By admin 
American democracy is in danger. We won’t know the exact margin of victory for a while, but the shape of the presidential battle this morning is clear enough to warrant a few basic conclusions. Donald Trump scored a narrow but decisive victory over Kamala Harris in an election where national discontent prevailed amid record voter turnout. Trump will take office in January with an ultra-conservative majority on the Supreme Court, a Republican majority in the Senate and a likely Republican majority in the House of Representatives. The era of polarized political conflict in America is not over and is likely to escalate in the coming months.
The Harris campaign will undoubtedly face intraparty criticism for the loss, but the widespread nature of Trump’s gains points to an electorate generally dissatisfied with the incumbent party rather than a flawed campaign strategy. Although detailed demographic data is still developing, Trump improved his 2020 performance in rural, urban and suburban counties, in red and blue states, and with both white and Latino voters. President Joe Biden does the most unpopular sitting president since Harry Truman. His vice president could not escape his political seriousness.
Anyone who reads this website recognizes the enormous consequences of Harris’s defeat. Trump spent the campaign demonizing immigrants and repeatedly discussed using the U.S. military against leading Democratic Party politicians. His own former chief of staff described him as “fascist,” and over the summer the Supreme Court protected Trump from prosecution for all crimes committed in the course of “official acts” as president. The past eight years offer little reason to hope that Republican Party leaders will rein in Trump’s most reckless impulses, and every reason to expect Trump support from billionaires and big corporations. The best Democrats can hope for over the next four years is chronic dysfunction and administrative incompetence. The worst is scary to think about.
The established political parties are having a hard time worldwide. Liberal and conservative governments on multiple continents have suffered electoral setbacks over the past year as they grapple with a variety of global economic disruptions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Japan has slipped in and out recessionwhile Europe is plagued by it weak growth. The US economy remains very strong – the envy of the developed world, with moderate inflation, robust growth and the best labor market in fifty years. But the voters did continued reporting of economic dissatisfaction in surveys all year round.
The country is clearly unhappy, no matter what the numbers say, and none of the Harris campaign’s appeals to democracy, personal character or abortion rights were enough to secure gains for her among the constituencies the campaign targeted. There was no flow of suburban women to Harris; no renegade Republican bloc followed Liz Cheney into the Harris camp. Trump even appears to have enjoyed a surge of support among Latino voters when he favored mass deportations.
Trump’s campaign was a campaign of raw anger, and voters across the country rewarded him for it. Americans have been living in an era of political anger since the 2008 bank bailouts, but not the Democratic Party. The legislative successes—Obama’s health care law, Biden’s investments in green technology—have been narrow procedural issues, negotiated through control of the Capitol Hill process rather than through the mobilization of public energy and emotion. Anger will remain the dominant currency of American politics during a second Trump term because Trump fosters the very forces that lead to so much fear and instability. Silicon Valley billionaires will increase their profits by spreading hate online, various parts of our government will be effectively for sale to lobbyists and contractors, oppressive regimes abroad will be emboldened to attack their neighbors, and Trump himself will attack journalists mercilessly.
In difficult times, optimism is a duty, not an indulgence. As threatened as it is, American democracy is not dead. Trump was a very unpopular president, and will be again. There will be political battles worth fighting and there will be political victories to be won if the Democratic Party can reshuffle the demographic deck. The trend over the 21st It’s been a century since Democrats consolidated the gains of college-educated voters while losing support from voters without a college degree. This cannot continue in a country where most voters do not graduate.
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I don’t know how much of that process has to do with actual policy commitments. Trump’s bland, victorious campaign offers little evidence that voters respond directly to policy ideas. But Democrats will have to find a way to channel the prevailing public anger rather than trying to circumvent or assuage it. Angry people don’t have much faith in win-win outcomes; someone has to lose before they can win. Democrats need to learn how to craft political narratives with active villains who need to be held accountable. Trump defines his coalition by defining his enemies: he hates immigrants, so if you’re not an immigrant, he’s on your team.
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Where Trump offers cheap scapegoats, Democrats should instead revive a politics of public accountability. During the 21st century, Democrats have practiced a deep aversion to open conflict with bad actors. Obama didn’t even bother to pardon the torturers of George W. Bush’s administration, ultimately trying to suppress reports of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” operations. After the 2008 financial crisis, bankers’ bonuses were protected with public funds, while clear criminal financial behavior went unprosecuted when the banking crash caused the worst recession since the Great Depression. During Trump’s first term, Nancy Pelosi shied away from confronting him about clear misconduct.
In each of these iterations, party leaders advanced vague political considerations for fear of alienating Republicans from the general public. But at a certain point the pattern resembles a simple fear of confrontation itself. Democratic leaders couldn’t even bring themselves to take a clearly weakened Joe Biden out of the race until it was too late, instead trying to mislead the public about the state of his decline while hoping for the best. The public feels stripped of all agency, subject to social forces beyond its control, from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to the financial crisis and the COVID-19 crash. By refusing to defend basic responsibility, Democrats have deepened the very divisions they hoped to bridge.
Democrats insist they are fighting for democracy and the common good, but they find it difficult to define who and what they are fighting against in return for. It’s time to find out. The future of democracy depends on it It.