As warnings concerning the fall of American democracy accumulate upfront of the Nov. 8 election, I feel increasingly more like Eleanor Shellstrop on “The Good Place” as she realizes, “We’re already here. This is ‘the Bad Place.’”
Polls from the past couple of weeks suggest that the Republican Party will take one or each chambers of Congress this yr, thanks partially to candidates who falsely say that the last presidential election was one way or the other rigged. The polls also add evidence to the idea that the majority Americans either think democracy is already broken or don’t really prefer it in the primary place (or they are saying the previous but really mean the latter). Do the radically different perceptions of U.S. politics that prevail in several parts of the country mean that we’re already in a Cold Civil War? Are we locked within the form of bickering that led Eleanor to grasp that she was in hell?
I actually have covered this growing pessimism about our political system in previous columns, however the evidence keeps coming.
I actually have covered this growing pessimism about our political system in previous columns, however the evidence keeps coming. In an AP-NORC poll conducted in early October, only 9 percent of respondents said that democracy in america is faring “very” or “extremely” well (including 5 percent of Republicans and 15 percent of Democrats), a somewhat ironic assessment provided that voter turnout has been up significantly since Donald J. Trump began running for president. A Latest York Times/Siena College poll, also conducted in early October, found that 71 percent of voters agreed that U.S. democracy is now “under threat.”
Because the Times’ Nate Cohn noted, “only about 17 percent of voters [in the Times poll] described the threat in a way that squares with discussion in mainstream media and amongst experts—with a concentrate on Republicans, Donald J. Trump, political violence, election denial, authoritarianism, and so forth.” The truth is, the “mainstream media” was most continuously identified as a “major” threat to democracy, by 59 percent of likely voters (including 89 percent of those that voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 but additionally 31 percent of those that voted for Mr. Biden).
The distrust of mainstream media—which is also defined as media that reaches voters across political and demographic divides—is something that already has deep roots, not something that might occur in consequence of elections in 2022 or 2024. And it just isn’t prone to fade as recent voters enter the electorate. Within the Times poll, 62 percent of those under 30 said the mainstream media was a serious threat to democracy (presumably including some Democrats who complain that the nonpartisan media is not partisan enough), and this was the age group most definitely (22 percent) to say that “social media” is their most frequent news source.
The distrust of mainstream media is something that already has deep roots, not something that might occur.
The Times poll found wide agreement that the U.S. government “mainly works to profit powerful elites,” versus helping “strange people”—an announcement endorsed by 68 percent of likely voters, including 60 percent of those that voted for Mr. Biden and 76 percent of those that voted for Mr. Trump. This can be a sentiment that’s already widespread, not depending on a future election result, and it could have more of an effect than outlandish vote-rigging theories in causing residents to query the legitimacy of an elected government.
Consistent with the concept that the worst threats to democracy are still on the horizon, The Washington Post recently asked political scientists, historians and other experts to explain “chillingly plausible chains of potential actions and reactions that would unravel the nation” if Mr. Trump returns to the White House. There are fears that Mr. Trump will likely be more practical a second time around in stacking the chief branch and the military with loyalists willing to impose authoritarianism, but among the Post’s scenarios appear to be already underway. David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, warns that the refusal to just accept national election results could pit states against one another, making them “competitors moderately than collaborators and partners” in addressing problems facing america. But that is already happening with some frequency, as with tax policy and the recent example of the Republican governors of Florida and Texas transporting migrants to places governed by Democrats. (Abortion policy, now that it has been returned to the states, can be prone to cause some adversarial relationships.)
One among the worst-case scenarios within the Post article comes from Barbara Walter, a political science professor on the University of California at San Diego and the creator of How Civil Wars Start: And The best way to Stop Them. She doubts a replay of the Nineteenth-century Civil War, during which entire states picked sides within the fight over slavery, but as a substitute worries about “a style of guerrilla war, a siege of terror that’s going to be targeted very specifically at certain individuals and certain groups of individuals, all civilians.” Terror campaigns usually are not unknown to even essentially the most stable democracies—consider the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, the Quebec separatist movement in Canada and the multiply motivated acts of political violence in america within the late ’60s and early ’70s—but they’ve generally had specific objectives that didn’t not involve election denialism or attempts to dismantle democratic institutions.
The present threats of political violence in america seem each more diffuse and harder to defuse.
The present threats of political violence in america seem each more diffuse and harder to defuse. What form of peace talks would involve the boys convicted of attempting to kidnap the governor of Michigan, who were apparently white supremacists angered by Covid restrictions? What would satisfy the residents who are actually threatening election officials and volunteers at polling sites, or who act on the belief that a lot of their fellow Americans are committing voter fraud? Is there any strategy to hold negotiations (let alone election debates) between two political parties when 80 percent of the members of every party think the opposite “poses a threat that if not stopped will destroy America as we comprehend it,” as respondents said in an NBC poll?
There appears to be a backlash against economic, demographic and social changes that features blaming democratic institutions for allowing them to occur, so warnings that democratic institutions are at risk will not be as effective as political scientists hope.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, responded to that day’s events by warning, “If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. We’d never see the entire nation accept an election again.”
But we’re already in a spot where the flimsiest claims of voter fraud are embraced by tens of millions irrespective of how repeatedly they’re debunked. (Yes, this includes the claim that “mules” forged 400,000 illegal votes in ballot drop boxes in 2020, and all these extra votes were never detected within the precinct-level election data that experts have been dissecting and analyzing for 2 years.) And what if election denialism is a lagging moderately than a number one indicator of a broken democracy?
So are we already in a democracy death spiral? Are we already within the Bad Place… or are journalists, political scientists and various do-gooders overreacting to Mr. Trump’s successes in a political system that has never worked easily or cleanly? We can have to attend for the historians to come to a decision whether 2022 was a yr after we began to tug ourselves out of a ditch or a yr after we sank deeper into the mud.
[Related book review: “Predicting (and preventing) the next civil war”]
