Kingdom ofSenegal, Republic ofSerbia and MontenegroSeychelles, Republic ofSierra Leone, Republic ofSingapore, Republic ofSlovakia (Slovak Republic)SloveniaSolomon IslandsSomalia, Somali RepublicSouth Africa, Republic ofSouth Georgia and the South Sandwich IslandsSpain, Spanish StateSri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic ofSt. HelenaSt. Kitts and NevisSt. LuciaSt. Pierre and MiquelonSt. Vincent and the GrenadinesSudan, Democratic Republic of theSuriname, Republic ofSvalbard & Jan Mayen IslandsSwaziland, Kingdom ofSweden, Kingdom ofSwitzerland, Swiss ConfederationSyrian Arab RepublicTaiwan, Province of ChinaTajikistanTanzania, United Republic ofThailand, Kingdom ofTimor-Leste, Democratic Republic ofTogo, Togolese RepublicTokelau (Tokelau Islands)Tonga, Kingdom ofTrinidad and Tobago, Republic ofTunisia, Republic ofTurkey, Republic ofTurkmenistanTurks and Caicos IslandsTuvaluUganda, Republic ofUkraineUnited Arab EmiratesUnited Kingdom of Great Britain & N. IrelandUruguay, Eastern Republic ofUzbekistanVanuatuVenezuela, Bolivarian Republic ofViet Nam, Socialist Republic ofWallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambia, Republic ofZimbabwe

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Letter to the editor: This sort of democracy isn't new, has its perils - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Arizona's Maricopa County is ground zero in the continuing debate over election integrity in the United States. The so-called audit of the 2.1 million votes cast in that county in last year's presidential electionby the almost comically inept firm Cyber Ninjaswas supposed to arrive at the Arizona Senate this week. But delivery was once again delayed as three members of the five-person Ninja team contracted COVID-19.

The Maricopa "audit" has assumed such mythic proportions among the Trump diehards who insist that their Il Duce won the presidential election that some QAnon believers have insisted that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is a hoaxto distract attention from the allegations of vote-tampering in Arizona. No doubt rumors have begun somewhere in cyberspace that the forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and droughts sweeping across the world are also "false-flag operations" designed by the Biden camp to help them erase evidence of election fraud.

The Trump forces that have taken over the Republican Party regularly fulminate against The Squad, antifa, that "socialist Biden," and other convenient punching bags. But the real target of their ire is closer to home: Republicans who have refused to join the Trump personality cult.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is a very conservative Republican who supported Trump as his party's leader. He has also refused to lie for the president. Prior to the release of the Cyber Ninja "audit," he reiterated that a tri-partisan (Republican, Democrat, Libertarian) hand count of the ballots immediately after the election matched the machine count 100 percent while a live-streamed assessment of the tabulation equipment revealed no manipulations whatsoever.

The thanks Richer has gotten for standing up for the rule of law? Death threats and ridiculous trolling for being a RINO (Republican In Name Only).

Bill Gates is an Arizona Republican who serves on the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, which oversaw the 2020 election and certified the results. Gates is one of four Republicans who serve on the five-person board. He and his colleagues resisted calls for the Cyber Ninja audit even as his GOP colleagues in the Arizona Senate unanimously supported a resolution calling to arrest all the supervisors for contempt.

In a telling passage in Jane Mayer's recent New Yorker piece on the financing of the anti-democratic initiatives of the far right, Gates spoke of the death threats that he received for what would ordinarily be the routine actions of the Board of Supervisors.

Part of what had drawn Gates to the Republican Party was the Reagan-era doctrine of confronting totalitarianism. He'd long had a fascination with emerging democracies, particularly the former Soviet republics. He had come up with what he admits was a "kooky" retirement plan"to go to some place like Uzbekistan and help." He told me, "I'd always thought that, if I had a tragic end, it would be in some place like Tajikistan." He shook his head. "If you had told me, 'You're going to be doing this in the U.S.,' I would have told you, 'You're crazy.'"

Democracy promotionit was supposed to be a method by which the United States remade the world to look more like us. Thus, the interchangeability of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the above passage couldn't be more revealing. In traditional democracy promotion, the foreign contexts have been wildly diverseand largely irrelevant. The important part of the equation has never been the various facts on the ground but, rather, the verities of the American constitutional system.

These verities are now under attack as insurrectionists, vigilante groups, and conspiracy theorists attempt to undermine the fundamental principle of one person, one vote. With Democrats rushing to promote democracy at home, Americans are now getting a taste of our own medicine.

Actually, given the rapid spread of the anti-democratic disease, we're in desperate need of a full course of antibiotics.

Destroy Democracy to Save Democracy?

After the January 6 insurrection, I wrote about the future of democracy promotion overseas, concluding that the concept was still viable as long as democracy means not only checks and balances but also grassroots efforts to promote racial justice, reduce economic inequality, and address the climate crisis. At the end of the piece, though, I noted that "at some point in the future, we may need to call upon the international community to help us save our democracy as well."

So, only six months later, how close is America to sending out that SOS? For the time being, much depends on Donald Trump.

In the best-case scenario, Trump exits the political scene as smoothly as he did the White House after one disastrous term. He continues to poll poorly in the country as a whole with a 60 percent disapproval rating (and only 76 percent of Republicans viewing him favorably). Still banned from Facebook and Twitter and largely ignored by the mainstream media, he lacks a platform to appeal beyond his base. And let's not forget the multiple lawsuits he faces from election tampering, inciting violence on January 6, sexually assaulting at least two dozen women, and engaging in myriad corrupt business practices.

If Trump drops out of political life, his followers in the Republican Party will be left leaderless, though any number of rogues aspire to take his place. Without a broadly popular standard-bearer, the Trump forces would disintegrate and the Republican Party would face the inevitable. America is becoming increasingly multiracial (and the Republican Party isn't). Climate change is raging across the country (and the Republican Party remains in denial). The United States needs to retool its economy to meet the demands of the global market and the constraints of natural resources (and the Republican Party still has its head in the tar sands).

In this scenario, Trump has been little more than a deus ex machina inserted into the final act of the Republican Party's story to enable it to escape, momentarily, its self-inflicted marginality. Trump has been the last-ditch effort of America's version of the Nationalist Party in South Africa, the minority Afrikaner party that presided over apartheid, to preserve white power.

Trump or no Trump, the Republican Party extremists have latched onto an age-old method of maintaining control: voter suppression. Democrats have demography on their side: African-American voters supported Biden over Trump by a margin of seven to one, Latinos by two to one, and Asians by almost two to one. Instead of trying to woo the non-white vote, which is growing every election cycle, Republicans have decided simply to make it as hard as possible for those folks to vote.

So far in 2021, 17 states have passed 28 laws making it harder to vote. Democrats in Texas fled the state to prevent one more such vote from passing, but that looks to be only a temporary gambit. Meanwhile, the omnibus voting rights bill (For the People Act) has attracted exactly zero Republican support in the Senate, which means that it will die without some modification of the filibuster. The narrower bill that just passed the House along party lines, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, faces a similar fate in the Senate.

Then there's the effort among some Republican extremists to do an end run around the popular vote altogether by empowering state legislatures to pick electors in the Electoral College and thereby determine the outcome of presidential elections. They call it the "independent state legislature doctrine," and unfortunately it has even attracted some support from four Supreme Court justices. In one 2024 scenario, Richard Hasen writes in Slate, "Republican legislatures in states won by the Democratic candidate could seize on some normal election administration rule created by a state or local election administrator or some ruling from a state court, and argue that implementation of the rule renders the presidential election unconstitutional, leaving it to the state legislature to pick a different slate of electors."

So, all those careful arguments about Trump's unpopularity, the divisions within the Republican Party, and the demographic transformation of the United States mean little in the face of a brazen power play by Republican stalwarts who have already demonstrated on multiple occasions that they could care less about rules, law, or the rule of law. Like the U.S. Army units in the Vietnam War that were determined to "save" Vietnamese villages by destroying them, the Republican Party is mission-driven to "save" American democracy in their own special way.

In between the voter suppression laws and ploys like the "independent state legislature doctrine" are the more insidious efforts to call into question the integrity of all elections that produce outcomes that Trump supporters simply don't like. The spread of insane conspiracy theories undermines not only the impartiality of elections but the verifiability of their integrity. Conservative Republicans have time and again debunked the outlandish claims of "voter fraud" in Maricopa County, but that has not silenced the crazies.

Multiply Maricopa by the hundreds, even the thousands, and U.S. elections will no longer reflect popular will but extremist skepticism. When faith in elections erode, democracy can't endure.

Geopolitical Implications

It would be comforting to report that the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020 has taken the wind out of the sails of the far right around the world. But the success of the far right relies on a globally networked set of ideasthe failures of neoliberal globalization, the perfidy of "globalists" in supporting this failed project, and the perception of immigrants as the foot soldiers of globalizationnot any one figure.

In fact, Trump proved to be something of a liability to the global far right. He's an American (a no-no among the anti-American right), a nationalist (who believes that America is better than everywhere else), and an ignoramus (whose gaffes are so gross as to embarrass the more discerning members of the far right). In America, Trump was the perfect candidate to unite disaffected independents, traditional conservatives, and the American alt-right. As his would-be Svengali Steve Bannon discovered in his failed effort to create a Nationalist International, Trump was not a grand unifier on the international stage.

Without Trump in the White House, the far right continues to prosper. In Europe, right-wing nationalists remain securely in power in Poland, Hungary, and Slovenia. A neo-fascist party leads the polls in Italy, the far-right Sweden Democrats are poised to exercise real power after helping to oust the Social Democratic prime minister, and the extremist Marine Le Pen continues to run head-to-head with Emmanuel Macron in presidential polls (though her Nationalist Rally didn't do so well in recent regional elections).

Authoritarian nationalists still preside over the largest countries in the world: China, India, Russia, Brazil, Turkey. The Taliban has taken over in Afghanistan, the conservatives have come to power in Iran, and the Saudis are still running their extremist theocracy. In the one Arab Spring success story, Tunisia, Kais Saied just extended the state of emergency he declared last month. Coup leaders continue to control Thailand and Myanmar. It's hard to find good news on the democracy front in Africa. Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela: all still run by strong-arm caudillos despite significant public protests.

All of this means that the list of countries that can pitch in to save American democracy is a short one. New Zealand and Iceland can teach Americans how gender equality is central to a healthy political system. South Korea can give us some pointers on how to put a Green New Deal at the center of national policy. A number of European countries can provide guidance on the importance of strong social policy for any thriving democracy.

Joe Biden plans to invite these countries to his Summit for Democracy in December. The three pillars of this initiative are reasonable: "defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption, advancing respect for human rights." Given the trends in the world, however, the gathering has a whiff of the desperate. It threatens to be a farewell party: "Alas, poor democracy, I knew it well for it hath borne me on its back a thousand times"

It would be a different matter if Biden convened the summit as a true listening session. The Summit for Democracy could be an opportunity for America to admit that it has a problem and submit to a 12-step program of self-help, perhaps with a couple sponsors (South Korea, Costa Rica) to keep us on the road to political health.

But that's just a fantasy. The United States doesn't listen to other countries. America is like the alpha male who refuses to ask for directions even when he's dangerously lost.

Right now, America is heading into uncharted political territory. Will any of our leaders ask for directions before it's too late?

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Opinion | GOP Destroying Democracy With Claims They Are Saving It - Common Dreams