Split partisan perceptions of the threat to democracy

Some informed, intelligent, well-meaning people continue to see limited threat to American democracy. But, recent polling indicates that solid majorities of both Democrats and Republicans see a serious threat to American democracy. In my opinion, differences in how the two groups see the threat is also part of the threat. The New York Times writes:

The good news is that deeply divided Americans agree on at least one thing. The bad news is they share the view that their nearly two-and-a-half-century-old democracy is in danger — and disagree drastically about who is threatening it.

In a remarkable consensus, a new Quinnipiac University poll found that 69 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans say that democracy is “in danger of collapse.” But one side blames former President Donald J. Trump and his “MAGA Republicans” while the other fingers President Biden and the “socialist Democrats.”

There are at least four possibilities with possible variations on all of them, the Dems are the main threat, the Repubs are the main threat, both are roughly equal threats, neither is a major threat (but one or both could be non-trivial but minor threats). 

Some conservatives are truly terrified of things like aggressive liberal intrusions in shaping the content of secular public education and liberal defenses of non-heterosexuality. Some see a deadly threat to Christianity, fearing Christians will be rounded up and put into re-education camps and converted by force into atheism and/or pedophilia. Apparently, most conservatives see a rising liberal tyranny in all of that, even the conservatives who do not believe that the 2020 election was stolen. 

Conservative fears of threats of Democrats and their socialism and liberalism drives most of the rank and file right to support the ex-president and extremist Republican politicians. For most conservatives, whatever Republican Party and dogma threat there actually is to democracy appears to recede into secondary importance, or to near or complete non-existence.

Articulating the liberal threat

Liberals and democrats do not control most rural areas, so the liberal threat there is not going to come to pass. Libs and Dems do control some cities in some red states. But the liberal threat there is not going to come to pass because the legislature and governor can put the kibosh on liberal tyranny in those places. Laws are already being passed in red states to control teaching about race and gender in public schools. Most or nearly all religious schools in America already are bastions of social conservatism, so they are not going to fall to liberal tyranny.

Socialist Democratic tyranny judges do not control the Supreme Court, so that is not a source of major threat to democracy.

Democrats fight against Republican opposition to protect and expand voting rights. So that is not a source of significant threat to democracy, unless one believes that free and fair elections are a threat to democracy, which some conservatives do believe.

Democrats in liberal areas in blue states do have significant leeway over influencing public education, so those areas could be bastions of liberal anti-democratic tyranny. In those areas, at least some conservatives retreat from public education in favor of private schools or home schooling. Others move to conservative areas or red states. Some just chafe at the situation and are fearful of creeping liberal tyranny.

So why is there such a huge divide about who the threat is from? Most democrats and conservatives apparently operate with (i) significantly different definitions or conceptions of democracy and free and fair elections[1], and (ii) different sets of true or false beliefs based on facts or reasoning that may or may not be true or sound. For the former point, the conservative conception of democracy appears to have more power reside in states and their legislatures and less with voters and the federal government. In that vision, partisan cracking and packing gerrymandering tactics aren't flaws in the system. They are the system. With that view, Republican "election integrity" laws are not significantly worrisome to conservatives even if some voters are disenfranchised. Minority rule is what most Republicans appear to support, even if they are unaware of it. 

Partisan differences in perception of facts and reality are also a major factor. That gap probably cannot be bridged. 

But, at least when people say that democracy is not threatened, one can now respond by pointing out that is not majority opinion.

Q: What is probably closest to the truth, the Dems are the main threat, the Repubs are the main threat, both are roughly equal threats, neither is a major threat? Or is the question an oxymoron because the concept of democracy is essentially contested?

Footnote: 

1. The NYT article comments:

“There is a real difference in how the parties define democracy,” said Nicole Hemmer, a historian at Vanderbilt University and author of “Partisans,” a newly published history of the rise of conservative movement figures in the 1990s and their transformation of American politics.

“The Republican Party at the moment subscribes to a much narrower definition, as is evident in their support for everything from voter suppression to extensive gerrymandering to the right of Republican officials to overturn voter preferences in the certification process,” she added. “The Democratic Party favors not only a more inclusive voting system but more robust systems to support majoritarian politics.”

Thoughts on Biden's speech on democracy

The network news media

The Washington Post writes that his speech was deemed political or not important by major TV networks. ABS aired a game show called “Press Your Luck.” WaPo writes:

As Biden spelled out his objections to former president Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans,” NBC was broadcasting a rerun of “Law and Order.” CBS skipped the speech to show a rerun of “Young Sheldon.”

[Broadcasters] have passed on speeches that were part of campaign rallies or events, or when the subject was deemed insufficiently important or newsworthy. The networks, for example, decided not to carry a speech on immigration reform by President Barack Obama in November of 2014.

People involved in negotiations over Thursday’s address said the networks deemed Biden’s remarks as “political” in nature and therefore decided not to televise it.

Is the broadcast media off its rocker? Broadcast networks deemed a desperately needed defense of democracy speech by a sitting president to be too political and/or unimportant. That tells us that corporate news sees the threat of radical right authoritarianism as not real. Corporate lust for profit and power have subverted what integrity was left of broadcast news. 

It is fact- and reason-based to argue that (i) TV network news as a pro-democracy institution has fallen to authoritarianism and profit lust, and (ii) it is a betrayal of the American people and democracy. ABC, NBS and CBS appear to be enemies of democracy, at least by complicity, if not by quiet active subversion.

The Speech

If one believes the threat to democracy to be serious and urgent, Biden's speech was long overdue. Other than urging people to vote, the speech was generally vague about how democracy could be defended. There was no outline about how to protect civil liberties, including voting rights that are now under direct attack. The speech seemed designed to inspire, which is fine. But is that enough? 

Biden understated the threat when he asserted that most Republicans are not MAGA Republican Party (RP) extremists. Some recent polling and political facts indicate that is not true. More than half of Republicans support the ex-president. Only two Republicans in congress (Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) openly oppose RP authoritarianism. That includes alleged Senate moderates Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Essentially the entire RP leadership, its donors and elites and the radical right media are all in support of authoritarian, Christian theocratic RP extremism, election subversion, attacks on civil liberties and outright dictatorship. If one believes the threat to be serious and urgent, Biden seriously underplayed it. Maybe he did that in an attempt to be unifying and not divisive. Unfortunately, years of divisive RP propaganda has made defending democracy highly divisive. 

Divisiveness cannot be avoided under current circumstances. Simply saying that RP MAGA-style extremism is a threat to democracy is a necessary attack on the RP. Speaking truth directly attacks the RP's authoritarianism. The RP will respond as is now always does, with blasts of divisive lies, propaganda, slanders, vulgarity and crackpot conspiracy theories. Biden seems to be unaware of all of this. If not, in my opinion, he falsely believes that trying for unity will be helpful to the cause of democracy.

Qs: Was Biden's speech adequate or not? Should he give at least a couple more speeches in defense of democracy that are less vague and more accurate about the depth and scope of the RP authoritarian threat? Did the TV networks make the right call by airing reruns instead of airing the speech? Being for-profit capitalist businesses, should TV networks have any moral or other obligation to defend democracy or otherwise serve the public interest?

How democracies promote tyrants to power

Brazil's corrupt dictator and 

his corrupt offspring units

These are comments that PD left here a couple of days ago. He is commenting on a 2 hour documentary that PBS broadcast about the rise to power of Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro and his corrupt children. He is another anti-democratic demagogue-criminal-fornicator-liar like our ex-president and his corrupt offspring. The parallels between the two thug political leaders and how they rose to power are striking and depressing. PD's comments speaks for themselves. 

I saw the doc last night (googled it and streamed it). It was good, and it reaffirmed my conviction that people like Trump and Bolsonaro move from the fringes to the halls of power largely because of the convergence and interplay of 3 critical factors: 1) many idiots in society, 2) a powerful, 24/7, dumbed down media which puts idiocy (e.g. birtherism, Bolsonaro's stunts etc.) in the spotlight (began in 90s when entertainment and news merged in various cable TV outlets), and 3) recent forms of social media that allow ambitious politicians who are fringe and get in the dumbed down headlines to inflame the passions of the aforementioned idiots who quickly reciprocate by devoting all their free time to posting stupid, toxic memes, fake news, thus creating an "alternative information ecosystem" in which truth and fiction are nearly interchangeable, and crowd-sourced mass political movements upstage formerly legitimate (but more "boring") politics.

Put simply, politics is being conducted at the level of, say, the Jerry Springer Show, here and in many places (Brazil, much of Europe swept up in its own faux populists bashing minorities etc.).

Walter Lippmann was right (in his 1922 book, Public Opinion) when he said political reality is too complex for the masses to digest thoughtfully, and that confronted with it they descend to levels of idiocy that would make their input dangerous. He was WRONG to imagine that there would or should be an elite group of "experts" who socially engineer a relatively benign public consensus through think-tanks, media and the like. The more advanced media gets, the more we see educated "experts" and "pundits" happily feeding dumbed down sensationalism to the many eager consumers of idiocy.

The answer isn't Lippmann's "manufactured consensus" or the more sinister option of state-controlled media which is where all this is leading anyway. No, the educated journalists and "pundits" must stop putting idiots and their stunts online as well as on the front pages, essays and books where they are recycled and manipulated and distorted on Twitter, Facebook or whatever. When pols started getting Twitter accounts, I argued they should not have such accounts as "official" accounts. It would allow them to use legitimate government status and roles to disseminate bullshit at will. Sure enough, we got a lurid and obsessive Tweeter shortly thereafter in the WH. A president with an "official" Twitter account is like a modern-day equivalent of say Reagan or Clinton having their own TV Channels in the 80s or 90s plus having fan clubs (the equivalent of sympathetic "followers" online). Same idea.

Imagine a Reagan or Clinton skipping most press conferences in favor of controlling the flow of OFFICIAL information on TV shows they would produce themselves, and which would bear the imprimatur of the US Gov't. Unaccountable to even the press (which has become itself a Twitterized group of pundits each with their own fan-clubs and often TV shows or slots). The crass commercialization of the serious business of statecraft is really alarming when you stop and think how far it has sunk and how rapidly.

In the same way, journalists have used their increasingly glamorous status (remember when almost all journos were just schlubs who had their gigs and were mostly unknown and invisible?) to tantalize hordes of entertainment hungry consumers with gossip and lurid bullshit (Palin, birtherism, meaningless scandals etc.) to sell themselves and their product. Had they not covered Bolsonaro's idiot-stunts so much, his candidacy and even his stabbing would not have been such gigantic media feeding frenzies. If CNN and MSNBC had not given Trump SO MUCH airtime to spout out his bullshit Birther claims, he might not have run. If he had run but the media had not used footage and discussions of him and his candidacy as a go-to staple of entertainment, his success in politics would have been, imo, far less likely.

As one Republican operative said, "If you treat politics like a game show, you might end up with an unhinged star from a game show in the White House."

A quote from a 2016 book by two social scientists that I've posted here about 20 or 30 times roughly echoes what Lippman intuitively understood in 1922:

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

The ex-president plans for his second term

In a nutshell, T**** plans to kill American democracy, mostly following the path Viktor Orban used to kill democracy in Hungary. The Atlantic writes: 

Ever since the U.S. Senate failed to convict Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection and disqualify him from running for president again, a lot of people, myself included, have been warning that a second Trump term could bring about the extinction of American democracy. Essential features of the system, including the rule of law, honest vote tallies, and orderly succession, would be at risk.

Today, however, we can do more than just speculate about how a second Trump term would unfold, because the MAGA movement has been telegraphing its plans in some detail. In a host of ways—including the overt embrace of illiberal foreign leaders; the ruthless behavior of Republican elected officials since the 2020 election; Trump allies’ elaborate scheming, as uncovered by the House’s January 6 committee, to prevent the peaceful transition of power; and Trump’s own actions in the waning weeks of his presidency and now as ex-president—the former president and his allies have laid out their model and their methods.

Begin with the model. Viktor Orbán has been the prime minister of Hungary twice. His current tenure began in 2010. He is not a heavy-handed tyrant; he has not led a military coup or appointed himself maximum leader. Instead, he follows the path of what he has called “illiberal democracy.” Combining populist rhetoric with machine politics, he and his party, Fidesz, have rotted Hungarian democracy from within by politicizing media regulation, buying or bankrupting independent media outlets, appointing judges who toe the party line, creating obstacles for opposition parties, and more. Hungary has not gone from democracy to dictatorship, but it has gone from democracy to democracy-ish. Freedom House rates it only partly free. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s ratings show declines in every democratic indicator since Fidesz took power.

The MAGA movement has studied Orbán and Fidesz attentively. Hungary is where Tucker Carlson, the leading U.S. conservative-media personality (who is sometimes mentioned as a possible presidential contender), took his show for a week of fawning broadcasts. Orbán is the leader whom the Conservative Political Action Conference brought in as a keynote speaker in August. He told the group what it loves to hear: “We cannot fight successfully by liberal means.” Trump himself has made clear his admiration for Orbán, praising him as “a strong leader and respected by all.”

The U.S. is an older and better-established democracy than Hungary. How, then, could MAGA acolytes emulate Orbán in the American context? To simplify matters, set aside the possibility of a stolen or contested 2024 election and suppose that Trump wins a fair Electoral College victory. In this scenario, beginning on January 20, 2025, he and his supporters set about bringing Budapest to the Potomac by increments. Their playbook:

First, install toadies in key positions. Upon regaining the White House, the president systematically and unabashedly nominates personal loyalists, with or without qualifications, to Senate-confirmed jobs. Assisted by the likes of Johnny McEntee, a White House aide during his first term, and Kash Patel, a Pentagon staffer, he appoints officials willing to purge conscientious civil servants, neutralize or fire inspectors general, and ignore or overturn inconvenient rules.

Second, intimidate the career bureaucracy. On day one of his second term, Trump signs an executive order reinstating an innovation he calls Schedule F federal employment. This designation would effectively turn tens of thousands of civil servants who have a hand in shaping policy into at-will employees. He approved Schedule F in October of his final year in office, but he ran out of time to implement it and President Biden rescinded it.

Career civil servants have always been supervised by political appointees, and, within the boundaries of law and regulation, so they should be. Schedule F, however, gives Trump a new way to threaten bureaucrats with retaliation and termination if they resist or question him. The result is to weaken an important institutional safeguard against Trump’s demands to do everything from harass his enemies to alter weather forecasts.

Third, co-opt the armed forces. Having identified the military as a locus of resistance in his first term, Trump sets about cashiering senior military leaders. In their place, he promotes and installs officers who will raise no objection to stunts such as sending troops to round up undocumented immigrants or intimidate protesters (or shoot them). Within a couple of years, the military will grow used to acting as a political instrument for the White House.

Fourth, bring law enforcement to heel. Even more intimidating to the president’s opponents than a complaisant military is his securing full control, at long last, over the Justice Department.

In his first term, both of Trump’s attorneys general bowed to him in some respects but stood up to him when it mattered most: Jeff Sessions by recusing himself from the Russia investigation and allowing a special counsel to be appointed; Bill Barr by refusing to endorse Trump’s election lies and seize voting machines. Everyday prosecutions remained in the hands of ordinary prosecutors.

Fifth, weaponize the pardon. In Trump’s first term, officials stood up to many of his illegal and unethical demands because they feared legal jeopardy. The president has a fix for that, too. He wasn’t joking when he mused about pardoning the January 6 rioters. In his first term, he pardoned some of his cronies and dangled pardons to discourage potential testimony against him, but that was a mere dry run. Now, unrestrained by politics, he offers impunity to those who do his bidding. They may still face jeopardy under state law and from professional sanctions such as disbarment, but Trump’s promises to bestow pardons—and his threats to withhold them—open an unprecedented space for abuse and corruption.

Sixth, the final blow: defy court orders. Naturally, the president’s corrupt and lawless actions incite a blizzard of lawsuits. Members of Congress sue to block illegal appointments, interest groups sue to overturn corrupt rulemaking, targets of investigations sue to quash subpoenas, and so on. Trump meets these challenges with long-practiced aplomb. As he has always done, he uses every tactic in the book to contest, stonewall, tangle, and politicize litigation. He creates a perpetual-motion machine of appeals and delays while court after court rules against him.

At first, the president’s lawlessness seems shocking. Yet soon, as Republicans defend it, the public grows acclimated. To salvage what it can of its authority, the Supreme Court accommodates Trump more than the other way around. It becomes gun-shy about crossing him.

And so we arrive: With the courts relegated to advisory status, the rule of law no longer obtains. In other words, America is no longer a liberal democracy, and by this point, there is not much anyone can do about it.

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And so, after four years? America has crossed Freedom House’s line from “free” to “partly free.” The president’s powers are determined by what he can get away with. His opponents are harried, chilled, demoralized. He is term-limited, but the MAGA movement has entrenched itself. And Trump has demonstrated in the United States what Orbán proved in Hungary: The public will accept authoritarianism, provided it is of the creeping variety.

“We should not be afraid to go against the spirit of the age and build an illiberal political and state system [a dictatorship],” Orbán declared in 2014. Trump and his followers openly plan to emulate Orbán. We can’t say we weren’t warned. 

Q: Have we been adequately warned? (IMO we have not)

Acknowledgement: Thanks to milo for bringing this article to my attention.