Why Democracy Is At Risk

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.

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Connecting The Dots

A few evenings ago, I introduced a Zoom meeting sponsored by ReCenter Indiana. It was focused upon the very negative effects of our legislative super-majority. Democrats have identified four districts in Indiana that–should they all go Blue in November–would reduce the current super-majority to a simple majority. My job was to begin the session with an explanation of how a legislative super-majority advances extremism and stifles democratic deliberation.

Here are those introductory remarks.

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Let me begin this discussion by connecting some dots. Hoosier voters need to understand how partisan redistricting—usually referred to as gerrymandering–has given Indiana its legislative super-majority, and how that super-majority has given us increasingly extreme legislation: a virtually-complete abortion ban, education vouchers that are starving our public schools, gun laws that allow anyone who can fog a mirror to possess a lethal weapon– basically, a focus on culture war at the expense of attention to actual governance.

It’s a vicious circle, because in Indiana, the GOP’s legislative super-majority also allows the party to continue the extreme gerrymandering that has made Indiana one of the five most gerrymandered states in the country.

Gerrymandering has all sorts of undemocratic consequences, one of which is voter suppression. In districts perceived as “safe,” people who favor the “loser” party tend to stay home. That’s one reason why Indiana ranks 50th among the states in turnout. (Interestingly, due to Indiana’s population shifts, a number of those theoretically “safe” districts wouldn’t currently be safe if discouraged folks came out and voted. Those demographic shifts are one of the reasons there’s a chance this year to break the current GOP supermajority.)

Indiana is an excellent example of how the gerrymandering that leads to legislative super-majorities has a profound and very negative impact on policy.

We know that primaries attract the most ideologically extreme voters in either party. When the primary is, in effect, the general election, Republican incumbents protect their right flank, Democrats their left. In Indiana, which has been gerrymandered to produce more Republican districts, that reality has steadily moved us farther and farther Right. Today’s “culture warriors” win office in order to focus on issues like banning abortion, waging war on trans children, and removing common-sense restrictions on gun ownership. And it’s getting worse–there are indications that during the next session we’ll see the introduction of anti-vaccine measures that—if passed–would threaten public health. (For reasons I fail to understand, opposition to vaccination has become a preoccupation of what I’ll call the “Micah Beckwith wing” of the GOP.)

These are the pet issues of extremists, rather than the issues that most Hoosiers care about and that we traditionally consider governmental: roads and bridges and other infrastructure, crime and punishment, economic development.

Thanks to the gerrymandering that has given Republicans a super-majority, these extremist legislators face virtually no barriers to enacting measures that research tells us are deeply unpopular with most Hoosiers. Members of a super-majority don’t face pressure to negotiate, or to moderate the most extreme versions of their extreme positions.

A party with a super-majority also faces no obstacles to rewarding its donors and supporters; in Indiana, that has given us policies that almost uniformly favor the well-to-do. It has defeated even the most minimal efforts to protect renters. It has given us privatization programs like vouchers, in which our tax dollars are used almost exclusively by the well-to-do while impoverishing the public schools that serve poorer children, and it has given us what is arguably an unconstitutional effort to protect gun manufacturers from litigation.

That super-majority has also blocked more stringent ethics measures.

Any super-majority—Republican or Democrat—gives those in power the ability to ignore contending arguments, unpalatable data and the needs of Hoosiers likely to vote for the opposing party. They don’t need to negotiate or compromise. They don’t even need to look like they’re negotiating or compromising.

Indiana can’t get rid of the gerrymandering that makes our legislature’s extremism possible—we lack a referendum or initiative, mechanisms that have been used by other states to institute nonpartisan redistricting. In this state, only the legislature itself—only the people who benefit from the system—can change it. The only way Indiana will get rid of the gerrymandering that allows legislators to choose their voters rather than the other way around would be Congress passing the John Lewis act, which (among other very positive things) would make gerrymandering illegal nationally.

Since the GOP benefits from America’s gerrymandering far more than the Democrats do, passing the John Lewis Act would probably require a Democratic trifecta: a Democratic House and Senate to pass it and a Democratic President to sign it.
Until that happens, if it ever does, Indiana’s Republican gerrymandering is likely to continue giving Hoosiers a Republican legislative majority. But we do have a chance this year to defeat the super-majority, and to slow down our state’s march toward culture-war extremism. One reason is the shifting demography that I previously mentioned. Another is that the GOP has moved so far toward a very unconservative extremism that its candidates are turning off voters who previously voted Republican.

Those realities give four candidates in particular a better-than-usual chance to win their districts:
• Josh Lowry, District 24;
• Tiffany Stoner, District 25;
• Victoria Garcia Wilburn, District 32 (incumbent); and
• Matt McNally, District 39.

We’ll now hear from each of them.

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That GOP Retreat From Reality

Watching the Republican Party morph into a cult has been extremely demoralizing–especially to the millions of sane Americans who once called that party home. I have detailed many aspects of the spiraling lunacy–the denial of climate change, the efforts of Christian Nationalists to neuter the First Amendment, the failure to admit that Donald Trump is mentally-ill and getting worse–basically, the Republican insistence on “facts” that are demonstrably untrue.

A recent editorial by Thomas Edsall in The New York Times explores yet another aspect of the GOP’s increasing retreat from reality: science denial.

In “The Polarization and Politicization of Trust in Scientists,” a paper presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, James Druckman and Jonathan Schulman of the University of Rochester and the University of Pennsylvania wrote:

Consider in 2000, 46 percent of Democrats and, almost equivalently, 47 percent of Republicans expressed a great deal of confidence in scientists. In 2022, these respective percentages were 53 percent and 28 percent. In 20 years, a partisan chasm in trust (a 25-percentage-point gap) emerged.

Edsall quoted Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, who warns that distrust of science is “arguably the greatest hindrance to societal action to stem numerous threats to the lives of Americans and people worldwide.” As he pointed out, Americans died because they had been led to believe that mRNA vaccines were more dangerous than a bout of Covid.

Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, Dallek argued, turbocharged anti-science conspiracy theories and attitudes on the American right, vaulting them to an even more influential place in American politics. Bogus notions — vaccines may cause autism, hydroxychloroquine may cure Covid, climate change isn’t real — have become linchpins of MAGA-era conservatism.

Edsall argues that the roots of Republican science denial go back at least 50 years, to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and passage of the  Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

These pillars of the regulatory state were and still are deeply dependent on scientific research to set rules and guidelines. All would soon be seen as adversaries of the sections of the business community that are closely allied with the Republican Party, although each of these agencies and laws was backed by a Republican president, Richard Nixon.

These regulatory efforts made science a part of political debates, since federal agencies like the E.P.A. and OSHA “are considered adversarial to corporate interests. Regulatory science directly connects to policy management and, therefore, has become entangled in policy debates that are unavoidably ideological.”

Edsall quoted an academic article that found antipathy to science taking hold during the Reagan administration, “largely in response to scientific evidence of environmental crises that invited governmental response. Thus, science — particularly environmental and public health science — became the target of conservative anti-regulatory attitudes.”

Republican distrust of science became far more prevalent when an ascendant religious right began its takeover of the GOP. Religious fundamentalists supported creationism over evolution, and religious and political skepticism of science became “mutually constitutive and self-reinforcing.”

Meanwhile, individuals who are comfortable with secularism, and thus secular science, concentrate in the Democratic Party. The process of party sorting along religious lines has helped turn an ideological divide over science into a partisan one.

These days, when political tribalism shapes identity, people are more and more likely to accept scientific findings only when those findings align with their political beliefs. Edsall noted a recent survey that asked, “How much risk do you believe climate change poses to human health, safety or prosperity?” Strong Democrats saw severe risk potential; strong Republicans close to none. As another scholarly paper has put it,

The fundamental principle of science is that evidence — not authority, tradition, rhetorical eloquence or social prestige — should triumph. This commitment makes science a radical force in society: challenging and disrupting sacred myths, cherished beliefs and socially desirable narratives. Consequently, science exists in tension with other institutions, occasionally provoking hostility and censorship.

There is much more in Edsall’s essay, but the central message is clear–and very disturbing.

It is easy enough to make fun of the “anti-science” folks who–as one Facebook meme has it–use smartphones incorporating  scientific discoveries to post anti-science diatribes to a science-based internet. But the consequences of the GOP revolt against evidence and empiricism has spread to rejection of other facts incompatible with religious beliefs, and to growing contempt for medical and other scientific expertise. It powers not just climate denial, but the GOP’s growing antagonism to vaccination and other public health measures.

You’d think “pro-life” people would notice that antagonism to science is often incompatible with life. You’d be wrong.

There’s a reason Scientific American endorsed Harris–only the second time it has endorsed a Presidential candidate.

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How Gulllible Are MAGA Folks?

Periodically, it’s important to remind ourselves that an average IQ of 100 means that half the population falls below that figure. That statistical reality might help to explain the results of a recent poll reported by The Washington Post. This wasn’t a “horserace” poll; instead, it was an effort to see just how many Americans have accepted elements of Donald Trump’s constant firehose of  misinformation.

Actually, it wasn’t simply the acceptance of inaccuracies or distortions that caused my jaw to drop. It was the nature of so many of those lies–claims that are bizarre even by Trump standards.

A majority (52 percent) of Trump supporters say they believe the claim about Haitian migrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.” Excluding those who are “not sure,” twice as many say it’s at least “probably true” as say it’s at least “probably false.” (There remains no real evidence for this claim. Officials have debunked it and linked it to threats, and Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Sunday called it “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.”)

43 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth” — another claim Trump referenced at last week’s debate. In fact, slightly more said they believed this was true than disbelieved it. (It is false.)

28 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “public schools are providing students with sex-change operations,” something Trump has recently suggested is happening but for which there is no evidence.

81 percent of Trump supporters say they believe Venezuela is “deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions” to the United States. (There is no evidence that Venezuela or any other country is doing this, and Trump has used bad data to support his claim.)

There are a number of other claims that don’t require a departure from reality, but instead rely on public ignorance of government, policy and credible news sources. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans evidently believe the United States has given more aid to Ukraine than all of Europe combined, while 70 percent say they believe millions of undocumented immigrants are arriving in the U.S. every month. Another 70 percent insist that inflation is at its highest rate ever.

The numbers on those counts aren’t terribly surprising in context, given the many false things Trump supporters have convinced themselves of in recent years. For example, most Republicans have told pollsters that Trump didn’t try to overturn the 2020 election, that Trump didn’t have classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and that Trump’s offices were wiretapped during the 2016 election. And of course there is the 2020 stolen-election claim that as many as two-thirds of Republicans have believed.

It is important to emphasize that these percentages are based upon responses from self-identified Republicans. When the survey turned to independents, it found that those respondents disbelieve the Haitian migrants claim by more than 2-to-1, with thirty-five percent saying it’s “definitely false” and only seven percent saying it’s “definitely true.”

The gaps are even wider on executing babies and sex changes in schools. More than 6 in 10 independents dispute both, and relatively few independents — less than one-quarter — embrace them. Many independents are actually reliable voters for one side or another, and the data suggest these are probably Republican-leaning ones.

The article concludes that Trump is largely preaching to a credulous choir, while other, potentially decisive, voters generally see his conspiracy theories for what they are. That is undoubtedly true–Trump has made no discernable effort to expand his MAGA base. Instead, the GOP strategy seems focused on mobilization, on turning out that base, presumably by playing on its fears and bigotries with allegations unlikely to be accepted by more knowledgeable–and less racist–folks.

There are two lessons here. One is a political conclusion that most of us had already reached: this will be a turnout election. Trump’s base is simply not big enough to elect him if enough sane people vote. That’s why the enthusiasm for Harris/Walz and the explosion of grass-roots GOTV organizations are such hopeful signs.

The other lesson is more of a reminder. America has always harbored people who are lightly tethered to reality, people who are ill-equipped, whether intellectually or emotionally, to understand or accept the world they inhabit, and who–as a result–are vulnerable to even the most ridiculous lies and conspiracy theories. The country has also always harbored figures willing to cater to those people–to amplify their fears and to promote their hatred of “the Other” in order to gain political or social advantage. That isn’t new.

What is surprising (at least to me) is how many of them there are…..

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A Rerun

I particularly enjoy visiting the “your memories” function on Facebook (mostly for the pictures of grandchildren when they were younger and me when my hair was still black…). The other day, however, those memories included several comments referencing a post from 2017. I reread it, and concluded that it continues to be relevant–especially as we approach a pivotal election. So today, I’m taking the day off and reposting “Tribalism Versus Americanism.”

Think of it as a very late summer re-run.

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We Americans are a cantankerous and argumentative lot. We hold vastly different political philosophies and policy preferences, and we increasingly inhabit alternate realities. Partisans routinely attack elected officials—especially Presidents—who don’t share their preferences or otherwise meet their expectations.

Politics as usual. Unpleasant and often unfair, but—hysteria and hyperbole notwithstanding– usually not a threat to the future of the republic. Usually.

We are beginning to understand that Donald Trump does pose such a threat.

In the wake of Trump’s moral equivocations following Charlottesville, critics on both the left and right characterized his refusal to distinguish between the “fine people” among the Nazis and KKK and the “fine people” among the protestors as an assault on core American values. His subsequent, stunning decision to pardon rogue sheriff Joe Arpaio has been described, accurately, as an assault on the rule of law.

It’s worth considering what, exactly, is at stake.

Whatever our beliefs about “American exceptionalism,” the founding of this country was genuinely exceptional—defined as dramatically different from what had gone before—in one incredibly important respect: for the first time, citizenship was made dependent upon behavior rather than identity. In the Old World, countries had been created by conquest, or as expressions of ethnic or religious solidarity. As a result, the rights of individuals were dependent upon their identities, the status of their particular “tribes” in the relevant order. (Jews, for example, rarely enjoyed the same rights as Christians, even in countries that refrained from oppressing them.)

Your rights vis a vis your government depended upon who you were—your religion, your social class, your status as conqueror or conquered.

The new United States took a different approach to citizenship. Whatever the social realities, whatever the disabilities imposed by the laws of the various states, anyone (okay, any white male) born or naturalized here was equally a citizen. We look back now at the exclusion of blacks and women and our treatment of Native Americans as shameful departures from that approach, and they were, but we sometimes fail to appreciate how novel the approach itself was at that time in history.

All of our core American values—individual rights, civic equality, due process of law—flow from the principle that government must not facilitate tribalism, must not treat people differently based upon their ethnicity or religion or other marker of identity. Eventually (and for many people, reluctantly) we extended that principle to gender, skin color and sexual orientation.

Racism is a rejection of that civic equality. Signaling that government officials will not be punished for flagrantly violating that foundational principle so long as the disobedience advances the interests of the President, fatally undermines it.

Admittedly, America’s history is filled with disgraceful episodes in which we have failed to live up to the principles we profess. In many parts of the country, communities still grapple with bitter divisions based upon tribal affiliations—race, religion and increasingly, partisanship.

When our leaders have understood the foundations of American citizenship, when they have reminded us that what makes us Americans is allegiance to core American values—not the color of our skin, not the prayers we say, not who we love—we emerge stronger from these periods of unrest. When they speak to the “better angels of our nature,” most of those “better angels” respond.

When our leaders are morally bankrupt, all bets are off. We’re not all Americans any more, we’re just a collection of warring tribes, some favored by those in power, some not.

As the old saying goes: elections have consequences.

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