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As purple and red states pass voter suppression laws, Republicans grow more hostile to free and fair elections, and Congress remains unable to pass voting rights legislation, former President Barack Obama is sounding the alarm about the erosion of American democracy.

All of us, as citizens, have to recognize that the path towards an undemocratic America is not going to happen in just one bang. It happens in a series of steps, Obama told Anderson Cooper during an interview that aired on CNN on Monday evening.

Asked by Cooper if the January 6 insurrection and Republicans effort to delegitimize elections has led him to believe that our democracy is in crisis, Obama said hes concerned.

I think we have to worry when one of our major political parties is willing to embrace a way of thinking about our democracy that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago, he said.

In an exchange with Cooper, Obama pointed out that democracy has fallen at the ballot box in other countries.

COOPER: Democracy does not always die in a military coup.

OBAMA: Yes.

COOPER: Democracy dies at the ballot box.

OBAMA: Thats exactly right.

And Vladimir Putin gets elected with a majority of Russian voters, but none of us would claim that thats the kind of democracy that we want.

These comments, coming from a former president, should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who thought Donald Trumps departure from the White House in January ended the existential threat to American democracy that crested with the January 6 insurrection.

Those threats remain: The 44th president is right that there are good reasons to worry, given that Republicans responded to Trumps defeat and the insurrection not with introspection, but by pushing an antidemocratic agenda aimed at making it even harder for them to lose elections in the future.

Obamas concerns come about a month after a FiveThirtyEight analysis of recent polling indicated that the GOPs big lies about the 2020 election namely, that a combination of election fraud and illegal changes to state voting laws resulted in Trump having the presidency stolen from him are having a corrosive impact, with 70 percent of Republicans wrongly believing President Joe Bidens victory over Trump was illegitimate.

And things arent likely to get better soon, as Trump is now back on the speech and cable news circuit pushing these lies at every opportunity.

And as Obama noted during his sit down with Cooper, state-level Republicans are responding to the big lie by writing legislation that warps the voting process, as Voxs Ian Millhiser recently explained:

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of voter suppression laws. Many provisions currently being pushed by Republican state lawmakers make it harder to cast a ballot in a certain way such as by mailing in the ballot or placing it in a drop box. Or they place unnecessary procedural obstacles in the way of voters. These provisions often serve no purpose other than to make it more difficult to vote, but they also are not insurmountable obstacles.

Other provisions are more virulent. They might disqualify voters for no valid reason. Or allow partisan officials to refuse to certify an election, even if there are no legitimate questions about who won. Or make it so difficult for some voters, who are likely to vote for the party that is out of power, to cast their ballot that its nigh impossible for the incumbent party to lose.

Its that second type that appeared to worry Obama during his interview with Cooper.

When you look at some of the laws that are being passed at the state legislative level, where legislators are basically saying, were going to take away the certification of election processes from civil servants, you know, secretaries of state, people who are just counting ballots, and were going to put it in the hands of partisan legislatures, who may or may not decide that a states electoral votes should go to one person or another, and when thats all done against the backdrop of large numbers of Republicans having been convinced, wrongly, that there was something fishy about the last election, weve got a problem, he said.

In short, Obama is concerned that state-level Republicans are viewing election results as recommendations to be considered, not mandates from the people. And theyre using spurious claims of fraud and new laws to give themselves the ability to reject the will of the people next time it doesnt suit them.

Cooper mentioned Sarah Palins rise as a proto-Trump figure during the 2008 presidential campaign and asked Obama if he anticipated that spirits that have long been lurking on the edges of the Republican Party would ever get this dark.

Obama said he did not, then ticked through a brief history of how elected Republicans accommodated Trump at every turn and continue to do so even after he made a desperate attempt to overturn the result of an election he lost fair and square.

I thought that there were enough guardrails institutionally that even after Trump was elected that you would have the so-called Republican establishment who would say, Okay, you know, its a problem if the White House doesnt seem to be concerned about Russian meddling, or its a problem if we have a president who is saying that, you know, neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, there are good people on both sides. You know, thats a little bit beyond the pale.

... We did not see that Republican establishment say, Hold on, time out, thats not acceptable, thats not who we are, but rather be cowed into accepting it, and then finally culminating in January 6th, where what originally was, Oh, dont worry, this isnt going anywhere, were just letting Trump and others vent, and then suddenly you now have large portions of an elected Congress going along with the falsehood that there were problems with the election.

One could argue Obamas surprise at how dark the GOP has gotten is naive, especially considering Trumps rise within the party in 2011 and 12 was in large part the result of racist conspiracy theories he pushed about Obamas citizenship. And its long been the case that Republicans have used voter suppression laws for partisan advantage by making it harder for Democratic-leaning populations to vote.

But Obama suggested the difference these days is that very few elected Republicans have the courage to stand up to a Republican base poisoned by misinformation from right-wing media, and are more concerned about staying in office than they are standing up for democracy.

Suddenly, everybody was back in-line, Obama said, alluding to how some prominent Republicans such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy initially responded to the insurrection by speaking out against Trump before quickly circling the wagons around him. The reason for that is because the base believed [Trumps lies]. And the base believed it because this had been told to them not just by the president, but by the media that they watch.

While there may be no silver bullet solution to the corrosive polarization Obama described, he argued, as he often has, that trying to personally engage with people we disagree with can help reestablish a sense of shared national purpose.

It probably is not going to be done at the federal level. Its probably going to involve communities finding ways to rebuild that sense of neighborliness, working together, conversations, he said.

How does one build a sense of community with someone so deluded by right-wing propaganda that they buy evidence-free conspiracy theories about massive election fraud? Its a difficult question to deal with, but an urgent one especially given new federal voting rights legislation looks unlikely to pass before next years midterm elections.

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Barack Obama sounds the alarm about Americas democratic erosion in a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper - Vox.com

Five University of Notre Dame professors who specialize in different areas of democracy studies recently signed a strong statement of concern issued by the think tank New America warning of the serious threats to democracy in the U.S. Notre Dame is a longtime leader in research on democratization in comparative perspective through a number of campus institutes, and the American politics subfield that is part of the Department of Political Science emphasizes research on inclusion.

As demonstrated by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, there has been a significant erosion of liberal democracy in the U.S. since 2016, Michael Coppedge, professor of political science and one of the V-Dem principal investigators, said. V-Dem has measured hundreds of attributes of democracy and governance for most countries going back to 1789. The 2021 V-Dem report on democracy, Autocratization Goes Viral, underscores the dramatic spikes in countries becoming more autocratic. In fact, V-Dem reports that, as of 2020, only 4 percent of the worlds population is living in democratizing nations. It also reports that no country in North America or Western and Eastern Europe has advanced in democracy in the last decade, while democracy in the U.S. (along with Hungary, Poland, Serbia and Slovenia) has declined substantially.

A decline is already underway. If recent and pending state-level legislation erects more and more barriers to voting and makes the translation of votes into seats and electors even more distorted than it already is, I am sure this trend will worsen, added Coppedge, who is also a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

The U.S. has dropped in three out of six indices studied by V-Dem that measure everything from the quality of elections and individual rights to rule of law and whether political decisions are made in the interest of the common good. The 2021 report shows the U.S. declined substantially on the Liberal Democracy Index from 0.86 in 2010 to 0.73 in 2020. This is in part, the researchers write, a consequence of former President Donald Trumps repeated attacks on the media and opposition politicians, and the substantial weakening of the legislatures de facto checks and balances on executive power. The V-Dem team also reported significant negative changes in the U.S.s deliberation score, the component that captures the extent to which public speech, including counterarguments, and respect for political opponents is respected by political leaders. It moved from 0.91 in 2016 to 0.61 in 2020.

Although the V-Dem team saw an overall decline in pro-democracy mobilization worldwide, the U.S. had its highest number of protests in recent history. The June 6, 2020, protests with more than half a million people spurred by the murder of George Floyd and the months of protests that followed are seen as a condemnation of systemic oppression of people of color. Race was key in the fight for voting rights in 2020 in states like Georgia, where Black voters not only handed President Joe Biden a win, but also ensured victories for the states first Black senator and first Jewish senator over their Republican opponents. More recently, the Republican-led state legislature has been successful in changing voting laws in Georgia a move that has been criticized as an attempt to limit voting for people of color.

Marginalized and intersectional communities have been crucial leaders in the contemporary struggle to defend and secure voting rights. Black women in particular have turned their commitment to community into sophisticated voter mobilization organizations, said Christina Wolbrecht, professor of political science and director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy. Its important to emphasize, however, that resisting and overcoming discriminatory voting rules requires time, energy and attention that these communities do not have in abundance and that distract from other work that advances human flourishing.

Luis Fraga, the Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Political Science, whose areas of expertise include Latino politics, politics of race and ethnicity, voting rights policy and immigration policy, emphasized that the contemporary fight for minority rights is nothing new.

We are a nation founded on the basis of slavery and its related racism, he said. We have culture wars and our racist historical past and its lingering contemporary effects and immigration particularly from Latin America is identified as a threat to American identity and elements of American ideals. Add to that people coming from Muslim countries, and this intensifies the culture wars. Weve seen the decline of the material status of some blue-collar workers in some parts of the country. All these things together have led to and research backs this up the importance of white identity. Working against this threatens the status of the Republican Party and spurs the gerrymandering/voting tricks. Their goal is to dehumanize the people who are the sources of that threat.

Echoing the V-Dem teams deliberation score for the U.S., Fraga said this rhetoric, combined with political leadership doubling down on misinformation with the intent of spreading it as widely as possible via likeminded news outlets, has caused extreme political polarization in the U.S. He added, Its not that the people who are influenced by that are in any way unsophisticated its things changing in the U.S. in a way that they are not comfortable with.

Fraga, who also serves as the Rev. Donald P. McNeill, C.S.C., Professor of Transformative Latino Leadership and the director of the Institute for Latino Studies, sees hope in proposed legislation. The goal of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is to restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the For the People Act aims to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, limit partisan gerrymandering and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has announced that he will not support the For the People Act, as he believes any reforms in voting and election practices should be bipartisan. In a recent op-ed, he wrote, Partisan policymaking wont instill confidence in our democracy it will destroy it.

Fraga sees it differently, noting that many lawmakers see clearly that this is not America at its best, and that the proposed acts would be a way to prevent democratic backsliding.

The New America statement is supported by my research, teaching and values and is in the best traditions of Notre Dame, he continued. We were established to provide education to predominantly immigrant, working-class and marginalized Americans. This attack on voting rights one can understand as a threat to what Notre Dame stands for and what has brought it its greatness.

Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs Anbal Prez-Lin studies processes of democratization, political instability and the rule of law in new democracies, particularly in Latin America. He sees parallels in some Latin American countries to attempts by U.S. state Republican legislatures to restrict voting rules, thus securing long-term partisan control of their states.

This strategy only works if federal legislation fails to enforce voting rights nationally, said Perez-Lin, who holds a joint appointment at the Keough School of Global Affairs. Students of Latin American politics call this phenomenon boundary control. In Latin America, authoritarian governors are known to preserve power in their enclaves by fending off the influence of national governments.

The idea of eliminating the filibuster a Congressional tactic, meant to delay a vote on or kill a bill, that requires 60 percent of senators to overturn has been bandied about since the Biden administration began and Democrats gained control of both the White House and the Senate. Perez-Lin, who recently wrote an article for the Dignity & Development blog on the damage legislative supermajorities can do to democracy through altering the independence of courts, notes that the filibuster is an important maneuver that protects legislative minorities.

Paradoxically, however, some Republican senators are using this institution to disempower minorities in their own states, said Perez-Lin, who is also a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute. By blocking the adoption of federal legislation to defend voting rights, they sadly exercise boundary control to protect the adoption of restrictive voting laws.

Eugene and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science Scott Mainwaring agrees and stresses that the overt attempts to suppress minority votes, the partisan manipulation of electoral administration and the refusal to accept Trumps defeat are all harbingers of the demise of democracy.

These practices represent a movement toward competitive authoritarian regimes, and they are a deep threat to democracy, said Mainwaring, who is also a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute. As a student and scholar of democracy for more than 40 years, I am disheartened to see these practices.

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Political science professors sign statement warning of threats to US democracy - ND Newswire

In Bidens view, the United States and other democracies are in a competition with China and other autocracies. This is being exacerbated by a period of rapid technological change that could give China an opportunity to leapfrog the United States in certain areas. Biden regularly invokes his many conversations with Xi Jinping to observe that the Chinese leader is deeply ideological in his personal commitment to authoritarianism. Bidens top Asia adviser, Kurt M. Campbell, has echoed that sentiment, saying that Xi has almost completely disassembled nearly 40 years of mechanisms designed for collective leadership, and that he is largely responsible for a more assertive Chinese foreign policy.

Beyond the rhetoric, the Biden administration is working with Congress to pass the Endless Frontier Act in order to counter Chinas economic and geopolitical ambition, especially in technology; it has prioritized relations with Asian allies over bilateral diplomacy with Beijing; and it has pressed Europe to do more to counter China.

Read: The U.S. and China finally get real with each other

This has been a bit of a journey for the president. Two years ago, he spoke about why he thought reports of Chinas strength were overstated, and made a remark that Republicans hammered him for during the 2020 campaign: China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. I mean, you know, theyre not bad folks, folks. But guess what? Theyre not competition for us.

Now he worries that they are competition for America, and not only thatthey might win. This belief underpins the Biden doctrine.

To many within the Democratic Party, the speed with which Biden has adopted this stance has been a surprise. Some in the partys foreign-policy establishment hope that his views on China are not yet settled, and that he will moderate his rhetoric and outlook over time, deemphasizing the contest between democracy and authoritarianism. They worry that the United States could find itself embroiled in an ideological struggle with China akin to the Cold War. Like Biden in 2019, they think that Chinas strengths are overstated, and that the U.S. can afford to be patient and restrained. They believe that while Washington must stand up for its interests, it also needs to quickly transition to a point of peaceful coexistence with Chinabasically a restoration of the Obama administrations approach.

A Biden-administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss government deliberations, told me that while the top foreign-policy officials are simpatico with the president, some in the government share the restorationists concerns, while others have yet to grasp the significance of the presidents statements.

Americas allies in Europe, especially Germany, are also nervous about the emphasis on facing off with China. It is perhaps no coincidence that Biden published an article on the eve of his trip to Europe in which he downplayed the competition with autocracies, emphasizing instead the general need to prove democracys effectiveness.

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Joe Biden Worries That China Might Win - The Atlantic

(S. Eudora Smith)

Washington, D.C.I wore two masks this past yearone to guard against Covid-19, another to hide my fear of the political violence that infected the nations capital.

Eleven thousand people died from the coronavirus in D.C. Nearly 50,000 were diagnosed with Covid out of a population of more than 710,000. And at the US Capitol, five people died when a white mob incited by then-President Donald Trump ransacked the building in an attack on democracy and the sanctity of the vote. As Washington reopens, its easy to celebrate survival, though its hard to claim real security from Covid and the other virus that has left American democracy on a ventilator. Even if the source of only one of those will be formally investigatedleaving prosecutions the only hope for answers about the unprecedented attack on the Capitol and capitalwhat happened mustnt be forgotten.

District residents endured what no other place in the country hasa lockdown for a public health crisis and a crisis of democracy. After January 6, tanks had rolled into town. Twenty-six thousand National Guard troops were amassed. Surrounding waterways were patrolled by federal marshals. Armed soldiers and military vehicles mingled with the monuments and symbols that tell the official story of America, the postcard version that visitors from across the country and the world take home with them. Shortly before the inauguration of Joe Biden, I wrote a friend: At the request of the Secret Service, the bridges leading to Virginia will be closed from the 19th-21st. (A main bridge has already been closed.) I immediately thought of John Carpenters Escape from New York. Manhattan is a penal colony, and all the bridges out are wired to explode if anyone tries to escape.

We got a taste of what its like to live in a state of siege. I had to go no further than the corner. My home was on the periphery of a sweeping secured zone that included the Capitol and the National Mall, which were cordoned off by a massive chain-link fence. To the south this zone included the offices of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is bordered by a major interstate. I had imagined the nearby on-ramp to the interstate as my escape route if the capital descended into armed conflict, but National Guard tanks blocked the ramp.

Like other Washingtonians, I looked at the troops and worried, Will Trump leave without a fight? Will there be blood in the streets before its all over? And, as important, Should we even trust the Guard to oppose the insurrectionists? Might they turn on one another, and then on We the People?

The first night I drove home from the grocery store, two young Guard members stopped me as I tried to turn at the light to enter my complex. I live there, I said, pointing at the complex, ready to provide proof of address. After a brief pause, I was let through, though I didnt understand why I would be questioned in the first place. As a Black woman, I wasnt the reason the Guard has been deployed to the city.

Today the soldiers are gone. The last of them departed a few weeks ago. The metal fences that cordoned off the National Mall following the insurrection are gone too. I am leaving as well, for an ordinary reason, a different job. It strikes me, though, at this moment of reflection, that so much of what I love about D.C. has been eclipsed by memories of contagion and these multiple and still-uncertain efforts at containment.

Covid-19 cases have been reduced here. More than 42 percent of residents have been fully vaccinated. People talk of a return to normal, as if the crises we have experienced were just random interruptions in an otherwise predictable stream of events, not the movie trailer of disruptions to come. Health care experts anticipate a rise in cases in the fall and winter among unvaccinated people, and there are likely to be more variants, more pandemics in the future.

But for now, joggers leave puffs of dirt in their wake on the paths along the National Mall. Friends lounge on the bright green grass by the Washington Monument. Tourists pack the sidewalks on Independence and Pennsylvania avenues. People are out, masks off, while our democracy remains in critical condition.

Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, who from 198294 was the magazines chief political writer and analyst. This series of dispatches from Kopkinds far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.

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Democracy on a Ventilator - The Nation

Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the New America think tank and one of the organizers of New Americas Statement of Concern, wrote by email:

A longstanding finding in political science is that it is elites who preserve democracy, and elites who destroy democracy. Overwhelming majorities of voters support democracy in the abstract, but if they are told by elites that the other party is trying to destroy democracy and these emergency measures are needed to preserve democracy by keeping the other side out of power, most partisan voters are going to follow their leaders and support anti-democratic changes. This is especially the case in a highly polarized binary political system in which the thought of the opposing party taking power seems especially odious and even existential.

Like many of the co-signers of the Statement of Concern, Drutman has no expectation that the Supreme Court would step in to block states from tilting the partisan balance by tinkering with election rules and procedures:

The conservative Supreme Court has given states wide latitude to change electoral laws. I dont see how a 6-3 conservative court does much to interfere with the ability of states to choose their own electoral arrangements. The conservative majority on the Court has clearly decided it is not the role of the Supreme Court to place reasonable boundaries on the ability of partisan legislatures to stack elections in their favor.

Laura Gamboa, a political scientist at the University of Utah, is less harsh in her assessment of the citizenry, but she too does not place much hope in the ability of the American electorate to protect democratic institutions from assault:

I dont think Americans (or most other people) have a normative preference for dictatorship. Overall, people prefer democracy over authoritarianism. Having said that, polarization and misinformation can lead people to support power grabs. Research has shown that when a society is severely polarized and sees the out-group (in this case out-party) as enemies (not opponents), they are willing to support anti-democratic moves in order to prevent them from attaining power. More so, when they are misled to believe that these rules are put in place to protect elections from fraud.

More important, Gamboa argued that the corrosion of political norms that protect democratic governance

can definitively evolve into a broader rejection of the rule of law. Institutions do not survive by themselves, they need people to stand by them. This type of manipulation of electoral laws undermines the legitimacy of elections. Rules and norms that were once sacred become part of the political game: things to be changed if and when it serves the political purpose of those in power. Once that happens, these norms lose their value. They become unreliable and thus unable to serve as channels to adjudicate political differences, in this case, to determine who attains and who does not attain power.

The fact that public attention has been focused on Trumps claim that the election was stolen, the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and Republican stonewalling against the creation of a commission to investigate the attack on Congress help mask the fact that the crucial action is taking place across the country in state capitols, with only intermittent national coverage, especially on network television.

These Republican-controlled state governments have become, in the words of Jacob Grumbach, a political scientist at the University of Washington, Laboratories of Democratic Backsliding, the title of his April paper.

Grumbach developed 61 indicators of the level of adherence to democratic procedures and practices what he calls a State Democracy Index and tracked those measures in the states over the period from 2000 to 2018. The indicators include registration and absentee voting requirements, restrictions on voter registration drives and gerrymandering practices.

Grumbachs conclusion: Republican control of state government, however, consistently and profoundly reduces state democratic performance during this time period. The results, he writes,

are remarkably clear: Republican control of state government reduces democratic performance. The magnitude of democratic contraction from Republican control is surprisingly large, about one-half of a standard deviation. Much of this effect is driven by gerrymandering and electoral policy changes following Republican gains in state legislatures and governorships in the 2010 election.

In terms of specific states and regions, Grumbach found that states on the West Coast and in the Northeast score higher on the democracy measures than states in the South, which lost ground over the 18 years of the study. At the same time, states like North Carolina and Wisconsin were among the most democratic states in the year 2000, but by 2018 they are close to the bottom. Illinois and Vermont move from the middle of the pack in 2000 to among the top democratic performers in 2018.

Grumbach contends that there are two sets of motivating factors that drive key elements of the Republican coalition to support anti-democratic policies:

The modern Republican Party, which, at its elite level, is a coalition of the very wealthy, has incentives to limit the expansion of the electorate with new voters with very different class interests. The G.O.P.s electoral base, by contrast, is considerably less interested in the Republican economic agenda of top-heavy tax cuts and reductions in government spending. However, their preferences with respect to race and partisan identity provide the Republican electoral base with reason to oppose democracy in a diversifying country.

At one level, the Republican anti-democratic drive is clearly a holding action. A detailed Brookings study, Americas electoral future: The coming generational transformation, by Rob Griffin, Ruy Teixeira and William Frey, argues that Republicans have reason to fear the future:

Millennials and Generation Z appear to be far more Democratic leaning than their predecessors were at the same age. Even if todays youngest generations do grow more conservative as they age, its not at all clear they would end up as conservative as older generations are today.

In addition, the three authors write, Americas youngest generations are more racially and ethnically diverse than older generations.

As a result, Griffin, Teixeira and Frey contend,

the underlying demographic changes our country is likely to experience over the next several elections generally favor the Democratic Party. The projected growth of groups by race, age, education, gender and state tends to be more robust among Democratic-leaning groups, creating a consistent and growing headwind for the Republican Party.

From 2020 to 2036, the authors project that the percentage of eligible voters who identify as nonwhite in Texas will grow from 50 to 60 percent, in Georgia from 43 to 50 percent, in Arizona from 38 to 48 percent.

As these percentages grow, Republicans will be under constant pressure to enact state legislation to further restrict registration and voting. The question will become: How far are they willing to go?

I posed that question to Terry Moe, a political scientist at Stanford. His reply:

As for whether this electoral manipulation will devolve into a broader rejection of the rule of law, I would say that the Republican Party has already crossed the Rubicon. For four years during the Trump presidency, they defended or ignored his blatant abuses of power, his violations of democratic norms, and his attacks on our democratic institutions, and they routinely circled the wagons to protect him. They had countless opportunities to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law, and they consistently failed to do so.

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Opinion | How Far Are Republicans Willing to Go? Theyre Already Gone. - The New York Times