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As the Big Lie of a stolen election continues to dominate the Republican Party, GOP-controlled states enact restrictive voting laws and pursue preposterous election audits, aspiring candidates embrace the fiction of a stolen 2020 election, and a majority of GOP voters still believe Trump is the true president, the obvious questions follow: Where is this all headed? And is there any way out?

In one telling, the Republican Party will eventually come back to its senses and move past former President Donald Trump and Trumpist grievance politics, especially if Republicans lose a few elections in a row and realize that its a losing strategy. But theres another possible outcome: More contested elections, more violence and, ultimately, a collapse into competitive authoritarianism enabled by electoral advantages that tilt in one partys favor.

Trump and his particular style of party leadership are easy and obvious targets to blame for the decline of American democracy, as well as the Republican Partys increasing illiberalism. But if Trump was transformative, the more important question is: Why was he able to succeed in the first place?

The most compelling theory based on historical patterns of democratic decline is that hyper-polarization cracked the foundations of American democracy, creating the conditions under which a party could break democratic norms with impunity, because winning in the short term became more important than maintaining democracy for the long term.

In order for democracy to work, competing parties must accept that they can lose elections, and that its okay. But when partisans see their political opposition not just as the opposition, but as a genuine threat to the well-being of the nation, support for democratic norms fades because winning becomes everything. Politics, in turn, collapses into an all-out war of us against them, a kind of pernicious polarization that appears over and over again in democratic collapses, and bears a striking similarity to whats currently happening in the U.S.

Theres no shortage of plausible explanations for why U.S. politics has become so polarized, but many of these theories describe impossible-to-reverse trends that have played out across developed democracies, like the rise of social media and the increased political salience of globalization, immigration and urban-rural cultural divides. All of these trends are important contributors, for sure. But if they alone are driving illiberalism and hyper-partisanship in the U.S., then the problem should be consistent across all western democracies. But it isnt.

Whats happening in the U.S. is distinct in four respects.

First, the animosity that people feel toward opposing parties relative to their own (whats known as affective polarization in political science) has grown considerably over the last four decades. According to a June 2020 paper from economists Levi Boxell, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, the increase in affective polarization in the U.S. is the greatest compared to that of eight other OECD countries over the same time period.

Second, the change in how Americans feel about their party and other parties has been driven by a dramatic decrease in positive feelings toward the opposing party. In most (though not all) of the nine democracies, voters have become a little less enthusiastic about their own parties. But only in the U.S. have partisans turned decidedly against the other party.

Boxell, Gentzkow and Shapiro caution that the cross-country comparisons are not perfect, since they rely on different survey question wordings over time. But they also dont pull any punches in their findings: [O]ur central conclusion that the U.S. stands out for the pace of the long-term increase in affective polarization is not likely an artifact of data limitations.

Third, more so than in other countries, Americans report feeling isolated from their own party. When asked to identify both themselves and their favored party on an 11-point scale in a 2012 survey, Americans identified themselves as, on average, 1.3 units away from the party that comes closest to espousing their beliefs, according to an analysis from political scientist Jonathan Rodden. This gap is the highest difference Rodden found among respondents in comparable democracies. This isolation matters, too, because it means that parties cant count on enthusiasm from their own voters instead, they must demonize the political opposition in order to mobilize voters.

Fourth, and perhaps most significant, in the U.S., one party has become a major illiberal outlier: The Republican Party. Scholars at the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have been monitoring and evaluating political parties around the world. And one big area of study for them is liberalism and illiberalism, or a partys commitment (or lack thereof) to democratic norms prior to elections. And as the chart below shows, of conservative, right-leaning parties across the globe, the Republican Party has more in common with the dangerously authoritarian parties in Hungary and Turkey than it does with conservative parties in the U.K. or Germany.

The U.S. is truly exceptional in just how polarized its politics have become, but its not alone. People in countries with majoritarian(ish) democracies, or two very dominant parties dominating its politics like in the U.S. think Canada, Britain, Australia have displayed more unfavorable feelings toward the political opposition.

In fact, in a new book, American Affective Polarization in Comparative Perspective, another team of scholars, Noam Gidron, James Adams and Will Horne, shows that citizens in majoritarian democracies with less proportional representation dislike both their own parties and opposing parties more than citizens in multiparty democracies with more proportional representation.

This pattern may have something to do with the shifting politics of coalition formation in proportional democracies, where few political enemies are ever permanent (e.g., the unlikely new governing coalition in Israel). This also echoes something social psychologists have found in running experiments on group behavior: Breaking people into three groups instead of two leads to less animosity. Something, in other words, appears to be unique about the binary condition, or in this case, the two-party system, that triggers the kind of good-vs-evil, dark-vs-light, us-against-them thinking that is particularly pronounced in the U.S.

Ultimately, the more binary the party system, the stronger the out-party hatred. But there is also something particular about whats happening in the U.S., even compared to other majoritarian(ish) democracies. For example, the major parties on the right in Canada and Australia have not become as illiberal as their American counterpart. Canadian politics scholars would point out that in Canada, regional identities are often stronger than national partisan identities, and this regionalism has kept Canadian politics more moderate. And Australian scholars would point out that ranked-choice voting has exerted a moderating force on Australian politics.

In the U.S., meanwhile, (and to some extent the U.K.), politics have become extremely nationalized. Cities became more socially liberal, multiracial and cosmopolitan, most of the rest of the country held onto more traditional values and stayed predominantly white, and suburbs turned into the political battleground. And as Rodden explains in Why Cities Lose, parties with rural strongholds often wind up with disproportionate electoral power, since their opposition tends to over-concentrate its vote in lopsided districts. This rural bias is especially pronounced in the U.S. Senate, for instance.

But while its true that cultural values have emerged as a more important organizing conflict across advanced democracies (one compelling explanation is that following the collapse of Communism and the rise of neoliberalism in the 1990s, parties of the left and right converged on support for market economics), the urban-rural split in countries with more proportional voting systems is far less binary. Thats in large part because in proportional democracies, multiple parties can still win seats in geographically unfriendly areas, with coalition governments including some balance of both urban and rural representation.

Its not just the lack of a stark urban-rural divide that makes proportional democracies less polarized, though. There is also less of a clear strategic benefit to demonizing the opposition in an election that has more than two parties. For instance, in a multiparty election, taking down one party might not necessarily help you. After all, another party might benefit, since negative attacks typically have a backlash. And because parties can take stronger positions and appeal more directly to voters on policy, theres less need to rally your supporters by talking about how terrible and dangerous the other party is. Moreover, in systems where parties form governing coalitions, demonizing a side youve recently been in a coalition with (or hope to be in the future) doesnt ring quite as true.

While it is both easy and appropriate to criticize Trump and fellow Republicans for their anti-democratic descent in service of the Big Lie, it takes more work to appreciate how the structure of the party system itself laid the groundwork for the former presidents politics of loathing and fear. A politics defined by hatred of political opponents is a politics ripe for hateful illiberalism.

The new scholarship on comparative polarization is crucial in understanding this dynamic. In one sense, it offers a very depressing view: Given the current binary structure of American party politics, this conflict is mostly locked in. No level of social media regulation or media literacy or exhortation to civility is going to make much of a difference. But it also offers a kind of master key: If the structure of a party system is as crucial as these studies suggest it is, then the solution is obvious: The U.S. may want to change its voting system to become more proportional.

Read the rest here:
Why The Two-Party System Is Wrecking American Democracy - FiveThirtyEight

Today, politicians of both parties are playing Americans against each other to stay in office. For example, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a rich senator, is pushing against the For the People Act, which most West Virginians want to see passed, and is pushing against ending the filibuster, a supermajority requirement added by accident that makes it impossible to pass bipartisan legislation.

Heres how our country has gotten so corrupt and how Manchin is standing in the way of fixing it, and fixing democracy in the process.

The For the People Act would make sure that those who donate to political campaigns and political ads are disclosed and known, it would try to stop campaign finance corruption, try to stop legalized bribery and the revolving door, it would stop voter suppression like reducing polling station numbers, voter roll purges and felon disenfranchisement, and it would end gerrymandering, drawing congressional districts to favor one political party over another.

But Manchin is against it, because he is for a corrupt system. He says he wants to support bipartisanship, but his stance is creating more problems and pressure and more partisanship. Bipartisanship is not always a good thing. After all, the Fugitive Slave Act was part of a bipartisan compromise. What we need is nonpartisanship, not bipartisanship.

Originally posted here:
LETTER: Manchin is standing in the way of fixing our democracy - Charleston Gazette-Mail

Warren founded Generation Citizen, which engages young people in political activism to promote their civic education, and a visiting fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, which seeks to strengthen global democracy by improving civic engagement and inclusive dialogue.

The right to vote, the bedrock of our country's democracy, is under attack. Predicated on former President Donald Trump's continued insistence that the election was stolen, Republicans have launched an unprecedented push to make it harder to vote under the veneer of election integrity. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 389 bills have been introduced in 48 states to restrict access to voting, and 14 states have already enacted laws that tighten the rules around casting ballots.

In response, more than 100 prominent scholars recently signed onto a statement declaring that democracy is "now at risk", and they called for urgent federal action, noting that several states are becoming "political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections." President Biden has enlisted Vice President Harris to lead the administration's efforts to protect voting rights. Democrats in Congress are waging an all-out campaign to pass the For the People Act (a comprehensive voting rights bill known as H.R. 1 in the House and S. 1 in the Senate) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4), which would restore provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court.

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The reality, however, is that passing both bills is highly unlikely, given fervent resistance from Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to abolishing the filibuster. Signing the bills into law would also be insufficient efforts to actually save our democracy.

Biden clearly understands the crisis in democracy, remarking at his first press conference: "I predict to you, your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded, autocracy or democracy, because that is what is at stake." The administration's approach to the domestic and global crisis in democracy has been centered on focusing on voting rights and planning a "Democracy Summit," bringing together countries and civil society around the world dedicated to the pursuit of democracy.

Voting and a summit are not enough. On other issues, like the economy, infrastructure, racial inequality and climate change, the administration has launched bold efforts, allocating trillions of dollars of funding and passing transformational policies that may remake the fabric of American society for generations to come. Biden should recognize the existential nature of the threat to democracy, and articulate and pursue a similarly bold democracy agenda. This agenda should focus on the hyper-local and the macro-global: promoting democracy at the most local levels of government, while also leading a global vaccine distribution plan that demonstrates the soft power of the American government at the international stage.

Protecting the right to vote is crucial. Republicans are pursuing regulations that are race-based and will disproportionately restrict access to people of color. But the crisis in democracy goes far beyond access to the ballot box.

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index evaluates democracies around the world, measuring 60 indicators across five general categories: electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties. The United States currently ranks 25th out of 167 countries analyzed marking it as a flawed democracy.

The crisis in democracy is not just an American problem. According to the index, less than 9 percent of the world's population currently lives in a "full democracy." More than a third of the world's population lives under authoritarian rule.

The fact that democracy is receding across the globe demonstrates the endemic nature of the problem: It goes far beyond any leader or political party. Individuals are increasingly distrustful of a system that they feel like has promised much, and offered little in return, especially as economic inequality increases across the world. The fact that China, as an emerging power, has provided an alternate form of government is threatening. China's average GDP growth of 7.01 percent from 2013 to 2020 marks one of the world's highest, while its rank on the Democracy Index is one of the world's lowest. China's autocratic system is attempting to demonstrate that countries can build economic power without democracy.

In the wake of China's rise, Biden sees his role in restoring democracy as pursuing policies that will strengthen the economy and lessen inequality, proving, as he articulated in his speech to a joint session of Congress, that "democracy still works, that our government still works and we can deliver for our people." He needs to go beyond delivering results and invest serious resources into the local aspects of democratic culture, and the global potential of American democratic power.

At the local level, studies have articulated that the increasing focus on the federal level furthers polarization and democratic dysfunction. Conversely, local cities and towns across the country have the potential to productively engage citizens in democratic engagement. The city of Durham, N.C., has begun to implement an Equitable Community Engagement Blueprint, drafted in collaboration with community members, to authentically engage and involve community members in every step of the city's decision-making processes. Detroit has formalized a system of community "block clubs," connecting the city to community groups, business owners, faith leaders, educators and everyday residents, which has proven vital for vaccine distribution. The city of Seattle recently approved $1 million in spending to support the creation of a participatory budgeting process in the city. A recent bipartisan congressional effort has focused on a $1 billion fund for civics education in districts across the country. These experiments are occurring across the country the administration should highlight these efforts and allocate serious monetary resources to support and scale their implementation.

Globally, the Biden administration can and should continue to articulate a more forceful and ambitious comprehensive strategy to improve vaccine distribution. While the United States roars back, countries across the world, from India to Latin America, are experiencing the worst of the pandemic. While the administration has backed a global waiver to intellectual property protections around Covid-19 vaccines and recently committed 500 million vaccine doses to the rest of the world, much more is needed. Indeed, the World Health Organization estimates $11 billion vaccine doses are needed for 70 percent immunity. The U.S. needs to convince more democracies to give more vaccines and needs to ensure that countries can use intellectual property to create their own vaccines.

Indeed, this accelerated pace is still behind China's global vaccine distribution. To date, China claims it has sent "350 million doses of vaccines to the international community, including vaccine assistance to over 80 countries and vaccine exports to more than 40 countries."

Given the Biden-articulated choice between Chinese autocracy and U.S. democracy, countries may very well be persuaded by the Chinese model if they see them as better able to provide real results. If the U.S. is serious about showing that its model of democracy can work, it must demonstrate it can lead the world in ending the pandemic.

Ensuring that all Americans can vote is vital to a functioning democracy. But it is just one lever in ensuring that democracy can survive, and thrive. As the president has noted, the fate of democracy itself may be at stake. We should respond with that level of ambition.

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Protecting voting isn't enough to save democracy - The Fulcrum

You said it, Greg Jayne: Inequity real risk to capitalism (The Columbian, June 13). And its also a real risk to democracy. Justice Brandeis said that best: We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cant have both.

Today, the scales are tipped too far; not only are some people able to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth, this is occurring while the majority of Americans are struggling in fact, some have been slipping backwards. What kind of system, and what kind of philosophy or theology, would support this dysfunctional imbalance?

As Jayne points out, this is the system our youth are confronting as they start their journey on the path of the American dream. The system does not support them, and their political clout to change it pales in contrast with that of the super rich. At least a few of the super rich, like Warren Buffet, realize how privileged they are and recommend raising taxes on the wealthy. If only they all had a conscience like this. Looks like the have nots are going to have to lead the way to save both capitalism and democracy.

Read the original here:
Letter: Save capitalism and democracy - The Columbian

US Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin arrive for a bipartisan meeting on infrastructure after original talks fell through with the White House on June 8, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

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In his first address to Congress on April 28, Joe Biden invoked the January 6 insurrection, saying, The images of a violent mob assaulting this Capitol, desecrating our democracy, remain vivid in all our minds. He added, The insurrection was an existential crisisa test of whether our democracy could survive. And it did. But the struggle is far from over.

These were uncharacteristically bold words from Biden, but they are not hyperbolic. On January 6, a sitting president incited a mob to attack Congress in order to sabotage the certification of his successor. Shocking as that was, it was only the flash point in a larger war against democracy. In truth, Donald Trumps clown coup had little chance of succeeding. The more serious threat lay in the very fact that he was able to do something so reckless and yet remain the standard-bearer of his party, someone whom most congressional Republicans still wouldnt vote to impeach.

Though Trump has left the White House, the Trumpification of the GOP continues apace. Those few brave but hapless Republicans who stood up to Trump, like Congresswoman Liz Cheney, are finding themselves pariahs in their own party, stripped of their positions and scorned by party loyalists. The GOP has embraced the Trumpian Big Lie that the election was stolen, an idea endorsed by 53 percent of Republicans according to a May Reuters/Ipsos poll. Trump is not so much an ex-president as a pretender to the throne, the exiled king of Mar-a-Lago whom elected Republicans cross at their peril.

The Big Lie is behind the efforts of state-level Republicans to roll back voting rights. As Geoffrey Skelley reported in FiveThirtyEight, In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Republican lawmakers have pushed new voting restrictions in nearly every state. From making it harder to cast ballots early to increasing the frequency of voter roll purges, at least 25 new restrictive voting laws have been enacted, with more potentially on the horizon. The most disturbing innovation in this rollback of democracy is the idea that state legislators could be empowered to overturn election results and pick their own presidential electors. In that scenario, Biden or another Democrat could win the popular count in states that carry over 270 electoral votes and still be deprived of the presidency. MORE FROM Jeet Heer

According to Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr., If Republicans win the governorships of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin next year, taking total control in those key swing states, they could impose all kinds of electoral barriers for the next presidential election. The Republicans are laying the groundwork to refuse to certify a 2024 Democratic presidential victory should the GOP hold a House majority.

Only the complacent would dismiss this as fanciful. Considering all the antics Trump pulled to try to overturn the 2020 electionand the fact that most elected Republicans are now going out of their way to grovel in front of him2024 will almost certainly be an even bigger test of American democracy.

Democrats have a very narrow window of opportunity to shore up our democracy against the ongoing GOP threat. The good news is that the party has put forward two very strong measuresHR 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Actwhich are the most robust pro-democracy reforms in a generation. Taken together, they would make it easier to vote, make voting more secure, limit the power of dark money in politics, and push back against antidemocratic shenanigans like gerrymandering.Current Issue

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Such measures are all extraordinarily popular with the general public. Writing in The New Yorker in March, Jane Mayer reported receiving a recording of a private conference call on January 8th, between a policy adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell and the leaders of several prominent conservative groupsincluding one run by the Koch brothers networkreveal[ing] the participants worry that the proposed election reforms garner wide support not just from liberals but from conservative voters, too. The speakers on the call expressed alarm at the broad popularity of [HR 1s] provision calling for more public disclosure about secret political donors.

The two voting rights acts proposed by the Democrats are both necessary and popular. Even with their narrow hold on power in Congress, it should be a no-brainer to push them through. Alas, its very hard to pass a prodemocratic measure in an antidemocratic system. Joe Manchin, with his cult of bipartisanship, is one major stumbling block. The West Virginia senator, as Luke Savage notes in The Atlantic, has reiterated his opposition to H.R. 1 on the deeply spurious grounds that any prospective voting-rights legislation ought to pass with bipartisan supporta DOA line of reasoning even when it comes to the watered-down version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act that Manchin himself is proposing.Related Articles

Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema supports HR 1 but, like Manchin, is also a fetishist of the filibuster. Since neither bill can be passed by reconciliation and both lack Republican support, the only way for either to get through the Senate is by overturning the filibuster. The core truth is that Manchin and Sinema are committed to the old order, even if following the established path leads to a successful Republican coup.

Ultimately, this issue is a test of how serious Biden and the Democrats are about their own rhetoric. If American democracy is indeed facing an existential crisis, then Biden should pull out all the stops to win over Manchin and Sinema: offer them any inducements that he has availableand threaten them with severe punishments for not toeing the party line. This is what Republicans are doing to recalcitrant members like Cheney and Mitt Romney. If the GOP can be in deadly earnest trying to undermine democracy, we have every right to expect Democrats to be just as organized, just as dedicated, and just as ruthless in preserving democracy.

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Are Dems Incapable of Defending Democracy? Or Just Unwilling? - The Nation