The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part Twenty: Will White Americans Dismantle the Republic?

There's an old story that in 1787 at the close of the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin if the Constitution would produce a republic or a monarchy. "A Republic, if you can keep it," replied Franklin.

A 2014 Northwestern University study concluded that the United States is not a democratic republic but an oligarchy of economic elites: "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."

"When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."

I've discussed at length in this series how big money interests have subverted democracy in America, but there's an elephant in the room I haven't talked about yet. Republican voter suppression tactics aside, it's for the most part the American people themselves who have forfeited their own rights by either not voting or by electing Republicans. The US has a two-party political system. One party, the Republicans, has for the past several decades sought to curtail voting rights, workers' rights, immigrants' rights, minority rights and just about every legal right afforded to human beings in favor of the power of the economic elites commonly referred to as the "1%". The Democratic party, by contrast, has tried (often not hard enough, granted) to protect people power.

So why have Americans allowed this to happen? I think there are three reasons.

1. Apathy
Only about 6 in 10 Americans vote in Presidential election years, and about 4 in 10 in the midterms. Research shows that a majority of young people don't think voting is an effective way to change society. Republicans have few qualms perpetuating those feelings among young voters, as nonvoters more likely to be poor, young, Hispanic or Asian-American and more likely to align with the Democratic Party.

2. People vote against their own interests
Non-college-educated white voters have gone all-in for Donald Trump and Republican politics. And what have they gotten in return? American workers are among the hardest working and most productive in the world, yet find themselves commonly living below the poverty line, denied healthcare, and denied basic benefits they would be guaranteed in other leading nations such as paid vacation and maternity leave and a retirement pension at a reasonable age.

Roger Ebert discussed the strange phenomenon of people voting against their economic interests in in a great 2011 article entitled, The One-Percenters. The article noted that Wall Street duped investors and wrecked the economy during the Great Recession, all while voting itself record bonuses. And the public's response?

"What puzzles me is why there isn't more indignation. The Tea Party is the most indignant domestic political movement since Norman Thomas's Socialist Party, but its wrath is turned in the wrong direction. It favors policies that are favorable to corporations and unfavorable to individuals. Its opposition to Obamacare is a textbook example. Insurance companies and the health care industry finance a "populist" movement that is manipulated to oppose its own interests. The billionaire Koch brothers payroll right wing front organizations that oppose labor unions and financial reform. The patriots wave their flags and don't realize they're being duped.

Consider taxes. Do you know we could eliminate half the predicted shortfall in the national budget by simply failing to renew the Bush tax cuts? Do you know that if corporations were taxed at a fair rate, much of the rest could be found? General Electric recently reported it paid no current taxes. Why do you think that was? Why do middle and lower class Tea Party members not understand that they bear an unfair burden of taxes that should be more fairly distributed? Why do they support those who campaign against unions and a higher minimum wage? What do they think is in it for them?"

Similarly, Thomas Frank wrote in the political study, What's the Matter with Kansas, "Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, farther to the right. Strip today’s Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they’re protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there’s a good chance they’ll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower."

3. Racism
2020 will mark the Quadricentennial celebration of the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. For 400 years old, white, wealthy, "Christian", allegedly heterosexual men have run everything in this country. Because white people have always been the majority, unless you count the Native Americans, which White America seldom has. But not for much longer. By the year 2045, America will become minority white. This is a prospect that terrifies white America. And I think it's the biggest reason why more white people are voting Republican, and voting for xenophobic white supremacists like Donald Trump.

Just this past week, economist Paul Krugman commented on this in the New York Times. Krugman noted that President Trump's economic policies are clearly terrible for rural America, and asked: "Why, then, do rural areas support Trump? A lot of it has to do with cultural factors. In particular, rural voters are far more hostile to immigrants than urban voters — especially in communities where there are few immigrants to be found. Lack of familiarity apparently breeds contempt."

Krugman has hit the nail on the head: a lot of Americans are prepared to keep an insane, lying criminal with no respect for democratic institutions in the White House, as long as he speaks to their fears of a browner America.

But the problem goes deeper than just a lot of Republicans and un-worldly rural people who believe a lot of lies about immigrant populations harming America. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 46 percent of white Americans fear that a non-white majority population in the US would weaken American "culture". Similarly, a 2014 New York University study showed that white people who read about the coming white non-white majority in America tend to favor more restrictive immigration policies.

So where does this all lead? Unfortunately, it leads us to even worse things than electing a white supremacist as President. The title of this NBC News article by Noah Berlastky says it all: The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism.

According to Berlatsky, while many cite increasing partisanship as the biggest threat to American democracy, "A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white America's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy."

"Based on surveys from the United States, the authors found that white people who did not want to have immigrants or people of different races living next door to them were more likely to be supportive of authoritarianism. For instance, people who said they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race were more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results."

So is there any good news? Yes. Time is on the side of democracy. And not because the country is becoming less white. Consider a recent article by Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post entitled: The next generation of voters is more liberal, more inclusive and believes in government.

"Generation Z, defined as those born after 1996, is on the cusp of adulthood. The oldest are graduating college. By 2020, almost half will be eligible to vote in the presidential election, which means their values and opinions could soon help shape national politics.

According to (a recent Pew Center) survey, released Thursday, Gen Z teens and young adults have overwhelmingly adopted left-leaning beliefs similar to those of the millennials before them. They overwhelmingly disapprove of President Trump, believe the government should do more and reject American exceptionalism.

It’s not uncommon for young people to hold liberal views that moderate as they age. But Gen Zers grew up in a very different world than previous generations. The oldest among them was 11 when the first black president was elected. They became teenagers as same-sex marriage was legalized around the country. They also, according to Pew, will be the most racially diverse and well-educated generation.

This younger generation is much more likely to see climate change as a result of human behavior and to believe black Americans are treated unfairly."

And it's not as if the Republican party is attempting any kind of outreach to less-conservative, multicultural young people, as party leaders suggested after Mitt Romney's loss in 2012. Long-time Republican strategist and leader of the "Never Trump" movement Rick Wilson commented last year that, "Everything we Never Trump folks warned you of, including massive, decades-long downstream election losses, is coming. Alienating African Americans and Hispanics beyond redemption? Check. Raising a generation of young voters who are fleeing the GOP in droves? Check. Age-old beefs, juvenile complaints, and ego bruises taking center stage while the world burns? Check. Playing public footsie with white supremacists and neo-Nazis? Check. Blistering pig-ignorance about the economy and the world? Check. … Shredding the last iota of the GOP’s credibility as a party that cares about debt, deficits, and fiscal probity? Check."

You know the Republican party is in trouble with minority voters when the only minority candidates it can find to run for Congress are just as racist and crazy as Donald Trump. Just this week the GOP was excited to announce the congressional bid of Cuban-American Irina Vilariño in Florida. Ms. Vilariño is known for backing various bigoted conspiracy theories, and has refused to apologize for promoting a fake video which makes President Obama appear to say he was born in Kenya.

In conclusion, this is the thread that ties together everything I've discussed in this series on the many threats to America's democratic institutions: White, conservative Americans see that in their lifetimes people of color will become a majority in this country, and they consider that a threat to white dominance of American culture. They also see that the new multicultural majority is rejecting the neo-liberal politics of Ronald Reagan and those who came after him that seek to perpetually grow power for the wealthy while brutalizing the poor. And the old conservative white hegemony does not intend to let a little thing like democracy curtail their power, culturally or politically.

Jason Sattler, opinion columnist for USA Today recently observed, "Republicans have given up on voters. America's future depends on whether Democrats can expand voting rights faster than the GOP can restrict them."

Every day, the tide of population demographics shifts a little more against the Trump voter. Democracy in this country may last longer than they do. I think it will.

Thanks for reading.

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The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part Five: Gerrymandering and Race

Gerrymandering is such a big topic, I couldn't cover it all in my previous post on the subject. Let's take a look at another way Republicans have long manipulated the system of creating legislative districts: racial gerrymandering. Even before technology allowed those in control to precisely draw districts to their advantage on practically a house-to-house basis based on demographics, Republicans effectively gerrymandered congressional districts through the creation of majority-minority districts.

Here's how it works. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits the once-common practice of spreading minorities across voting districts, leaving them too few in number in any given district to elect their preferred candidates. The practice was known as "racial gerrymandering." Wow, conservatives must hate being required to create districts where minority voters are the majority, right? Wrong! They love it! Why? Because creating majority-minority districts allows them to racially gerrymander more effectively than ever.

There's a reason why Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina each send exactly one Democrat (and one person of color) to the US House despite the fact that those states have a lot of minority voters. It's because most of those minority voters are carefully packed into a single congressional district.

Grant Hayden, a Professor of Law at Hofstra University has written a good summary the problem: 

"[M]ajority-minority districts give rise to a dynamic that undercuts the very goal they are designed to achieve. While they improve the ability of minority voters to elect a candidate of their choice in a particular district, they also cost their preferred political party other valuable seats in the legislature."

"Majority-minority districts have at least one very curious effect: they help Republicans. This is curious because minority voters, especially blacks, vote for Democrats in overwhelming numbers. But upon closer study, this by-product of majority-minority districts merely fulfills a longstanding theoretical prediction."

"The theory goes like this. When creating a majority-minority political district, the additional minority voters must come from somewhere. That somewhere is adjoining districts, which are drained of their minority voters. Those voters, though, are not merely minority voters-they are also reliably Democratic voters. And this makes it more likely that the Republican candidates will prevail in those adjoining districts."

Would this actually happen in practice? It's well-documented that it already has. After the 1990 census, scores of majority-minority districts were created in order to comply with the mandates of the Voting Rights Act. For example, thirteen additional majority-black Congressional districts were created. They, in turn, produced thirteen additional black representatives. Majority-minority districting did, indeed, lead to the election of the candidates of the minorities' choosing."

"Unfortunately, a large number of studies of the 1992 and 1994 Congressional elections revealed that this additional representation came at a cost. As a result of majority-minority districting, Democrats lost at least ten seats to Republicans. When minority voters were drained out of adjoining districts, Republican majorities were the result." 

"Both parties apparently notice that majority-minority districts tend to help Republicans overall, and hurt Democrats overall. In the early 1990s, the Republican National Committee pushed for the creation of more black and Hispanic districts as part of a strategy to win additional seats in the House."

This January, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on racial gerrymandering of the kind described above orchestrated by Texas Republicans. This is in addition to the two cases the Court had already agreed to hear on gerrymandering, the first from Wisconsin regarding the extreme Republican gerrymander in that state, the second regarding the gerrymander of a single congressional seat in Maryland by Democrats.

As noted by Pema Levy of Mother Jones:

"This summer, a three-judge panel in San Antonio found that Texas Republicans intentionally weakened the voting power of African American and Latino voters when it drew multiple state House and congressional districts. This was the ninth racial discrimination in voting case the state has lost since 2011, which includes a long legal battle over its stringent voter ID requirement. Now, the Supreme Court will determine whether Texas’ maps can stand."

Whether Texas intentionally weakened the voting power of minorities through gerrymander in that state is not really a question, given that Texas Governor Greg Abbot has said, "[i]n 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats."

The real question is, how long and to what degree with the Court (and Americans at large) will continue to let Republicans get away with this garbage.

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The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part One: Bigotry as a Winning Strategy

Democracy is not dying in America. But that's not for lack of effort by leading Republicans and conservative billionaires. Those folks are attacking democratic institutions with everything they've got, because their interests and the interests of the American people are very much at odds. The driving force of American politics in the current decade has been conservative leadership attempting to cement their long-term goals as public policy before changing population demographics overwhelm them and their old, white hegemony at the ballot box. This is the first in a series of articles that will focus on how conservatives are attempting to transform America into an oligarchy where elections are held only to determine which Republican will have the job of making sure corporations and billionaires get everything they want.

Republicans expected to win the 2012 election. In the immediate aftermath of that loss, conservatives noted that the tide of changing population demographics and growing minority vote not only contributed to Romney's loss (given that few non-whites voted Republican) but also that these same trends would prove even bigger challenges in the future, given that American minority populations are growing faster than the white, Christian conservative base of the Republican party.

Here's what conservative pundit Sean Trende had to say:
"For Republicans, that despair now comes from an electorate that seems to have undergone a sea change. In the 2008 final exit polls (unavailable online), the electorate was 75 percent white, 12.2 percent African-American, 8.4 percent Latino, with 4.5 percent distributed to other ethnicities. We’ll have to wait for this year’s absolute final exit polls to come in to know the exact estimate of the composition this time, but right now it appears to be pegged at about 72 percent white, 13 percent black, 10 percent Latino and 5 percent “other.”

Obviously, this surge in the non-white vote is troubling to Republicans, who are increasingly almost as reliant upon the white vote to win as Democrats are on the non-white vote. With the white vote decreasing as a share of the electorate over time, it becomes harder and harder for Republicans to prevail.

This supposed surge in minority voting has sparked discussions about the GOP’s renewed need to draw in minority voters, especially Latinos, usually by agreeing to comprehensive immigration reform."

Republican party leadership was quick to pick up on the theme of expanding minority outreach. Here's a quote from the Republican National Committee "Growth and Opportunity Project", issued in 2013: "We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities. But it is not just tone that counts. Policy always matters."

That was the strategy the Republican establishment recommended, but it wasn't the one they got in 2016. Here are some quotes from Donald Trump:
March, 2016: "I think Islam hates us... And we can't allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States."
From Time magazine, August, 2016: "Donald Trump kicked off his presidential bid more than a year ago with harsh words for Mexico. "They are not our friend, believe me," he said, before disparaging Mexican immigrants: "They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.""
November 2017: Regarding the suggestion from Greg Sargent of the Washington Post on Twitter that, "Trump regularly attacks high-profile African Americans to feed his supporters' belief that the system is rigged for minorities", Trump responded, "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

As it turns out, there was another, completely opposite strategy to the more-inclusive campaign the Republican leadership had suggested: go full-on white supremacist. During the 2016 campaign, Sean Trende described the Trump strategy in terms of numbers: In 2012, the electorate that went to the polls had been 59% white, but, "If we do see Donald Trump push the white vote up into 63-64%, it suggests that as whites move towards minority status that they become more aware of their whiteness, and it plays into politics. It is a disheartening and dangerous trend, but it might be something we don't have any control over."

Trende was exactly right: the "forgotten" white voter who ignored Mitt Romney found a home in Donald Trump's whites-only Republican party, helping Trump carry rust-belt states that nearly everyone thought were safely in the Democratic column. Trende, to his credit, noted after the election that, "my observation was expressly limited to the idea that missing whites could help the GOP win. People interpreted this as advocating for a "whites-only" GOP, which I expressly disclaimed."

Final point: I said this is a series about how Republicans are attacking democracy. Successful appeals to white-supremacy are repugnant, but it takes more than an assault on inclusiveness and on America as the great melting pot to destroy democratic institutions. Next time, I'll talk about how Republicans have translated their attacks on minorities into policies that keep minority voices from being heard.

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