One Possible Exception

 Actually, there is one qualification to my last post.  There may be one limit to how much crazy Republicans can get away with.

The whole "woke" or politically correct culture has been criticized, no only for its radicalism, but for being radical in a very superficial way.  Wokeness is first and foremost a set of rules on what is acceptable to say.  It can be incredibly exacting and annoying, but in the end it avoids going into any real depth.  Consider the response to the whole Black Lives Matter outburst this summer.  It led to taking down Confederate flags, renaming bases named for Confederate generals, newspapers insisting on spelling Black with a capital "B" and debates on whether it was acceptable to say master bedroom.  These are all cheap gestures that avoid the genuine hard work of police reform, much less inflammatory matters like housing access.  They cost little and achieve little.

Much the same can be said for Q Anon and other conspiracy theories.  So you say Democrats are running a massive child trafficking ring, that Democrats drink the blood of babies, and that the election was stolen from Donald Trump by massive voter fraud.  But let's face it.  These nutty conspiracy theories are also a very superficial form of radicalism.  They don't commit you to a specific program.

In many ways, Paul Ryan is more radical than Q Anon.  After all, Paul Ryan wanted to actually do something.  He wanted to turn Social Security into a 401-k and Medicare into an Obamacare style voucher program.  He failed because doing so was extremely unpopular.

And, although I cannot find the link, a defeated moderate Democrat pointed out for all their nuttery, Republicans seem to be good at avoiding bringing up actual substantive policies many of them favor that are broadly unpopular with the general public.  After all, Paul Ryan's proposals went exactly nowhere under the Trump Administration.  And the attempt to roll back Obamacare hurt Republicans.  And she pointed out that a lot of Republican leaders probably want to do other things, remove restraints on the sale of fully automatic machine guns, or limit access to contraception, that are also highly unpopular.  And, after all, you can call Democrats blood-drinking pedophiles and oppose any changes to Social Security or Medicare.

So that may be the one thing Republicans can't get away with -- something with clear, undeniable real world consequences that are unpopular.  And, predictable as the winter solstice, once Joe Biden is sworn in as President, Republicans will be calling for spending cuts.  They have vowed to reject any further COVID relief and are even talking about "entitlement reform," i.e., cuts.  These positions are broadly unpopular.  That is no doubt why Republicans refrained from doing any of them when they held power.

If Democrats are to have any chance of winning again, the only way to do it is to call Republicans out in it.

Reflections on the Election

 After every election, we hear media speculation that whichever party lost is doomed forever.  Invariably, the losing party makes a comeback and partisan politics continue -- as is normal for democracy.

But this time feels different.  This time really feels like the Democrats are doomed.

Yes, granted, we beat Donald Trump.  That has to count for something.  But usually a winning candidate for President has coattails, i.e., sweeps in down ballot candidates.  This time Republicans won everything but the Presidency.  And they won it in a way that truly makes me wonder if the Democrats can ever come back.

For as long as I can remember, every time the Democrats lost an election, it was taken as a sign that they had moved to far to the left and needed to move to the center.  And every time the Republicans lost an election, it was taken as a sign that they had moved too far to the center and needed to move right.  And now Republicans have elected a Q Anon believer.

Democrats used to see grounds for hope.  The rising Hispanic/Latino tide would favor Democrats.  Republicans' offensive nativism would keep them from winning the Hispanic/Latino vote.  Well, it turns out that blatant, bigoted nativism attracts Latino votes.  Even the Black vote is becoming less solidly Democratic -- and moving in favor of a blatant racist.

We used to believe that Democratic voters just weren't turning out enough, or that non-voters favored Democrats.  Well, turnout levels set records in this election -- and it favored Republicans.

We used to believe that we could win broadly across the board if we just mobilized enough.  Well, we mobilized like never before and have nothing to show for it.

We used to believe that incumbents won in good times and lost in bad times.  Well, 2020 has been the worst year in memory -- and it favored the incumbent party.

We used to believe that sooner or later denying reality would catch up with Republicans and reality came back to haunt them.  Well, here we are in the midst of a deadly pandemic, and Republicans have found that ignoring this reality is a winning message.

We used to think that if Republicans got too nutty, they might be able to win primaries, but it would hurt them in the general election.  Well, it appears that nutty Republicans do better in the general as well as the primary election.

We used to believe polls.  Well, it appears that polls are massively off -- Republicans always do better than polls suggest.

But above all, what dismays me is that the big, winning message for Republicans in down-ballot elections (that they are making in Georgia now) is that if Joe Biden is President, we need Republican control of Congress to hold those crazy radical socialist Democrats in check.  Yes, it would appear after everything else that Democrats are still viewed as the crazy ones. We hoped for the longest time that Democrats could avoid the apologetic cringe for being liberal and stand up and say it proudly.  Well, now it turns out that Democrats' only chance of winning is the apologetic cringe and the promise to do nothing.  Republicans, meanwhile, have a seemingly boundless appetite for crazy and pay no penalty for it.   

It would appear that if Democrats propose adding a public option to Obamacare they will be seen as ushering in a Communist tyranny.  Republicans can claim that their opponents are running a massive pedophilia ring and drinking the blood of babies and any attempt to portray that as radical will be seen as elitist snobbery and losing touch with Real Americans in the Heartland.

And there really doesn't seem to be any way for Democrats to hurt Republicans by painting them as crazy because Republicans' appetite for crazy is boundless and so many people share it.  Is there any degree of crazy that can hurt Republicans?  And the answer seems to be clear.  The only degree of crazy that can hurt Republicans is not enough.

Daniel Ziblatt: How Democracies Die, and the Importance of Political Parties

 

So, I promised a review of Daniel Ziblatt (not Zimblatt as I previously called him) and his book How Democracies Die, which will complement Stuart Stevens' It Was All a Lie. 

I have previously reviewed Ziblatt's book Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy.  The two books stand in interesting contrast.  Conservative Parties is written for professional historians; How Democracies Die is written for the lay public.  Conservative Parties describes the preconditions to make democratic transformation possible; How Democracies Die is about what can go wrong after the transformation.  Conservative Parties sees the primary threat to democracy as on the right; How Democracies Die acknowledges that it can come from the left as well.  Both books see political parties as key to a functioning democracy, and particularly parties' role as gatekeepers, barring demagogues from power and restraining dangerous elements.  

How Democracies Die is aimed specifically toward Donald Trump, and generally toward how demagogues can undermine democracy from within.  Ziblatt presents two basis theses.  First, that political parties are key to preserving democracies, and second, that democracies depend, not just on laws, but on norms.

Political parties

Political parties, Ziblatt argues, serve as "gatekeepers" to democracy, barring potential authoritarian leaders.  Authoritarians rarely become strong enough to subvert democracy without the cooperation of establishment parties.  Inter-war Germany and Italy are particularly notorious examples.  But Ziblatt also describes in some detail how Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela, despite having previously attempted a coup, by making an alliance with a mainstream party leader.  When an dangerous, anti-democratic party arises, Ziblatt argues, mainstream parties can block it by forming alliances across ideological lines, i.e., an alliance between the center-right and center-left to block the extremes.  He offers as examples inter-war Belgium and Finland, and present-day Austria.  All these countries were parliamentary democracies, working by coalition.  In all of them, the center-right made an alliance with the center-left to keep the hard right out of power.  

It can be difficult to understand at a distance, but Ziblatt attempts to explain just how hard such alliances are to make.  "Picture Senator Edward Kennedy and other liberal Democrats campaigning for Ronald Reagan, or the British Labour Party and their trade union allies endorsing Margaret Thatcher."

And he is right.  Given the uniquely binary nature of US politics, the equivalent of forming a coalition with the opposing party is to purposefully lose to it.  That does seem hard.  And yet, I have seen it happen in my lifetime, not at the presidential level, but in Louisiana.  

In fact, although I did not know it, it happened twice in Louisiana in two years, when David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan became the de facto Republican nominee.  Louisiana has a non-partisan primary in which all candidates compete.  If no one wins a majority, there is a run-off between the top two vote getters.  In the 1990 election for Senate, the incumbent was a Democrat.  Duke ran way ahead of the Republican challenger.  The Republicans ended up withdrawing their candidate and throwing their weight behind the Democrat.  It was not any easy thing for Louisiana Republicans to do, but they could take comfort in the knowledge that (1) the Democratic incumbent was a conservative, oil-friendly Louisiana Democrat who has represented the state before without disaster and (2) that he was, in any event, just one of 100 senators.

Rather different was the 1991 election for Governor.  In that case, the Republican incumbent came in third in the primary, and a runoff took place between Duke and the Democratic candidate.  And this candidate was not an ordinary, respectable Democrat.  This was Edwin Edwards, the second least-acceptable candidate in Louisiana.  Edwards' method of governing was to buy popularity by spreading around Louisiana's oil money, ensuring that everyone got a piece, and keeping a sizable portion for himself.  Edwards had served two terms as governor and been indicted (though not convicted) both times.  He was known to go to Las Vegas with briefcases of money.  When I describe him to friends, they think I am talking about Huey Long.  And he famously commented that he could only lose if it got caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy, a sort of precursor to Trump saying he wouldn't lose votes if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.  Nonetheless, given the choice between such a man and David Duke, the Louisiana Republican establishment very reluctantly threw its support behind Edwards.  They handed out T-shirts and bumper stickers saying "Vote for the lizard, not the wizard" and "Vote for the crook.  It's important."  Edwards handily won, and Duke's career in mainstream politics was at an end.

Another obvious  example today are the "Never Trump" Republicans throwing their support behind Biden.  More on that later.

Ziblatt is fairly clear that democracy can succeed only if there are brakes on it to prevent it from either descending into mob rule or tearing itself apart by factionalism.  He sees political parties as the primary form of brakes, or "gatekeepers," as he calls them.

But that raises an awkward questions.  Ziblatt warns that we should beware of the populist outsider, denouncing party elites as corrupt and claiming to speak  for the people.  He has a certain tendency to assume that outsider = authoritarian.  

But democracies really can become corrupt and sclerotic, and democratic rulers really can be captured by special interests.  So what happens is a democracy really does begin to stagnate, and to descend into corruption, sclerosis, and capture by special interests. Are we to condemn all political outsiders and all people criticizing the system?  To say that outsiders are to be barred as authoritarians waiting to happen and that criticism is just demagoguery is itself subversive of democracy -- it allows democracy to degenerate into a cozy little oligarchy.

There are two answers to this.  One is that there are dangers in putting power into the hands of an outsider.  An outsider is unlikely to understand the rules of the game, the intricacies of democratic politics, or the complexity of the problems the country is facing.  An outsider may end up wrecking, rather than reforming, the system.  A reform-minded insider is often a better bet.  The candidate running on the promise to cut through the red tape and get things done is often promising to set aside the tiresome constraints of democracy and the rule of law.  (Ziblatt give Peru's Alberto Fujimori as such an example.  He did not run with the express intent of being an authoritarian, but his desire not to be bound by the democratic rules of the game led to his becoming an authoritarian.

The other is that outsiders are not necessarily authoritarians, and that insiders can be authoritarians as well.  What we should look out for in any politicians are signs of authoritarian behavior.  Ziblatt gives four such signs:

1. Rejection of, or weak commitment to, democratic rules of the game, such as
1. Rejection of the constitution or willingness to violate it
2. Willingness to take anti-democratic measures, such as canceling elections, suspending the Constitution, banning certain organizations, or restricting basic civil or political rights
3. Endorsing extra-legal measures, such as military coup, violent insurrection, or mass protests aimed at ousting the government
4. Seeking to undermine the legitimacy of elections
2. Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents, such as:
1. Calling their opponents subversive
2. Calling their opponents an existential threat
3. Baselessly calling their opponents criminals who should be barred from the political arena
4. Baselessly calling their opponents foreign agents
3. Toleration or encouragement of violence such as:
1. Association with armed gangs or paramilitaries
2. Encouraging mob violence
3. Refusal to condemn violence committed by their side
4. Praising political violence in the past or in other countries
4. Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including the media such as:
1. Expanding libel laws, laws restricting protest, or laws restraining opposing organizations
2. Threats to take legal action against opponents or critics
3. Praising such measures in the past or in other countries.

Ziblatt (writing in 2018) sees Trump has having done many (not all) of these things:

• Seeking to undermine the legitimacy of elections
• Baselessly describing opponents as criminals who should be disqualified from participation
• Refusing to condemn violence by supporters
• Praising political violence in other countries
• Supporting laws restricting civil liberties, such as expanding libel law or laws restricting protests, criticism of government, or laws restraining opposing organizations
• Threats to take legal action against opponents or critics
• Praise for such actions in other countries

Note that, although some of the red flags Ziblatt warns against are actual illegality, many are not.  Some are perfectly legal, but violate established norms.  The difficult question of institutional norms will be addressed in my next post.