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I was listening to Rachel Maddow Thursday night (June 3, 2021) and had an epiphany. Democracy is not being threatened; it is already in serious decline. This is not some future problem; it is a current problem. Trust in democracy has been eroding for some time. For example, look at the data below on trust in American institutions. Every single governmental institution (with the exceptions of the police and the military) have trust levels below 50% and falling. The Presidency and the Supreme Court are at 38%, and the Congress at an abysmal 11%.
Perhaps more salient is the following chart taken from the World Values Survey. In 2011, 43% of American elites (those in the top fifth of the income distribution) agreed with the following statement: “A strong leader, not parliament and elections would be a good way to run the country.” Note that this poll reflects 2011 data, long before Trump was seen as a candidate running for president.
With that information as a backdrop, consider the following data from a May 21, 2021 Ipsos poll:
It seems to me that here are five major issues threatening our democracy, three of which are illustrated in the table above.:
- The death of “truth.” No matter which side you come down on, there is only one “truth,” and a large number of people are believing a “lie” to be true. Consider the questions as to whether “left-wing” provocateurs were responsible for the riot at the Capitol. Fifty-two percent of Republicans believe that to be true while only sixteen percent of Democrats do so. The proportion who disagree with that statement are 33% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats. The ratio of agree to disagree is 1.6 among Republicans and 0.2 among Democrats.
The Pew Trust asked Republicans and Democrats what separated them. The answer is shown in the figure below. Three quarters of respondents (both parties) say they are separated by a disagreement over facts. This is astonishing, but not surprising. Facts should be easy to agree on. For example, what percent of Americans are women? What percent of these women work outside their home? How many children do these women have on average? There are official sources for these facts –in this case, the US Government (Bureau of Census and Department of Labor). Similarly, the number of COVID deaths is knowable, as is the percentage of people who have been vaccinated who get COVID. But people who are hesitant to get the vaccine, argue that there’s not enough data. Around 875,000 people around the world have received at least one dose and the vaccines are shown to be 95% effective. This isn’t enough data?
- The increase in tribalism. The poll above provides a snapshot of tribalism in 2020, as shown in widely different views of what political reality looks like. In 2000, 33% of Gallup poll respondents found the Republican Party as too extreme, while 25% of respondents found the Democratic Party too extreme. By 2020, those numbers had risen sharply; 47% found the Republican Party too extreme while 42% found the Democratic Party too extreme. Perhaps the most significant data point on party tribalism is the following: while just14% of non-blacks would oppose their relative marrying a black person, 38% of people would oppose their relative marrying someone from another party (both Democrats and Republicans had the same view).
- The rejection of “bipartisanism.” In 2010 Senator Mitch McConnell said in an interview with the National Journal, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president. The salient part of the interview between McConnell and the National Journal (NJ) is repeated below.
NJ: Does that mean endless, or at least frequent, confrontation with the president?
McConnell: If President Obama does a Clintonian backflip, if he’s willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues, it’s not inappropriate for us to do business with him.
NJ: What are the big issues?
McConnell: It is possible the president’s advisers will tell him he has to do something to get right with the public on his levels of spending and [on] lowering the national debt (Note from author: This is rich after Trump’s tax cut raised the deficit from 2-3% of GDP to 4.6%). If he were to heed that advice, he would, I imagine, find more support among our conference than he would among some in the Senate in his own party. I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change. So, we’ll see. The next move is going to be up to him.
In a later interview, McConnell said, “Over the past week, some have said it was indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office. But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things.” The major point here is that McConnell’s goals all require Republican control of the Presidency. They cannot be achieved by negotiating with Democrats. In 2010 bipartisanism died.
In 2014, CNN’s Manu Raju reported, “In an extensive interview here, the typically reserved McConnell laid out his clearest thinking yet of how he would lead the Senate if Republicans gain control of the chamber. The emerging strategy: Attach riders to spending bills that would limit Obama policies on everything from the environment to health care, consider using an arcane budget tactic to circumvent Democratic filibusters and force the president to “move to the center” if he wants to get any new legislation through Congress.”
McConnell hasn’t changed. On May 6, 2021, “Speaking to reporters in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell was asked about the House GOP leadership feud that reached a boiling point this week after Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican, again rebutted former President Donald Trump’s stolen election lie. McConnell was also asked whether he was concerned about the direction of the party…”One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” McConnell said, adding, “We’re confronted with severe challenges from a new administration, and a narrow majority of Democrats in the House and a 50-50 Senate to turn America into a socialist country, and that’s 100 percent of my focus.” The “Joes” (Joe Manchin’s and Joe Biden’s) old-fashioned search for bipartisan solutions to legislative gridlock is doomed to failure.
