I’m happy to see that there’s been some good follow-on coverage and analysis of President Biden’s Independence Hall speech, in which he condemned MAGA Republicans as a clear threat to American democracy and political stability. As I wrote in my own reaction to the speech, the address seems to have marked or even catalyzed a turning point in how Democrats are thinking and talking about the authoritarian menace posed by the Republican Party. But as Amanda Marcotte lays out, the groundwork for Biden to give it in the first place had been laid by other Democrats and other developments over the past several months. From the January 6 hearings to the purloined national security documents that the FBI seized in a raid at Mar-a-Lago, to Donald Trump’s attempts to incite his supporters to engage in violence to defend him from the consequences of his illegal actions, the public sphere has been awash in evidence of the former president’s anti-democratic shenanigans and violent intimidation from the right. With the public thus made more receptive to a stronger message about GOP authoritarianism, Marcotte notes that Biden’s speech could well have a further galvanizing effect on public sentiment. And as she notes, a Reuters/Ipsos poll a few days after the speech found that 58% of respondents agree that “Trump and his movement are undermining democracy” — positive news that the public is paying attention to the news and perhaps to Biden’s speech as well. The whole piece is well worth a read, including her take on Biden’s navigation between calling out MAGA Republicans and leaving a path for remaining mainstream Republicans to abandon the party.
Meanwhile, historian Thomas Zimmer rightly notes the historical significance of the speech, and fits our current moment (and the need for the speech) into a long-running struggle over the nature of American democracy and society. He also provides some necessary overview of the conflicts that have led to this time of crisis:
Both the attempts to subvert the political system and to impose conservative social and cultural ideals on the entire country are indeed part of a broader reactionary counter-mobilization against egalitarian, multiracial, pluralistic democracy. The conservative vision for America is one of maintaining traditional hierarchies, of 1950s-style white Christian patriarchal dominance in all spheres of American life: the political institutions, the public square, the workplace, the family. And conservatives understand that they are pursuing a minoritarian project.
For me, the most striking observation that Zimmer makes is that we are now at a point where “the status quo is untenable [. . ] there is no stable equilibrium in sight”:
While Republicans claim to be representing “real America”, their agenda of entrenching a white Christian patriarchal order lacks majority support – and the gap between what most Americans want and what the Republican party is implementing wherever it gets the chance is rapidly growing. Some form of stability can only be achieved by either overcoming reactionary rule – or through ever more authoritarian measures and increasingly violent oppression. The fact that a shrinking minority of white conservatives is consistently being enabled to hold on to power against the will of the majority of voters is causing a massive legitimacy crisis. And unless the system is properly democratized, it is only going to get worse.
This is a succinct and clarifying statement of the basic dynamic of American democracy right now. The country is ultimately in a state of conflict not due to some fuzzy “polarization” or “partisanship,” but over real, irreconcilable conflicts over whether we live in a democracy and a pluralistic society, or in an undemocratic regime that privileges the morality of a white, Christian minority. We can be one thing or the other, but we can’t be both. Part of the danger and imbalance of our politics lies in the fact that more people on the right have grasped the nature of this struggle than in the middle and on the left. The defense and expansion of our democracy will only succeed if not only Democratic politicians, but concerned citizens at all levels of society, work to get the word out about the full dimensions of our conflict.