The punditry keeps telling us that democracy is at risk. There’s a reason why that is.
Yes, Donald J. Trump (aka “the former guy”) poses an existential risk to American democracy. But let’s be honest– crazy Donald and Project 2025 are only threats because of the actual, underlying reason for the erosion of our democratic processes: the systemic distortions that continue to promote minority rule.
I have used this platform to pontificate about several of those distortions, from the Electoral College (hugely undemocratic) to the current form of the filibuster (significantly undemocratic), but especially (and yes, repeatedly) gerrymandering.
In one of Heather Cox Richardson’s recent Letters from an American, she explained more eloquently than I have the degree to which partisan redistricting–aka gerrymandering–mutes the voice of the electorate. As a result, I’m quoting her explanation at length.
The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in this election is stark, and it reflects a systemic problem that has been growing in the U.S. since the 1980s.
Democracy depends on at least two healthy political parties that can compete for voters on a level playing field. Although the men who wrote the Constitution hated the idea of political parties, they quickly figured out that parties tie voters to the mechanics of Congress and the presidency.
And they do far more than that. Before political thinkers legitimized the idea of political opposition to the king, disagreeing with the person in charge usually led to execution or banishment for treason. Parties allowed for the idea of loyal and legitimate opposition, which in turn allowed for the peaceful transition of power. That peaceful exchange enabled the people to choose their leaders and leaders to relinquish power safely. Parties also create a system for criticizing people in power, which helps to weed out corrupt or unfit leaders.
But those benefits of a party system depend on a level political playing field for everyone, so that a party must constantly compete for voters by testing which policies are most popular and getting rid of the corrupt or unstable leaders voters would reject.
In the 1980s, radical Republican leaders set out to dismantle the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. But that system was popular, and to overcome the majority who favored it, they began to tip the political playing field in their direction…. By the 1990s, extremists in the party were taking power by purging traditional Republicans from it.
And yet, voters still elected Democrats, and after they put President Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2010 launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project. The plan was to take over state legislatures so Republicans would control the new district maps drawn after the 2010 census, especially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It worked, and Republican legislatures in those states and elsewhere carved up state maps into dramatically gerrymandered districts.
In those districts, the Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed election, so they focused not on attracting voters with popular policies but on amplifying increasingly extreme talking points to excite the party’s base. That drove the party farther and farther to the right. By 2012, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein warned that the Republican Party had “become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
At the same time, the skewed playing field meant that candidates who were corrupt or bonkers did not get removed from the political mix after opponents pounced on their misdeeds and misstatements, as they would have been in a healthy system.
There is much more, and I encourage you to click through and read Richardson’s letter in its entirety–or, for that matter, if you are not now a subscriber, to become one. As a historian, she provides an illuminating historical context to the problems we face.
One of those problems is that, in a democracy, many voters–perhaps most—fail to recognize the immense importance of the systems within which We the People operate. Only when those systems operate to facilitate fair play and to provide a level playing field are the people we elect incentivized to heed the will of their constituents.
Richardson says there are two possible outcomes to today’s corrupted system: the election of Republicans who will follow the Project 2025 playbook, or a voters’ revolt sufficient to dislodge its beneficiaries and prompt reform of the cult that has replaced the GOP.
In November, we’ll know which of those outcomes we’ve chosen.
All the more reason to break the super-majority and replace the red dog ideologues with sensible, reasonable people. What can we do about the low turnout rate of Democrats in Indiana? Ask yourself this question: What have I done today to GOTV? Talk to one person. Ask if they have registered to vote. Remind them that Oct 7 is the deadline. Direct them to a page to check their registration and tell them about early voting locations. Ask if they have a plan to vote, and encourage them to ask their friends and family members the same.
If Democrats show up to the polls we will win despite the obstacles the MAGA has put up. GOTV!
Granted, that is an example of powerful writing and, comprehension.
In the end though, what do words of this nature accomplish? In this day and age, words do not equate or evolve into action.
As scripture says, “faith without works is dead.”
I’m sure the authors believe in what they say, writing these powerful and insightful theses’ although most of the time it’s like fiddling as Rome burns. Caesar lit the fire, and then persecuted Christians for it!
In the end, actions speak louder than words. Of course, you need intestinal fortitude for action, which is sorely lacking.
We won’t get there in November. We need a tsunami and that’s not what we’ll get. Democrats need a long term plan. I’m aware that this is anathema to the blue. Yesterday Dirk said it was time to pull on our big boy pants and he was right about that, but the best way to fight is to plan, state by state, how to get out the vote in each.
BTW, last night I had to inform two of my favorite people in Indiana, that they have a really good slate of statewide candidates. These two are interested in politics, but I don’t think they’ve even thought about the state races yet.
Republicans assume that they have a right to a majority representation in the federal government even though they see the government as an obstacle to their path to monetizing everything and distributing the maximum amount of that wealth and power to the few takers supporting them.
Operation Redmap was a tactic supporting this right to power that led to the Trump takeover of the party because it made him electable by a minority of voters. He blew through democracy unimpeded to control the party and the country.
Honestly, he sees wealth as power and power as wealth. They are readily interchangeable in his mind and the sense of the average Republican.
When reminded of the liberal democratic sense of our Constitution, they don’t defend it but do this assumed right to power and wealth.
Even with her lengthy excerpt, HCR avoids mentioning the founding oligarchs or our existing oligarchy. She’s a far cry from Anne Nelson, who is at least honest about our founding and how our oligarchy holds on to power. Most of the Republicans used by the oligarchy aren’t smart enough to tie their own shoes.
Thanks to Tony Bennett’s abuse of his office during Mitch Daniel’s reign of terror, I got public access to the “Republican Heavy Hitters List” of donors. Republican officials pledging loyalty to the donors before they came into office were “Willing to do whatever is required to get money from the heavy hitters.”
This is why dimwits like Tommy Tuberville can cash in on his coaching fame to become a millionaire in Washington, even though walking and chewing gum is a challenge for him.
The “democracy” of our Founders was among the present oligarchs with different governing ideas. The people weren’t considered until later under Andrew Jackson’s climb to the presidency. The Britannica spells all this out, which makes me wonder who HCR represents:
https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Jacksonian-democracy#ref77732
This election isn’t about democracy since the Democratic Party is owned primarily by Wall Street’s Hedge Fund managers and, of course, independent billionaires like George Soros.
The Koch’s dark network owns the Republican Party. The Koch family’s business interests are all privately owned. None of them have been sold to shareholders, so even their businesses are anti-democratic.
We, the people, have been fighting for democracy from day one, but we haven’t gained our independence yet since we moved from being controlled by a monarchy to an oligarchy. The people fought for our independence, but it secured the independence of the oligarchs who didn’t want to be told by a King/Queen how to do things. They were also tired of paying taxes to the City of London, for which they had no representation. 😉
The constitution congress also. theres thought we could win this, but were still stuck in the mud and cogs if we cant muster a majority vote in the congress, then were still allowing the reds to kick the can down the road. until we can vote the system blue and rid outselves of the electorial vote system,, the game is still on with a marked deck. seems it will replay as the Obama years after 2010,congress went 50/50 basically with some fools betting on both sides.. the use of social media has become a full scale propaganda machine, and education is failing to teach the basics of right and wrong in this new world. Ai yea, now we are educating machines over human minds with,whatever the techs decide we should teach Ai. money here, and now the Ai machine will become the think tanks of a so called future. Elon is pissing his knickers.
id like to pint out the IRA act. Im working as a const worker per se. in getting a living wage along with many who work the hot sun and systems that make your highway. the prevailing wage,like a union wage, is a living wage. the fact were doing the sun and weather,the ungreatful traffic and equipment that can cut you up if your not tuned to this enviroment,i could go on, but understand, not many want this beat your ass dead job.. the last 5 years because of games played by mainly one side of congresses isle, made that prevailing wage, cut up like a chess board. last year we lost billions to Canada by buying their tar sands asphalt. your tax dollars went north, many of the small buisnesses like the one im employed by took a 40% cut in work. and the fact during agent organges, it was down hill in the projects. not covid, we distanced fine. we lost work due the red sides screwing the work. any federal contract work is a guarentee of a prevailing wage. like the federal employee, we get a living wage. thanks, for keeping one segment of the working class employed gainfully. this year I am working my patutty off. and that hasnt happen since Obama.. The IRA works, we just needed to patch that tax dollar hole to Canada..eh?
And beyond what you describe, beyond the apparently-legal perpetual minority rule through relatively subtle means such as gerrymandering that preserves the appearance of elections while distorting or quietly reversing their outcomes , there lies the threat — and the overt plan, on the part of the Trump Party — to subvert election results through blatant partisan refusal to count votes from areas that don’t support them; or to use partisan state officials and legislatures to override the people’s vote on purely partisan lines; or to have partisan judges step in to reverse election results they don’t like; or, if all that fails, to simply seize power through violence.
Trump, Vance and their junta are fascists who have no conscience and no reluctance to use lies, fraud and violence to seize power. This nation had better be prepared for that.
Yes, Democracy is at risk, because some people think that they are more entitled than everyone else…greedy bastards!
Remember, remember the fifth of November! Significant again this year, besides election day people hate oppression and intolerance. The authoritarian Maga sect doesn’t allow for self-correction of its own party, since they are authoritarian and can’t be wrong and project that they’re always right. Complete authoritarianism is oppositional to democracy and its freedoms and that’s what is at stake.
I’m glad to see that Kamala Harris will not attend the Al Smith fundraising dinner for Catholic Charities. She stands firm for women’s rights and not as second-class citizens that the church espouses.
I’ve been following HCR for a long time, over a year or so. She helps me see the news and not have to actually watch it. Then she usually gives us a history lesson on that day’s date. She’s going to help us elect Ds across the country because of so many followers to her nightly letters from an American. She will be more than a footnote in history with her postings and I’m glad I get to be a part of that knowledge base. Thanks for sharing her with us.