HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!

Remember book reports?  Well, buckle up, because today’s post is a book report.  And a memorial to American democracy.

If you haven’t read How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, and you care about your country, you really ought to.  Despite its gut-punch title, the book is actually cautiously optimistic.  The authors, two Harvard professors of government, make their case using historical examples of democracies in crisis and decay, and in resurgence and endurance, in Latin America, Europe, and the United States.  It’s an easy, quick read and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Their thesis is quite simple:  The constitutional protections (separation of powers, checks and balances) we rely on to secure democracy in America are insufficient without the democratic norms of mutual tolerance (compromise) and institutional forbearance (no nuclear options).  These norms are critical to keeping the building blocks of democracy upright; without them, the structure teeters and eventually topples over.  The authors are careful to remind us that, as much as many people would like to lay the blame for the crisis in American democracy at the feet of the current President, these democratic norms had already left the building before Donald Trump descended his golden escalator in June 2015.

Rot in the democratic house has been fomented by both parties, but the death spiral of extreme partisanship seems to have started in the late 1970s with Newt Gingrich, who harangued his Republican party:

You’re fighting a war.  It is a war for power….This party does not need another generation of cautious, prudent, careful, bland, irrelevant quasi-leaders….What we really need are people willing to stand up in a slug-fest.

Gingrich’s mantra of “politics as warfare” only intensified when he became Speaker of the House in 1995, as he:

transformed American politics from one in which people presume the good will of their opponents, even as they disagreed, into one in which people treated the people with whom they disagreed as bad and immoral. 

Gingrich was followed in 1999 by Tom “the Hammer” DeLay.  When George Bush’s election was confirmed by the Supreme Court, he promised to be a “uniter, not a divider.”  DeLay quickly quashed that bipartisan spirit, telling the President, “We don’t work with Democrats.  There’ll be none of that uniter-divider stuff.”

Touché!   Senate Democrats fought back by using their “advice and consent” tool to obstruct President Bush’s judicial nominees.  The GOP-dominated House responded tit-for-tat by abandoning “regular order,” a procedure that guaranteed the minority party an opportunity to amend legislation and exercise oversight of the presidency.  

And so the rot spread apace until Obama’s election in 2008, when extreme partisanship descended into challenges to the legitimacy of the election itself—birtherism and un-Americanism (Barack Hussein Obama)--and a flat-out refusal to work with the first black President.  Even though the country was in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Mitch McConnell announced to his Senate minority, “The single most important thing we want to achieve [in the Senate] is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”  Which led Obama to respond to the ensuing legislative stasis with numerous unilateral executive orders, thereby engaging in his own norm-breaking and laying the groundwork for President Trump’s retaliatory flurry of executive orders.

The relentless, escalating abrogation of democratic norms catalogued by the authors demonstrates that the three branches of government aren’t really so co-equal at all.  The Executive has very broad powers and very few constitutional limitations on them, impeachment being the exception, itself being limited by political calculus.  We’re seeing that play out in real time with the fallout from the Mueller Report.  Even though the current Commander in Chief regards “politics as warfare”and treats the opposition as the enemy in unprecedented ways, the authors argue that, after 40 years of eroding democratic norms, voting Trump out of office wouldn't be enough to restore democracy in America.  The democratic norms must be reinstated to stabilize the structure.  But as much as the norms are critical, they have been almost completely eclipsed by extreme partisanship.

But why?  The authors cite racism (in my view, America’s original sin) and severe economic inequality as the heart of the partisan problem.  I agree and would add that non-white, non-Christian immigration adds to the political instability.  The authors make the case that what we are seeing in America today is a waning dominant majority—the white Christian—fighting for its life.  I couldn’t agree more, and it's also obvious that the fight is futile. 

The statistical, biological, demographic fact is, the white Christian majority in the United States will no longer be the majority by 2045, (making one wonder why the hell these people are so anti-abortion), but making it crystal clear why they are so anti-immigrant.  I am nominally part of that majority, although I practice no religion, and I am sympathetic to the majority's fear that they are losing their country and their identity, but I do not countenance their vitriolic, pointless reaction.  These are facts that deserve recognition:  Those in the white Christian majority are losing their country as they remember (and fantasize about) it, and they are losing their identity as the dominant majority.   

The fear and anger that issue from those facts also deserve recognition.  They are not to be lightly dismissed or ridiculed, but neither are they to be encouraged.  How society deals with this fear and anger is above my pay grade, but it seems to me that this --the demographic shift, the fear, and the anger--is a reality to be faced, not denied or fought against.  And it’s certainly no reason to bring down the political house around our ears.  Yet it is.

But back to the the authors and their prognosis for the future.  They see three possible scenarios post-Trump and indicate their opinions as to the likelihood of each:

•  Trump is not re-elected and democracy is restored.  Unlikely because of the extreme partisanship and scorched earth politics that preceded Trump.  I agree.
• The US becomes a full-fledged autocracy.  Unlikely.  But the authors offer no substantive argument for why this is unlikely.  Somewhat ominously they concede that autocracy would be resisted, triggering resistance, which “could lead to escalating confrontation and even violent conflict, which, in turn, could bring heightened police repression and private vigilantism—in the name of ‘law and order.’”  And most disturbingly, they admit that, “It is difficult to find examples of societies in which shrinking ethnic majorities give up their dominant status without a fight.”  Because the authors have failed to convince me that the guardrails of democracy, the democratic norms, will prevent the car from being driven into a ditch, and because there are more guns than people in the U.S., I disagree.   Call me a pessimist, but I consider this the most likely scenario.
• The U.S. becomes purple, like North Carolina.  Most likely.  In this case, extreme partisanship continues unabated, democratic norms further deteriorate, and polarization deepens, but there are the occasional federal court decisions that prevent a full-scale slide into autocracy.  The authors dimly conclude, “The result is a system hovering constantly on the brink of crisis.”  I would note that their book was published in 2018, before AG Barr was appointed and before the federal courts were further packed and weaponized.  So I wonder if this would change their calculus; in any event, I disagree.  I think things will get much worse--before they get better.So, while I see the second scenario as the most likely one, I don’t think the slide into autocracy will endure, nor will it permanently destroy American democracy.  That’s because demographics have the potential to overtake and replace autocracy.  Think about it.  If the authors are correct that racism and income inequality are the drivers of extreme polarization and partisanship, which in turn destroy democratic norms that bolster the constitutional checks and balances, then isn’t it possible, even likely, that when the demographics change, as they inevitably will by 2045, so will the political dynamic?  

  

When the U.S. becomes a minority-majority country, won’t it be more of a society of equals, or at least "indistinguishables"?  The number of inter-racial, inter-faith, multi-cultural marriages will inevitably increase.  Just look at the pie chart above.  Children with mixed-race backgrounds are mixed-race positive and open to other cultures.  My guess is they're open to other religions, too, religion being central to culture.  The 2045 generation will go to school together, play together, work together, fall in love together, celebrate together, live together.  Most importantly, they will vote and they will hold office.  They will seek to advance the policies that serve their interests:  an end to racism and income inequality, too, because the latter is inextricably linked to the former.  

So, I’m very pessimistic for the short-term, but quite optimistic for the long-term.  Math is math.  It doesn’t lie.  The demographic wave facing America is inevitable, imminent, inescapable, and ultimately wholly positive.  It’s just that it will take another generation to crest, and it could very well swamp the country in violence as it advances to our shores.  At 71, I won't be around to meet the 2045 generation, but one thing is clear.  This huge demographic change has the potential to restore democracy in America.  And I say,

Keep it real!

Marilyn