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Your guide to what the 2024 US elections mean for Washington and the world
“At 2:24 p.m., as Mr. Trump sat alone, he issued a tweet attacking Mr. Pence and fueling the riot. . . One minute later, the US Secret Service had to evacuate Pence to a safe location in the Capitol building. When a White House adviser learned of this, he rushed to the dining room and informed Trump, who replied: “So what?”
This is an excerpt from what was recently released a report by Special Counsel, Jack Smith, in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This recasting of this report – just as Trump was sworn in for a second term in office – will be viewed by many Donald Trump supporters as irrelevant. They say the American people made their judgment when they went to the polls in November. Democrats campaigned on the idea that Trump threatens democracy. Despite this, Trump achieved a clear victory.
This raises an interesting question. Why was “democracy in danger” not a winning argument?
One theory is that voters simply don't care much. A reconnaissance Results conducted immediately before the presidential elections showed that 76% of Americans believe that American democracy is in danger. But only 7 percent believe democracy was the most important issue in the election.
While a majority of Republicans and Democrats alike agreed that American democracy was under threat, they appeared to have very different views on the source of the threat. For Democrats, the threat is Trump; As for Republicans, it is censorship by a “woke” elite.
This disagreement highlights an important distinction I recently heard made by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the Indian scholar, in a lecture he gave at the London School of Economics. Mehta said there are two competing understandings of the word “democracy” in contemporary politics. The first sees democracy as a means – a means of resolving disputes or conflicts of values. The second sees it as a means to empower citizens, that is, the will of the people.
As Mehta sees it, “democracy needs both values and empowerment.” But when voters feel that the political system frustrates them, rather than empowers them, they are able to abandon liberal values in favor of a strongman who promises to get things done. Then an illiberal version of “democracy” emerges, which attacks – in the name of the people – the checks and balances that are so crucial to liberal democracy.
This appears to be what is happening in the United States. opinion reconnaissance Last week, it found that two-thirds of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans believe the government serves itself and the powerful over ordinary people. A large majority does not trust Congress and the media.
Trump rose to power by promising to be the strong leader who would break the power of a corrupt elite and “Make America Great Again.” He has repeatedly claimed that the American system is “rigged” and controlled by a “deep state” that tortures ordinary Americans. In 2016, Trump told the Republican Convention that the American system allows “the powerful to beat up people who can't defend themselves,” claiming that “only I can fix it.”
In his last campaign, Trump portrayed all court cases as merely evidence of deep state machinations. “I am your revenge,” he promised Americans who felt similarly persecuted.
In certain places, and at certain times, strongman rule and illiberal democracy can be very popular. in El SalvadorPresident Nayib Bukele has suspended basic rights, imprisoned 83,000 people under state of emergency laws, sent troops to Congress, and is accused of allowing torture, killings and enforced disappearances. But crime rates in El Salvador fell sharply, and Bukele won re-election in a landslide.
El Salvador's leader eloquently summed up the doctrine of illiberal democracy when he told the United Nations: “Some say we imprisoned thousands, but in fact we freed millions.” Top Trump supporters have praised Bukele, including Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson.
One potential development to watch, with Trump in power, is for the next US president to seek to emulate Bukele or Hungarian President Viktor Orban by declaring… Emergency That would allow him to suspend the normal operation of the law. If Trump seeks to impose emergency powers, liberals will sound the alarm. But they should prepare for the possibility that many ordinary Americans, like ordinary Salvadorans or Hungarians, may agree.
If supporters of liberal democracy want to win the political battle, anger and resistance will not be enough. They will have to defeat the arguments of strongman leaders and illiberal democrats.
President Biden began this process belatedly in his farewell address from the White House, when he warned that the United States had been taken over by oligarchy. Liberals must also demonstrate that strong rulers tend to empower themselves and their comrades rather than the people. Corruption is almost the inevitable result.
Over the coming months and years, Trump's opponents will have to relentlessly demonstrate the consequences that oligarchic power and strongman rule have for ordinary Americans. There is likely a lot of corruption and self-dealing to point to.
If Trump's opponents can make their case, while at the same time protecting the integrity of the electoral system, the liberal version of democracy can still prevail in the end.
