I’ve been arguing for some time now that there’s no way out our political crisis until the Democrats fully acknowledge and confront the authoritarian, white supremacist reality of the Republican Party. For democracy to survive, Democrats need to defend it. But dishearteningly, through a combination of structural disadvantage, internal division, and poor leadership, the Democratic Party has so far failed to meet the moment. Incredibly, the party seems reluctant to make the GOP pay a political price for literally becoming a party of authoritarian insurrection, or to even know how to do so.
E.J. Dionne has a column out that manages to capture both the general notion of what the Democrats need to do, and the party’s bizarre confusion about how to properly engage the challenge before them. Not only is the GOP tied into Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen presidential election, Dionne correctly points out, the party is now engaged in doing what it can to undermine and steal the 2022 and 2024 elections. Meanwhile, it benefits from some voters’ excitement about Trumpism, even as it doesn’t suffer any previous backlash from Democratic voters, who aren’t being made aware by their elected officials as to the continuing threat of Trumpist authoritarianism. Asks Dionne, “So why are Democrats not shouting from the rooftops about the need to protect democracy?”
(I should pause here and say that, in a bleak media and political landscape, the fact that an opinion writer as essentially mainstream as E.J. Dionne is talking about his bewilderment at the Democrats’ fumbling of such an important and obvious thing as protecting democracy feels like a ray of hope. Surely, at some point, if enough people yell loud enough about the problem, the party leadership will be moved to act, at least so as not to appear too far outside mainstream consensus, right? Right. Like I said, it’s a ray of hope, not a full blast of sunshine, but we will take hope where we can.)
At any rate, Dionne offers a partial answer to his question about what’s keeping the Democrats so tongue-tied: too much adherence to the advice of political consultants who don’t see defense of democracy as a winning issue, particularly in comparison to everyday concerns like inflation and the state of the economy. Dionne rightly points out the circular logic at play, since not talking about issues is often a guaranty that voters will assume they’re not important.
But whatever role the consultant class might play in warping Democratic politicians’ strategies, the basic idea that Democrats are worried about prioritizing the fight for democracy because it doesn’t poll well is persuasive. And this, I would submit, is absolutely bonkers. There are limitless, effective ways in which the party can link everyday concerns with the democracy fight (hell, even the consultants Dionne interviews make some limp suggestions in this direction). The one area where I have a little sympathy with the party leadership right now is over worries that “democracy in crisis” might sound abstract next to the idea of food prices shooting up — but my sympathy ends when I start to think about how easy it is to make the GOP’s war on democracy as concrete as inflation’s war on Americans’ bank accounts.
On the one hand, after the shit show of the Trump presidency, Democrats should be able to easily make the case about what actually happens when the GOP holds power: uncontrolled pandemics, looting of the treasury, the elevation of white supremacism, and violent insurrection, coupled with inaction on any pressing issue facing the country save tax cuts for the richest among us. And on the positive side of the ledger, Democrats can point to the things that they can and will do if they hold power: expanded health care, stronger government support for unions, a higher minimum wage, more money for public schools, robust support for a green energy transition, and equal protection under the law regardless of your race, gender, or sexual orientation.
All of these ills, and all of these goods, are tied to whether or not the GOP overturns American democracy and institutes some variant of one-party rule in this country. Any concern that defending democracy is too abstract for voters to comprehend is a failure of imagination by politicians, not voters. At the end of the day, a Democratic message to voters that unites the war for democracy with the fight for everyday justice and prosperity might boil down to this: “Whatever you want in life, in your job, for your family, will simply be meaningless if your vote no longer counts, as the Republican Party is aiming for. Vote for Democrats, and not only will we make sure that your vote counts, we will fight like hell to make sure your civil rights are protected, the economy prospers for everyone, your children get a world-class education, the planet lives, and fascism dies.”
Given what I believe is the obviousness of the approach the Democrats should be taking, the question I find myself mulling more and more is the same one Dionne raises — why aren’t Democrats shouting from the rooftops about the threat to democracy, when such a clear case can be made in conjunction with concrete, kitchen table issues? I suspect that part of the Democrats’ failure to fully engage in the fight for democracy, and against GOP authoritarianism, can be tied to the party’s internal divisions over how much it should fight for the social and economic goods that are the concrete manifestations of democracy. One shocking but clarifying aspect of the apparently defunct Build Back Better Act is how non-radical its elements were: from child care and free community college to green energy spending, its initial, grandest form contained a wide range of programs that this country should already have had long ago. Prioritizing defense of democracy would also logically mean prioritizing delivery of the material and social goods that move democracy from theory to practice, that ultimately make democracy worth fighting for: the ability to make our votes count and our collective voice heard, not simply because it is morally right, but because it is the way we advance our collective interests.
My hunch is that another substantial reason for Democrats’ torpor is the party’s hesitation in confronting the white supremacism that’s core to the GOP’s turn to authoritarianism —not because the party leadership isn’t opposed to racism, but due to a primal fear of alienating white voters by making the stakes of the conflict so explicit. This caution runs the risk of being self-defeating, and of giving aid and comfort to the forces of white supremacist reaction. If the GOP can continue to more and more explicitly identify itself as the party of white supremacism, and to enact laws that give white supremacism the authority of state power, while the Democrats don’t describe this reality or move unambiguously to oppose it, this can only lead to demoralization among its multi-ethnic base and delegitimization of the party leadership.
What’s even crazier is that not only do the Democrats face a GOP opposition that sees ending competitive democracy as the road to power, the Republican Party’s machinations have crossed over into a sort of closeted insurrectionism. With retroactive approval of the January 6 coup attempt granted by most Republican congresspeople and senators, the party standing back and standing by as the former president incites mob violence against prosecutors who have him in their crosshairs, and multiple GOP state legislatures looking at ways to throw out presidential election results the next time around, the Republican Party has basically decided that insurrection is politics by other means, and that it feels pretty darned good. To see various Democratic Party politicians respond by insisting that Democratic voters just have to try harder to vote, by continuously imputing bipartisan openness to opponents who long for their destruction, and by essentially lying to their base about the threat the country faces, you would be in good company if it appeared to you that many Democratic leaders appear to have no clue as to the depth of the crisis we are in. So plain old denial may well be playing a part in the Democrats’ deer-in-the-headlights act.
Once again, it’s clear that our political crisis has two complementary halves: a GOP gone feral with authoritarian and white supremacist beliefs, and a Democratic Party not fully committed to opposing this existential threat to our democracy and to our basic ability to live our lives as we see fit. This is not to say there is any equivalence between the two, only that you could make a pretty good case that a tougher and more clear-eyed Democratic Party leadership would allow no political quarter to an opposition bent on the destruction of American democracy and the conversion of much of the Democratic base to unchallengeable second-class citizenship. Something has got to give here; let us hope it involves a new wave of Democratic leaders fighting back, and not the GOP steamrolling over the majority in the coming years.