It's helpful to think about democracy vs not as a spectrum vs a binary choice. Even the countries you consider to be non-democratic have democratic elements. When I was growing up in Iran, it was probably a .5 democracy, these days it's a .3 or .4 democracy. Same goes for the US where it probably at peak was about a .8 democracy, and these days it's sliding towards the .6 range. It is not a sudden change from democracy one day to not.
But how should blue-state leaders actually defend against a red-state 2024 theft? Should the California and New York governors begin a 1776-style "correspondence committee" of blue states, to warn that a stolen Presidency in 2024 won't be accepted?
That sounds crazy. But what's the more practical answer? "Hope the Trumpist legislators feel ashamed" is not a strategy.
One thing I would add is that the modern definitions of "democracy" focus a lot on individual rights, strong and independent institutions, free press, etc rather than "do whatever the majority wants" or even "whoever gets the most votes rule as they wish".
The current ruling parties in UK, Japan, South Korea and Australia all have a majority of seats despite not winning a majority of the popular vote; Trudeau is PM despite the Liberals not winning a plurality of the vote. Yet all of them do well in the democracy rankings.
Similarly, many "more democratic" countries have very unrepresentative upper houses, although the upper houses usually have less power than the US Senate.
Amazing. This needs to be read by the right people at the Democrats. In India, we have filibusters in the form of farm protests. In China, corruption drives. Lol or so it seems to me.
One note:
"The BBC even reported that Gilens and Page’s paper demonstrated that the U.S. was “not a democracy”.
|| This is complete misinformation.|| Vox’s Dylan Matthews explained why in a 2016 article, and I have little add to his masterful and succinct debunking, so I’ll just quote him here."
This may sound to many that media outlets are misinforming people when all they did was report a salient development. I do not know if the reporters went back and reported that it was misinformation (they probably left the jobs). Even if they did, I'm not sure if it would influence the same people.
As an Indian, I strongly believe you guys will Build Back Better.
The Senate is quite literally an anti-democratic institution. It blatantly violates the "one person one vote" rule. And while that's always been true, it didn't bias to Republicans until recently. I don't know if saying that is politically helpful or harmful (maybe we could at least decrease the partisan bias a little with DC statehood), but sometimes commentary just seeks to accurately describe the world. Of course "Democracy" is a spectrum, we're not a full autocracy, and voting is important. But I also believe we're lumbering under poorly designed institutions. If we were designing the system from scratch, stuff like equal representation for WY and CA or lifetime Supreme Court appointments would obviously be absurd. Maybe if you're a politician you bite your tongue about it, but someone needs to point out that the emperor has a dumb Constitution.
Another thoughtful, or, rather, thought-provoking, article. Thank you. I agree that throwing around terms like "defund the police" hurts the real discussions that should be happening.
While this is a good article, it fails in two ways. It doesn't consider the role of propaganda financed by the rich in creating the "desires" of the middle class, and it doesn't consider the bundling of the major financial interests of the rich with those "desires". The rich business conservatives outspend liberals by incredible amounts, and must be getting something for their money. Bundling of abortion issues with low taxes for the rich is not an accident, nor is the creation of a majority conservative SCOTUS to push those issues. You can have all the perfect democratic machinery you want, but if you control people's desires well enough to get them to vote your way, you have less than a democracy. Hence the laundry list of conservative positions which were created and promoted through massive, centralized propaganda campaigns rather than grassroots.
Great piece, I did find the part about packing the court interesting though. I felt it downplayed the packing over the last 4 years (without expanding the # of judges). Have you explored the ramifications of the 6-3 majority Trump put in place (and the 250+ federal judges)? I'd be interested in reading your thoughts on how that might play out.
The thesis of this article seems to be, in large part, "major features of the US political system, like the Senate, can't be a big problem with democracy because the democracy-rating agencies don't count them against the US". Even if you set aside status-quo bias, which I think is a serious issue - why should we care what those people think?
Responding to "the US is undemocratic because some people's votes matter massively more than others because of where they live, and this is becoming more critical in practice as political opinions segregate geographically" with "well, these people didn't take off points for it" practically feels like a non-sequitur. What facts do those people know that makes that disparity not matter? Maybe the implicit argument is "the intrinsically undemocratic features of the US aren't much worse than those of other countries, and you should only use 'democracy' as a relative term", but that's an argument many of the people you're criticizing would reject, so you can't smuggle it in as a premise.
Seeing how politicized Corona became, I have my doubts that any strategy of explicitly defending democracy would not backfire. Perhaps that is the one issue that could unite Americans enough to pull us back from the precipice. Still, when I think of all the forces ranged against this (our sclerotic institutions, misinformation, and money in politics), I fear that even a miraculous summoning of the political will to stop our slide would fall find purchase. And let’s admit it: very few of us have yet had enough of fighting.
In the end, even the most perfect democracy cannot long survive a 50/50 split once the divide grows too wide.
Your citations for where the “left” is on various positions are always joke tweets. The criticism of the state of our democracy not withstanding and they are valid arguments, there are plenty of folks on left organizing voting drives and voters. I know this because I’ve been there and you might spend a little more time talking to folks, face to face, and a little less time on Twitter.
Given that Freedom house is funded by the US government (66% in 2006 rising to 86% in 2016, according to Wikipedia), I don't think any ratings from them concerning the US government can really be trusted. This is even discounting the past instances where Freedom House executives participated in CIA color revolution programs.
V-Dem gets money from Soros/Open Society as well as the ERC and NSF.
And the Economist Intelligence Unit - the Economist is ground zero for neoliberal cheerleading underlying the Washington Consensus economic model.
Nor am I particularly impressed with the fearmongering over "Elements of the GOP" stealing when they're just responding to the (more or less legal) same actions undertaken in the 2020 election by various state level Secretaries of State.
I also like (/sarc) how the focus on negative executive action is all on Trump when far greater unilateral executive fiats were decreed by Biden and the CDC.
Let's also not forget that the use of the SCOTUS to enact society wide changes is not a Republican innovation - it was the activist liberal Supreme Court in the 1960s and 1970s that started this trend.
Lastly, the "will of the people". Do we have a society of laws or not?
The United States Constitution was written specifically to prevent the domination of the federal government by a handful of large, populous states.
If this is to change, either undertake the constitutional process of amendment or else tear the whole thing down via Revolution.
As is, all the whining appears primarily to be geared towards the PMCs = the oligarchy = managers, professors, bureaucrats to exert unelected powers to one side or the other in theory, but towards the PMCs own interests in reality.
Whatever paid think tankers say - continually rising inequality conveys a completely different message.
With regards to "is the US a democracy", it seems problematic that the liberals complaining about unelected judges are the same people who don't believe a majority of the population of a state should be able to vote to limit abortion.
There are some arguments made about "fundamental rights" to try to explain why the situation is different, but those are only convincing to people who already agree that liberals are correct.
Major claps for the point about oligarchy. I absolutely detest the fetishism about "money in politics", and I think it's mostly a self-serving lie told by the political class to ignorant/inattentive swing voters in order to keep them from reflexively "voting for the other guy this time".
I'd add to #1 that we need to push for Ranked Choice, Top Two, and other similar reforms. Skeptics often point to the failure of RCV to create multiple parties in Australia, which is a fraction of our population and far less sectionally diverse. I maintain that purging zero-sum dynamics like FPTP, winner-take-all, and single-member districts from our elections will free up room for regional parties to arise and give more competition to the two national parties.
It's helpful to think about democracy vs not as a spectrum vs a binary choice. Even the countries you consider to be non-democratic have democratic elements. When I was growing up in Iran, it was probably a .5 democracy, these days it's a .3 or .4 democracy. Same goes for the US where it probably at peak was about a .8 democracy, and these days it's sliding towards the .6 range. It is not a sudden change from democracy one day to not.
I like the "defend democracy" frame!
But how should blue-state leaders actually defend against a red-state 2024 theft? Should the California and New York governors begin a 1776-style "correspondence committee" of blue states, to warn that a stolen Presidency in 2024 won't be accepted?
That sounds crazy. But what's the more practical answer? "Hope the Trumpist legislators feel ashamed" is not a strategy.
Great article!
One thing I would add is that the modern definitions of "democracy" focus a lot on individual rights, strong and independent institutions, free press, etc rather than "do whatever the majority wants" or even "whoever gets the most votes rule as they wish".
The current ruling parties in UK, Japan, South Korea and Australia all have a majority of seats despite not winning a majority of the popular vote; Trudeau is PM despite the Liberals not winning a plurality of the vote. Yet all of them do well in the democracy rankings.
Similarly, many "more democratic" countries have very unrepresentative upper houses, although the upper houses usually have less power than the US Senate.
Amazing. This needs to be read by the right people at the Democrats. In India, we have filibusters in the form of farm protests. In China, corruption drives. Lol or so it seems to me.
One note:
"The BBC even reported that Gilens and Page’s paper demonstrated that the U.S. was “not a democracy”.
|| This is complete misinformation.|| Vox’s Dylan Matthews explained why in a 2016 article, and I have little add to his masterful and succinct debunking, so I’ll just quote him here."
This may sound to many that media outlets are misinforming people when all they did was report a salient development. I do not know if the reporters went back and reported that it was misinformation (they probably left the jobs). Even if they did, I'm not sure if it would influence the same people.
As an Indian, I strongly believe you guys will Build Back Better.
The Senate is quite literally an anti-democratic institution. It blatantly violates the "one person one vote" rule. And while that's always been true, it didn't bias to Republicans until recently. I don't know if saying that is politically helpful or harmful (maybe we could at least decrease the partisan bias a little with DC statehood), but sometimes commentary just seeks to accurately describe the world. Of course "Democracy" is a spectrum, we're not a full autocracy, and voting is important. But I also believe we're lumbering under poorly designed institutions. If we were designing the system from scratch, stuff like equal representation for WY and CA or lifetime Supreme Court appointments would obviously be absurd. Maybe if you're a politician you bite your tongue about it, but someone needs to point out that the emperor has a dumb Constitution.
Great piece. Indeed it would not take much for Democrats to be seen as the party of stability. They should rally around that simple fact.
Another thoughtful, or, rather, thought-provoking, article. Thank you. I agree that throwing around terms like "defund the police" hurts the real discussions that should be happening.
While this is a good article, it fails in two ways. It doesn't consider the role of propaganda financed by the rich in creating the "desires" of the middle class, and it doesn't consider the bundling of the major financial interests of the rich with those "desires". The rich business conservatives outspend liberals by incredible amounts, and must be getting something for their money. Bundling of abortion issues with low taxes for the rich is not an accident, nor is the creation of a majority conservative SCOTUS to push those issues. You can have all the perfect democratic machinery you want, but if you control people's desires well enough to get them to vote your way, you have less than a democracy. Hence the laundry list of conservative positions which were created and promoted through massive, centralized propaganda campaigns rather than grassroots.
Great piece, I did find the part about packing the court interesting though. I felt it downplayed the packing over the last 4 years (without expanding the # of judges). Have you explored the ramifications of the 6-3 majority Trump put in place (and the 250+ federal judges)? I'd be interested in reading your thoughts on how that might play out.
Keep up the great work, cheers!
Thank you for writing this.
The thesis of this article seems to be, in large part, "major features of the US political system, like the Senate, can't be a big problem with democracy because the democracy-rating agencies don't count them against the US". Even if you set aside status-quo bias, which I think is a serious issue - why should we care what those people think?
Responding to "the US is undemocratic because some people's votes matter massively more than others because of where they live, and this is becoming more critical in practice as political opinions segregate geographically" with "well, these people didn't take off points for it" practically feels like a non-sequitur. What facts do those people know that makes that disparity not matter? Maybe the implicit argument is "the intrinsically undemocratic features of the US aren't much worse than those of other countries, and you should only use 'democracy' as a relative term", but that's an argument many of the people you're criticizing would reject, so you can't smuggle it in as a premise.
Seeing how politicized Corona became, I have my doubts that any strategy of explicitly defending democracy would not backfire. Perhaps that is the one issue that could unite Americans enough to pull us back from the precipice. Still, when I think of all the forces ranged against this (our sclerotic institutions, misinformation, and money in politics), I fear that even a miraculous summoning of the political will to stop our slide would fall find purchase. And let’s admit it: very few of us have yet had enough of fighting.
In the end, even the most perfect democracy cannot long survive a 50/50 split once the divide grows too wide.
Your citations for where the “left” is on various positions are always joke tweets. The criticism of the state of our democracy not withstanding and they are valid arguments, there are plenty of folks on left organizing voting drives and voters. I know this because I’ve been there and you might spend a little more time talking to folks, face to face, and a little less time on Twitter.
Given that Freedom house is funded by the US government (66% in 2006 rising to 86% in 2016, according to Wikipedia), I don't think any ratings from them concerning the US government can really be trusted. This is even discounting the past instances where Freedom House executives participated in CIA color revolution programs.
V-Dem gets money from Soros/Open Society as well as the ERC and NSF.
And the Economist Intelligence Unit - the Economist is ground zero for neoliberal cheerleading underlying the Washington Consensus economic model.
Nor am I particularly impressed with the fearmongering over "Elements of the GOP" stealing when they're just responding to the (more or less legal) same actions undertaken in the 2020 election by various state level Secretaries of State.
I also like (/sarc) how the focus on negative executive action is all on Trump when far greater unilateral executive fiats were decreed by Biden and the CDC.
Let's also not forget that the use of the SCOTUS to enact society wide changes is not a Republican innovation - it was the activist liberal Supreme Court in the 1960s and 1970s that started this trend.
Lastly, the "will of the people". Do we have a society of laws or not?
The United States Constitution was written specifically to prevent the domination of the federal government by a handful of large, populous states.
If this is to change, either undertake the constitutional process of amendment or else tear the whole thing down via Revolution.
As is, all the whining appears primarily to be geared towards the PMCs = the oligarchy = managers, professors, bureaucrats to exert unelected powers to one side or the other in theory, but towards the PMCs own interests in reality.
Whatever paid think tankers say - continually rising inequality conveys a completely different message.
With regards to "is the US a democracy", it seems problematic that the liberals complaining about unelected judges are the same people who don't believe a majority of the population of a state should be able to vote to limit abortion.
There are some arguments made about "fundamental rights" to try to explain why the situation is different, but those are only convincing to people who already agree that liberals are correct.
Major claps for the point about oligarchy. I absolutely detest the fetishism about "money in politics", and I think it's mostly a self-serving lie told by the political class to ignorant/inattentive swing voters in order to keep them from reflexively "voting for the other guy this time".
I'd add to #1 that we need to push for Ranked Choice, Top Two, and other similar reforms. Skeptics often point to the failure of RCV to create multiple parties in Australia, which is a fraction of our population and far less sectionally diverse. I maintain that purging zero-sum dynamics like FPTP, winner-take-all, and single-member districts from our elections will free up room for regional parties to arise and give more competition to the two national parties.