Sorry but U.S. Democracy is Doomed

by Sandy Goodman

A lot of smart people are worried sick about the health of American democracy, as Republicans tighten their embrace of Donald Trump’s Big Lie.

Prof. Richard Hasen of the University of California at Irvine, an election law expert, is “scared shitless,”about “voter suppression,” and “election subversion” by officials “who will mess with the count.” All Trump needs to overpower the voters is “a rival slate of electoral votes” supplied by state legislatures and endorsed by a supportive congressional majority and supreme court, fears New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. More than 100 political scholars warn: “Our entire democracy is now at risk.”

Another, Ex-Republican neocon Robert Kagan, wrote: “The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves.”

The Brennan Center for Justice says 19 states enacted 33 laws so far this year that will make it harder to vote. So did state laws passed earlier. Republican lawmakers even seized some electoral powers from Democratic governors in states including Wisconsin and Georgia. Georgia’s new law will give Republican state legislators power to take over local election boards, suspend their officials and potentially overturn elections.

As Journalist Zack Beauchamp of Vox warns: “It can happen here, and in some ways it’s happening right now.”

He’s among a growing number of small d democrats who fear that, even beyond voter suppression, Republican minorities might manage to seize enough control of election machinery to achieve minority rule, as have right-wingers in Hungary.

I go beyond that fear. I’m convinced that this great country is committing national suicide, that American democracy is doomed. In its death throes. Kaput!

Democracy depends on citizens’ will far more than constitutions. It requires more than a barely-interested majority: it needs a critical mass motivated enough to assure it continues, especially against today’s fierce enemies. But the rest of us aren’t fighting back against those foes. The critical mass has disappeared.

Based only on opposition to Trump, Democrats should have won comfortably in Virginia, as Biden did last year by 10 points. Instead they lost the governorship and both other statewide races. And in New Jersey’s contest for governor, they barely won, by less than two percent, while the state’s second most powerful elective official got beat by a Republican rookie. Biden took Jersey by 16%.

A year after the presidential election, tens of millions of Americans still won’t acknowledge that Biden beat Trump fair and square, despite a mountain of evidence. Trump & Co. still insist he won big, but that his victory was somehow stolen. Trump calls it “the greatest crime in history.” But only if you’re as deranged and dishonest as he is. Most worrisome is a September CNN poll with 36% of U.S. adults saying Biden didn’t get enough legitimate votes to win.

If this is even close to accurate, it’s frightening.

Some 158 million citizens voted for president last year. So 36% is just over 57 million people who don’t believe the winner really won. Other polls are similar. And CNN pollsters say 6-of-10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents feel “supporting Trump and believing he won” form “an important part”of their Republican identity.

Instead of making Republicans more sensible, time has done the opposite. AP/NORC polls in February and July showed two-thirds believed Trump’s Big Lie. By September, says CNN, that figure rose to 78%.

Whatever the figure, the number of naysayers is huge. Majority rule is hardly possible if such a large, aggrieved minority denies that the winner won. And 2020 was no one-time exception. With the system’s flaws exposed, politicians will likely try to exploit them more often.

Citizens must take most blame for Americans’ ignorance. An informed citizenry is essential to democracy. But we don’t have one. A decade ago, political scholars Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson described “the dirty little secret of our profession:”

Among political scientists, that most voters are woefully ignorant about politics is completely uncontroversial and has been for decades. The survey evidence on this subject is overwhelming…

In 2018, for example, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation found only slightly over one-third of current citizens could pass the test required of new ones. Just one in four knew why the colonists fought Britain; three of five couldn’t name our WWII enemies; almost as many didn’t know the number of Supreme Court justices, and 37% said Ben Franklin invented the lightbulb.

Despite such ignorance, there appears no widespread enthusiasm for more teaching of civics. Culture wars might even trigger a decrease. Demographers widely predict continued rise in minority populations, including our largest minority, Hispanics. Although most Hispanics are proficient in English, many still are not, and many who are use Spanish at home. Equis Research, a firm that studies Latino voters, found that as bad as misinformation is in English, it’s far worse in Spanish.

That Trump is the worst liar in U.S. political history doesn’t help. Especially with such widespread lying by Fox News, talk radio, social media and GOP officials.

As noted, thousands of others worry and wonder. A few others like Professor Shawn Rosenberg, say more definitively, as I do, that democracy is doomed. “[I]n well established democracies like the United States, democratic governance will continue its inexorable decline, and will eventually fail,” he says. One wonders why he thinks it will take that long. Rosenberg teaches political psychology at the University of California Irvine. He argues that democracy alienates most people because it’s too abstract and complicated for them.

Democracy is hard work, requiring respect for people who don’t look like or agree with you, sorting through a lot of confusing information to find the truth, and making difficult judgements. But most people don’t think in those terms. Rosenberg says:“The majority of Americans are unable to understand or value democratic culture, institutions, practices or citizenship in the manner required.”

In contrast, populism, whose roots he finds in 20th century fascism, has clear categories of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ a simple authoritarian view of power, and is easier to understand and buy into. Most people used to be restrained by so-called elites. But not any more. So they choose populism over democracy.

Rosenberg blames Americans of all political stripes for rejecting democracy. He argues Trump is only a symptom, not a cause of that problem. Still, by far the worst, most imminent threat to our system comes from the disgraced ex-president and his Republican followers.

The most frightening thing is that millions want this psychotic sociopath back in office with his finger again on the nuclear trigger. This, even after they lived through four years of his incompetence and ignorance; his total lack of concern for thousands of lives he might have saved but didn’t by not publicizing his Covid vaccination; his hatefulness, divisiveness and, surpassing all, his continuing desecration of American democracy and the truth and trust needed to sustain it.

Sadly, even Trump’s most bitter enemies now routinely accept the likelihood that he’ll be his party’s 2024 nominee. What was once unthinkable and still ought to be has instead become business as usual. Everyone’s lack of outrage is shocking. Given such alarming realities as our current flirtation with fascism and the death of outrage, American democracy is doomed.