These last couple of weeks have felt like a particularly bleak period in U.S. politics, not just for their own sake but in the way they cast shadows and danger far into the future. The Build Back Better Act has run into a Joe Manchin-shaped wall, while the Democrats’ ensuing strategic pivot to voting rights has run into a Joe Manchin AND Kristen Sinema-shaped wall; the economy seems stable enough, but inflation concerns haunt the citizenry (and Joe Biden’s approval ratings); federal roll-outs of free at-home covid test kits and N95 masks are haunted by questions of why it took so long to provide such no-brainer basics; and we’ve been gifted with a seemingly unending stream of stories about Dems in disarray, circular firing squads, and a White House that lacks a strategy for the midterms. We’ve even seen the Supreme Court get in on the fun, striking down the OSHA policy requiring that all companies of 100 or more employees require covid vaccinations or testing — a decision that will surely contribute to thousands more needless deaths, not to mention serving the GOP’s partisan goals of kneecapping the economy and with it, Democratic election prospects.
So it might seem perverse that I’m about to ask you to stare even further into the political abyss — but let’s try to think of this as a sort of shock and awe therapy, where confronting our worst nightmares also holds the key to setting us free (or at least moving us towards an actual strategy for defending and retaining American democracy). I’m always eager to find writing that gets to the heart of America’s political dilemmas, and this past week has brought some real humdingers. There are few chroniclers of the structural impediments and cultural conflicts driving our political crisis as good as Ronald Brownstein; he’s consistently accessible and insightful, and has a pair of articles out this week that serve as the latest installments of his democracy-in-crisis coverage. He zeroes in on the voting rights fight, and how the failure of federal legislation to protect voting rights is both catalyst and symptom of an anti-democratic collection of Republican power, which consists of “the axis of Republican-controlled state governments, the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court and filibusters mounted by Senate Republicans,” which in combination are “limiting Democrats' ability to set the national agenda, even as they hold unified control of the White House, House and Senate for the first time since 2010.” None of these sources of GOP power on their own would be sufficient to block the Democratic trifecta of White House, Senate, and House of Representatives; together, though, they seem to be more than sufficient. Brownstein describes the Republicans as essentially conducting a “revolution from below,” using state initiatives to challenge federal policy. Where the wrenching importance of the voting rights rollback comes into view is not just in our embattled present, but moving forward, with voting suppression and a sympathetic Supreme Court very likely leading to a reversal of basic civil rights like abortion access across red states unencumbered by federal protections.
The particular power of Brownstein’s articles is in their persuasive description of dynamics that have long been in motion but are now reaching their logical conclusion, as if they were following rules of political dynamics akin to laws of physics. A far-right Supreme Court with nearly half its members appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote but still made it to the White House; a Senate disproportionately favoring conservative states; and voter suppression efforts aimed at negating the Democratic majority, and indeed making it impossible for that majority to ever change the rules back to fairness: all have congealed into an anti-democratic roadblock for the American polity.
Next to Brownstein’s excellent analysis of how America’s political structures have been manipulated in the service of the GOP’s quest for minority rule, a piece by historian Thomas Zimmer provides a parallel perspective on why the Republicans have embarked on a journey that has turned the GOP into an explicitly authoritarian party, with Zimmer writing that:
For several decades, the Republican party has been focused almost exclusively on the interests and sensibilities of white conservatives who tend to define “real America” as a predominantly white, Christian, patriarchal nation. America, to them, is supposed to be a place where white Christian men are at the top. [. . .]
Due to political, cultural and most importantly demographic changes, Republicans no longer have majority support for this political project – certainly not on the federal level, and even in many “red” states, their position is becoming increasingly tenuous. [. . .]
No one understands this better than Republicans themselves. In a functioning democratic system, they would have to either widen their focus beyond the interests and sensibilities of white conservatives, which they are not willing to do; or relinquish power, which they reject. They have chosen a different path – determined to do whatever it takes to protect their hold on power and preserve traditional hierarchies.
Zimmer notes that the GOP is actually correct that the United States has indeed been moving, over the last several decades, towards becoming a “multiracial, pluralistic democracy”; like Brownstein, Zimmer sees the attack on voting rights as central to the GOP’s authoritarian project, which involves a repudiation and reversal of whatever progress the United States has so far made towards multiracial democracy. Similarly, he sees a dark path ahead if the GOP project succeeds, with the advent of an authoritarian state well within the realm of plausibility.
Together, this trio of pieces helps us see our current political situation in stark, necessary terms — the only terms that will allow us to confront and overcome it. I feel more strongly than ever that there is simply no way for Democrats, or any supporters of democracy, to succeed if they do not begin describing our current situation to their fellow Americans in just such an accurate and pointed fashion. First, that the GOP is gunning, through the “axis” of state power, the Senate filibuster, and a Supreme Court majority, to institute minority rule in this country; and second, that this GOP vision is deeply rooted in a vision of white supremacism. This anti-democratic, racist agenda needs to be made central to the political conversation in this country.
On the first point, thinking about the long-term consequences of potential one-party rule by the GOP is also deeply clarifying, and must be mainstreamed into public discussion. Brownstein points out the rights that are already under threat, including the right to abortion and of course voting rights. But I think even this understates the depth of the danger. If the Republican Party can gerrymander and suppress its way to a lock on all three branches of the federal government (in addition to control of many or most states), then the sky is literally the limit — not just on “culture war” issues, like a reversal of gay Americans’ right to marry, but with a whole range of economic and political sabotage and extremism becoming possible. Higher taxes for blue states and lower (or no) taxes for red states — why not? Further restrictions on voting rights ensuring that even the greatest of blue waves won’t win back power for Democrats — a no brainer! Legislation requiring that recipients of federal contracts can’t be companies with unions — is the conservative and corrupt Supreme Court really going to stand in the way? Without the right to vote and have your vote counted, unchallengeable, unending one-party minority rule is the logical outcome, with guaranteed exploitation and degradation of the majority of Americans.
Along these lines, Brownstein and Zimmer have also left me more convinced than ever that Democratic rhetoric and efforts that treat the right to vote as an abstract assault on individual civil rights is woefully inadequate to the reality of our moment and of voting itself. Without question, each of our right to vote should be treated as sacred and non-negotiable. At the same time, though, our individual vote —our individual power — is only meaningful in combination with hundreds, thousands, millions of votes by similarly-minded or allied citizens. And this power, in turn, comes not from abstractly voting, but by voting for something — specifically, the politicians, policies, and ideas we support.
Both Brownstein and Zimmer make this connection explicit, by reminding us that the GOP is not just subverting and blocking voting rights as a political power play, but as a means to achieving a certain reactionary project that places the morality of conservative, patriarchally-minded whites as the guiding light. (To this, I would add that this conservative project also includes the advancement of corporate, anti-worker interests and the denigration of the state’s ability to address not just issues of social justice, but economic fairness as well.) I think President Biden started to approach such a strategy in his voting rights speech last week, in things like references to “Jim Crow 2.0.” However, this rhetoric needs to be greatly expanded, to explicitly address the reasons the GOP is now so very motivated to roll back voting rights: the collective threat the party perceives from a populace that is growing browner and more liberal every year. Biden and other Democrats need to do three things: remind the American majority that the threat posed by voter suppression is actually a threat to whether we can live in the kind of society we want to, remind Americans that we have already long been working towards such a society, and mobilize Americans in defense of this vision.
The elements of awareness and mobilization are all the more important in the face of likely unstoppable voting restrictions in the coming years. In the first place, pro-democracy forces in the United States must ensure that a maximal number of voters at least attempt to make their voices heard, in the hopes of overcoming restrictions and gerrymandering aimed at diluting majority rule. Alongside this, given the failure of the current Democratic Party leadership to prevent the GOP from attaining the means to a grand reversal of political and social progress, it will fall to state and local organizers and individuals to create strategies to counter the GOP’s subversion of voting and democratic governance. Whether it takes mass protests, statewide strikes, supercharged union organizing, or civil disobedience, the answer to attacks on democracy inevitably involves a massive democratic counter-movement. While one of the people Brownstein interviews suggests that the GOP’s minoritarian tactics in favor of unpopular positions make a backlash inevitable, the big question is whether this backlash can be channeled into actual reform and undoing of this reactionary movement: simply relying on voters to vote the bums out when those votes won’t count, or can’t even be cast in the first place, is not a strategy at all.
Having said all this, though, let’s not assume that all is lost in the coming election cycle. The Democrats need to run like hell to hold the line in the 2022 midterms, so as to build their Senate majority and finally pass democracy-protecting legislation. As observers like Brian Beutler have suggested, in the absence of large-scale achievements like the Build Back Better Act, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make the midterms about Republican perfidy; from Trump idolatry and the party’s murderous pro-covid policies and accompanying efforts to undermine the economic recovery, from opposition to popular Build Back Better policies like paid family leave and the child tax credit to complicity in the January 6 insurrection and cover-up, there’s plenty of ammunition for making the case that returning the GOP to power would be a stepping stone to the return of Donald Trump to the White House. And as I argued above, the GOP’s quest for unassailable one-party rule and embrace of a white nationalist vision for American must be part of the mix. “If Republicans win, your vote will never count again” is not much of an exaggeration, if at all.