(C) Tennessee Lookout
This story was originally published by Tennessee Lookout and is unaltered.
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Democracy as a weapon – Tennessee Lookout [1]
['More From Author', 'January', 'Bruce Barry']
Date: 2024-01-17
President Joe Biden used the weekend of the January 6 anniversary to open his 2024 campaign buffet by serving up a big heaping plate of democracy. “Democracy is on the ballot, your freedom is on the ballot” he declared in his much noticed speech near Valley Forge. “Our campaign is about preserving and strengthening our American democracy.”
The speech was generally well received as a welcome and energetic reboot by the faithful (“he brimmed with anger, disdain, and contempt”) and duly repudiated by the haters (“a trashy speech by a trashy president”). One Fox News host went as far as to opine that Biden “went full Hitler” in the speech; honestly I don’t know what to do with that. Personally, watching the speech didn’t do very much for me — like most doses of Grandpa Joe oratory, it seemed to carry the rhetorical force of scripted muttering by a wax figurine — but taking in the thing in transcript form did crystallize its message and up its coherence enough to make it sort of compelling.
Sort of compelling doesn’t necessarily mean really convincing. Theming the campaign around the big D is presumably a calculated move by Bidenworld to frame 2024 less as a referendum on his beleaguered presidency and instead (like the glory days of 2020) make it all about former President Donald Trump. This makes some sense as strategy: turbulent political winds blowing from Israel-Gaza to immigration and the border are doing Biden’s poll numbers no favors.
Metrics on crime and the economy have been trending Biden’s way, but in an election year pessimistic perceptions are the numbers that count, and he can’t seem to budge those. And make no mistake, the pessimism is profound: On the classic right-track-wrong-track question in a fall 2023 PRRI poll, Republicans as one would expect see the country headed in the wrong direction by a wide margin (88%), but an alarming (for an incumbent president) 81% of independents say the same, as do 59% of Democrats.
Polls, polls and damned polls: An Open Society survey last summer asked more than 36,000 people in 30 countries if it is important to live in a country that is democratically governed; 80% of Americans said yes. But, a poll by another organization in December found many younger adults think America should explore alternatives to democracy.
The problem with a democracy focus is it plays only if voters who actually care about the state of democracy regard it as at risk, and see Trump as the essence of that risk. The polling on this is disturbingly murky. The PRRI poll from October asked about the extent to which the election of Biden or Trump threatens “American democracy and way of life.” Among Democrats, 91% said Trump is such a threat, and almost as many Republicans (86%) said the same of Biden. Fine, it’s the usual tribal polarization — sad but somehow predictable. What I didn’t expect is the large and close-to-equal shares of independents who see Trump (57%) and Biden (56%) as posing such a threat. A Biden strategy that seeks to blind Trump in a harsh spotlight of antidemocratic fascism may not have legs if the electorate, and especially its independent segment, is just as ritualistically polarized on this as on everything else.
Two other things in Biden’s Valley Forge democracyfest speech caught my notice.
One is this assertion, which I found curious: “We’re living in an era where a determined minority is doing everything in its power to try to destroy our democracy for their own agenda.” Read casually, it qualifies as a B+ piece of fear-appeal wordsmithing by speechwriters aiming to up the stakes of a Biden loss. Pondered more seriously, though, it strikes me as less alarming than borderline nonsensical. The idea of a “determined minority” doing all it can “to destroy our democracy” seems wrong. Assuming the determined minority he has in mind is true-believer MAGAworld, I think we are looking more at a faction that doesn’t understand or care about democratic ideas and processes than one setting out to affirmatively destroy it. I also quarrel with the “for their own agenda” part. What agenda? The defining feature of Trumpism is power for its own sake, and no particular governing agenda. What we are seeing is a determined minority doing all it can to disregard our democracy for no particular reason other than to debilitate political opponents.
The other thing that caught my attention was Biden’s semi-solemn declaration that “America is still viewed as a beacon of democracy for the world.” Lofty and aspirational, sure, but consider a few data points that reveal this sort of nationalistic narcissism for the malarky it is.
O ur system seems incapable of doing all too often is giving the people the policy outcomes they actually say they want.
First, consider the extent to which Americans value the importance of even having a democracy. An Open Society survey last summer asked more than 36,000 people in 30 countries if it is important to live in a country that is democratically governed. The good news is that 80% of Americans said yes. The less good news is that this ranked 27th out of the 30 countries, with fewer valuing democracy only in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. Asked if democracy is preferable to other kinds of government, only 56% said yes, lower than all but four of the 30 countries. A YouGov poll last month found that agreement with the idea that America should explore alternatives to democracy is highest (and startlingly high) among younger adults — more than half either agreed or had no opinion. Knowing as we do of Biden’s struggles to draw support from unenthusiastic young voters, will a democracy-centered message help all that much?
Second, how much of a beacon is a system for which its own citizens have low regard? Americans in high numbers and across the political spectrum see our democracy as highly defective. A 2021 Pew report surveyed attitudes in 17 advanced economies about the state of their democracies. Across all 17 a median of 57% reported satisfaction with how their democracy is working. In the U.S. that satisfaction number is just 41%, in the bottom five. In 10 of 17 countries people surveyed indicated higher levels of government respect for personal freedoms than the U.S. A whopping 85% of Americans said the U.S. political system needs major changes or should be completely reformed — third highest of the 17.
And no wonder it feels defective, since one thing our system seems incapable of doing all too often is giving the people the policy outcomes they actually say they want. For instance, to cite just one recent bit of polling on federal electoral processes, large supermajorities of Americans would like age limits for elected officials (79% in favor) and Supreme Court justices (74%), Congressional term limits (87%), and automatic voter registration (62%). We have none of those things, nor any realistic prospect for enacting them. Here in Tennessee polls have made clear that substantial majorities favor higher minimum wages, Medicaid expansion, sensible firearms regulation, less restrictive abortion laws, and marijuana legalization. Again, we have none of those things, nor any realistic prospect for enacting them.
Anyone who travels widely can see this beacon-of-democracy crap for what it is: creaky nostalgia dressed up as tiresome American exceptionalism. People around the world may still admire America for its economic and scientific prowess, but from outside many thoughtful observers can easily spot the design flaws of a system that puts so much power to thwart the wants of the many in the hands of so few. As a beacon for how to do a safe, modern, advanced democratic society, the U.S. these days is pitied more than it is admired.
Of course, just because we have a democracy that leaks and needs repair doesn’t mean that Biden’s efforts to spotlight Trump as a threat might not squeak out enough purple state fence-sitters to make a difference. Here’s hoping it does. But let’s not pretend that the democracy many so covet is the one we actually have.
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