Perhaps the good news is that the Normals are tuning that sort of nonsense out.
The Biden campaign has made the 2024 general election into a referendum on democracy. So far, however, the electoral choice between authoritarianism and democracy has not registered among voters as a determining factor. The Times/Siena poll in May indicates that only 2% of registered voters identify the state of democracy as a main factor in their choice of a candidate for the presidency, and only 5% list it as their most important issue. That’s bleak, whichever way you look at it.Keep thinking that, Bobby. In the right-populist parts of the internet, waging lawfare against the survivor of a party's duly established nominating procedures so as to make the so-called defender of democracy have an easier path to the White House looks pretty autocratic. There might be "incompatible definitions," and then there are notions so foolish only an academician grants them.
Maybe the situation is not quite so bad? The March Reuters/Ipsos poll indicates, for instance, that 23% of the American public consider political extremism or threats to democracy the most important problem facing the US (36% of Democrats, 25% of independents, and 11% of Republicans). Of course, incompatible definitions of democracy, extremism, and threats held by voters of different political persuasions would reduce even further these relatively small numbers of voters who might support Biden to defend democracy from autocracy.
Let’s say the number of voters sufficiently troubled by the threat to democracy stands now somewhere between 2% and 23%. Maybe even as many as a third of Democrats plus half of Independents (together amounting to about 25% of voters) currently agree that the Republican Party’s presumptive candidate is a grave enough threat to democracy to vote for Biden despite concerns related to his age, inflation, interest rates, immigration, police reform, the Israel-Gaza war, and more. That is not enough to win the election, unless something changes between now and November to increase the number of voters seriously worried about an authoritarian victory and/or convinced on economic or other grounds to support Biden.Put another way, there are enough failures by the Jarrett regency along conventional lines (we could add the unconstitutional student loan forgiveness and the ukases banning automobiles and gas stoves) for which people might prefer to put the Republican back in the White House, and gridlock the government. One of these days students of government will figure out that the national government has grown too big and attempts too much.
Not old Bobby the Biden fanboy, though.
At least among Democratic voters and the subset of independents who tend to vote for Democratic candidates, it should be obvious that Donald Trump’s intentions for a second term are decidedly antidemocratic, that there is good reason to worry his authoritarian rule would not be restrained by democratic norms or institutions, and that a peaceful return to democracy would be unlikely after he takes power.Go ahead. Spell out your reasons for continuing Chevron deference. I dare you.
Alas, that's beyond Bobby's analytic abilities.
Criticism of Joe Biden’s policies, or even concern for his age, is not the problem. Indeed, a healthy democracy engages in spirited debate and is marked by the serious contestation of divergent viewpoints. The problem instead is that translating such concerns and serious differences into a decision not to vote, or even to vote for a third candidate, amounts to a vote against democracy. The 2024 election is a referendum on Joe Biden only insofar as he represents the alternative to authoritarian rule. This election is not a choice between candidates of the two major parties both of whom affirm democratic values. The choice is between constitutional democracy and autocracy. If the candidate for democracy wins, the politics of persuasion in a pluralistic polity and governance by checks and balances continue; if he loses, rule by demagoguery and coercion begins.That sounds pretty totalitarian to me. The choice is between two distortions of constitutional democracy. Where was Bobby when Dementia Joe went to Philadelphia and screamed at half the electorate? Where would the so-called progressives be if they couldn't deflect to some -ism or -phobia? And now he wishes to scold voters who vote for none of the above as voting against democracy?
It gets better from there. In the middle of a bundle of internally inconsistent arguments and invocations of some of those -isms and -phobias, perhaps there dawns on Bobby a recognition that the biggest danger to "democracy" is Government Itself.
Democracy in this sense is a politics of contestation in a world of uncertainties, divided opinions, competing interests, different priorities, and divergent perspectives. It operates on a principle of persuasion, if it is true to itself, and it is guided by a set of values, including liberty, equality, and fairness, among others. At best, these aspirational values are partially and tenuously realized at any given time or place. They are also subject to interpretation—even prevarication, perversion, and subversion—but, absent democratic values, politics is aimless, authority is arbitrary, and power is oppressive.Perhaps we could start with limited, enumerated and divided powers.
The difficulty of sustaining a robust democratic practice is rooted in the complexity of political relations. Competing interests and divergent perspectives, beliefs, and priorities are endemic to a large and diverse public. This condition of pluralism is a social reality that tests the limits of tolerance. It requires an ongoing search for common ground and an openness to compromise. As such, pluralism is also a democratic principle of good governance.
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