The end of US democracy: a flowchart

And you’ve left out:
(1) structurally the US system of government favors Republicans
(2) now that they’ve tasted MAGA and the power it gives them, it’s unlikely they go back to being sane

So it follows (as Murc of Murc’s Law put it once) it’s a lead-pipe cinch that they’ll try again, and after enough tries they’ll succeed. That is to say, it’s a lead-pipe cinch that sometime in the next 15-20 years they’ll take the trifecta, and American Democracy will just end.

2: why is that the end of democracy ? If TCFG is declared the winner, then a civil resistance and revolution (against TCFG) would be to -re-establish- democracy, not to end it. It’s the installation of TCFG that would most likely end democracy. I mean, he -did- try to overturn our Republic with a coup, remember. And it wouldn’t be some sort of “popular resistance” of the form you describe, b/c that is easily put down by organized armed force.

Now maybe you mean that some “popular uprising” would demand that TCFG be installed earlier than Jan 20. I don’t know where that leads, though I’d think that the wise men who run the country (billionaires, SCOTUS justices) would counsel him that ten weeks is not long to wait.

the flow chart doesn’t come even close to:
‘There’s not much I can do about it, but I still spend a lot of time thinking about what I, and others outside the US, should do if that country ceases to be a democracy’.

We play that game from 9 different countries (also from Melbourne) and Elon just made a few mistakes which cost him Puerto Rico and so we are still on track with our promise that
‘trum’ (the Worlds New Word for: Right Wing Racist Science Denying Setx Abusing Lying) will NEVER be erected again!

Oh dear. JQ, you have managed to misinterpret my comment entirely, “decoding” as you supposed a message which was not encoded at all.

I do not in the slightest wish to see the dangerous buffoon Trump in power, still less to see him imposing Enabling Acts. I can’t see why you suppose I would. When I wrote that we must hope for the best I did not think it necessary to say that by that I meant Trump’s electoral defeat, and I think it’s slightly paranoid of you to suppose otherwise.

I merely pointed out that in the surprisingly long period between the electoral vote and the inauguration, there was a possibility not considered by you for opposition to President-Elect Trump to become violent. You may think that, because it would never happen if you were in charge, it is impossible. I’m not so sure; and I should make my view clear. Such opposition would be either unsuccessful, in which case the outlook for democracy after he took over would be even worse, or successful, in which case the outlook for democracy in a country which had prevented a lawfully elected politician from taking office by unconstitutional means would not be brilliant. But I very much hope that Trump or anyone like him is not elected.

On the question of what we, outside the US, should do. Well, I think the answer is “be prepared”. I would expect to see US-led destabilization attempts in other anglophone democracies (UK, Australia and Canada; I think NZ and Ireland safer for now) and in parts of the EU together with deals with Putin that would surrender parts of eastern Europe to a Russian sphere of influence (certainly Ukraine, Moldova) and a refusal to honour any NATO security guarantee. And things would get very bad very fast for Mexico as a Trump administration would try to force deportations across that border without the consent of the receiving state.

If I understand correctly you’re assigning a 20% probability that Trump’s coup will be successful despite having zero formal power?

Are you thinking that there are enough loyal generals that are willing to risk everything because they’re so devoted to Trump? Or that some rogue colonels will be able to capture certain key areas and win a drawn-out battle?

I’m not trying to deny the reality and danger of January 6. But a key part of that situation is that he was still president.

This logic also makes me think that you’re missing an arrow: Trump wins the EC but the democrats do a coup. Certainly, if democracy is basically dead anyway if Trump wins, what do they have to lose.

John’s dismissal of Stephen’s analysis rings true – and the fact it rings true is the dilemma faced by Democrats in the US. There is no willingness or ability for Democrats to operate outside legal democratic norms. Stephen seems to be talking about BLM type protest as having anti-democratic potential, which is obvious BS taken from right-wing fantasies. It does raise an interesting issue however: there is another possibility – most likely an illusory possibility but one which seems to be there on paper.

The Supreme Court has given the Presidency the right to violate the law, including for example the right to assassinate political opponents. Obviously, this right is meant only for Trump, but on paper at least it is there for Democratic presidents as well.

If Harris loses, Democrats will be assassinated, imprisoned etc. This is a win or die scenario for them. At least, for many of them. Trump may be merciful in specific instances. But I would not bet my life on it. (This is a major reason why so many Republicans are not willing to go against Trump in practice – they know this is coming. They are thinking “better to just let them come for the Communists, because I am not a Communist.”) In a win or die scenario, you might expect some to consider options that they’d rather not, and be willing to violate democratic norms, since those norms will soon be gone anyways if they do nothing.

So the Democrats in theory could try violent action first, preemptively, but they won’t. Organizing assassinations requires more than just a legal right on paper saying you can do it. You need people willing and able to carry those out, at considerable personal risk. The Democrats don’t have this, but Republicans do. And the American people would not necessarily go along with Democrats doing it – when the Republicans start in, few will be brave enough to speak out.

If Harris wins, there may be a violent coup attempt, but in that case the Democrats will support violence to end it – unless the Republicans’ inevitable gaslighting is successful.

I think the flow chart captures these possibilities, but I would not assign a probability above zero to these ones: 1) Trump governing constitutionally – he will not. 2) the Supreme Court stopping him – they have already said he can murder people, officially, based on made up law – the Constitution is already a dead letter. 3) Trump not attempting a coup. Unless he dies or something he will attempt one. He may fail.

I think this chart suffers pretty egregiously from failing to define “end of democracy.” If Trump were to try and cancel the 2026 elections or jail elected democrats without habeas corpus I am very confident there is not be a 90 percent chance the supreme court would go along with it, or that the military / law enforcement would defy the supreme court. The presidential immunity decision was egregious but SCOTUS signing off on full dictatorship would also be SCOTUS signing off on its own political irrelevance which none of them want to do. The Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity was maybe the worst decision since Korematsu, but it has been badly misunderstood to be an endorsement of anything the president wants to do. Instead reporting on what Roberts thought he was doing, and the decision itself, show that he thought he was preventing use of means outside the normal political process to decide elections–he thought the risk of prosecuting former presidents to the system was very high. He’s totally wrong about that, but it’s not the same as endorsing dictatorship.

The value of the exercise in OP is not clear to me. This is the same kind of exercise as assigning coefficients to the terms of the Drake Equation. You don’t know anything at the end that you didn’t at the start. I suppose it could be viewed as a sort of mental fidgeting that seems worthwhile as a distraction from the uncertainty and tension.

FWIW I think it is likely that if Trump “wins,” the Project 2025 people will find that they cannot accomplish all of their goals. Which is not to deny that it would be a catastrophe, but the outcomes where the Republic gets completely uprooted are not inevitable. These are not very bright guys, and time will reveal they have bitten off more than they can chew.

@MisterMr 8 “…the executive power becomes more powerful at the expense of the legislative and judiciary”

Or, perhaps, at the expense of what they call “the deep state” or “the establishment”? In which case, giving the elected president more power actually makes the system more democratic, doesn’t it?

It is not clear to me what counts as unconstitutional government by Trump.

Trumpery has its own unique flavor but Trump follows the precedents set by John Adams (Alien and Sedition Acts—also a precedent for executive incompetence I think); Thomas Jefferson (Burr prosecution interference and the Embargo Act too though I’m sure most would disagree); Andrew Jackson (dismissing Supreme Court decision on Cherokee, supporting postal censorship in the South, instituting spoils system); John Tyler (attempting to form a patronage party against his own—officially—Whig party); James Polk (lying to manipulate a war); Franklin Pierce (beginning de facto US civil war by supporting Kansas-Nebraska Act and subsequent southern violence); James Buchanan (refusal to defend democracy—which does include national unity, in my opinion); Andrew Johnson (supporting racial terror in the South and white supremacy nationally); Rutherford Hayes (corrupting the South by endorsing racist terror for personal election and breaking the railroad strike); Grover Cleveland (breaking strikes); William McKinley (launching offshore colonialism by US on false pretenses a la Polk, indifferent to so-called Redemption in the South, including even the Wilmington coup); Theodore Roosevelt (imperialism—the most flagrant was his actions re Hawaii before he was president, if I remember correctly and breaking anthracite coal strike); Woodrow Wilson (segregation of federal government, entry into WWI against campaign pledges, first Red Scare); Herbert Hoover (violence against Bonus Marchers); Harry Truman (begins second Red Scare, threatens to draft strikers, Korean War); Dwight Eisenhower (largely supportive of second Red Scare, refuses to make peace in Korea, pursues Cold War including overflights of the USSR); John Kennedy (begins Vietnam War, attempts invasion of Cuba); Lyndon Johnson (invasion of Dominican Republic, supports [plans?] the Indonesian massacres); Richard Nixon (impoundment of federal funds, supports assassinations and other covert ops against Blacks in particular, including deliberately targeting Blacks under cover of “War on Crime,” illicit use of government funds against political opponents, unilaterally goes off gold, imposes “price” controls); Jimmy Carter (creates jihadi movements still with us to attack Afghanistan’s leftist government); George H. Bush (false pretenses for first phase of Iraq war); Bill Clinton (drone murders, random bombing of foreign countries, free reign for finance—admittedly later Congress officially repealed Glass-Steagall); George W. Bush (accepts presidency under legal cover to prevent vote count, false pretenses for second phase of Iraq war, second phase of Afghan war); Barack Obama (continued drone murders, including US citizen); Trump (begins economic warfare against Iran and the PRC, increases drone murders as I understand it, increases covert ops in Africa, Space Force); Joe Biden (supports genocidal assault on Palestinians and supports Ukrainian [CENSORED]).

This may seem tediously lengthy: True, TLDR is always effective rhetoric. Still.

Omitting war from the flow chart seems to make the whole thing a little too ideal?Objections that foreign affairs are the presidential prerogative (like a monarch’s) and it was designed that way. That is merely constitutionalism in my opinion. Also in my opinion, if the people cannot decide issues of war and peace, it is not ideal democracy.

At this point, though, counterposing ideal democracy to actually existing democracy is useful largely for people who want to use ideal democracy to condemn actually existing socialism. In constitutional, actually existing democracy, the Tawney court, the Fuller court and the Roberts court are the norm, not a violation. Personally I think the notion that if it’s legal (SCOTUS certified) it’s moral and democratic is the means justifies the ends, moral imbecility. But that’s me, so what else could you expect?

The US has been deemed a constitutional democracy for its entire existence. It is commonplace for many conservatives to consider Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt quasi-revolutionaries whose work had to be undone as much as possible, in the name of constitutional democracy. The 14th Amendment is not formally Lincoln’s personal work true, but the courts worked very hard to undo it and it is very much considered to be the fruit of the revolutionary impetus of Lincoln’s war. The failure to impeach the appalling Andrew Johnson is usually considered to be a milestone in the preservation of democracy. Undoing the New Deal has been an ongoing project of courts, parties, politicians and the serious people for a very long time. As the highly esteemed Friedrich von Hayek has demonstrated, such things are The Road to Serfdom (yes, that is sarcasm, except von Hayek is indeed still highly esteemed.)

Constitutional democracy is entirely compatible with foreign wars effectively initiated by one man, with political purges and with race riots (what would be called pogroms in other countries.) In the US, majority rule is not accepted to be a fundamental democratic principle. Instead, the principle of minority rule, called constitutionalism usually, is upheld as essential to democracy.

A denied but key aspect to 1/6 was the way the military stood down for a good part of the events at the Capitol. Reports are that it took violation of the chain of command to finally bring in reinforcements (supposedly Pence stepped in.) Trump’s previous attempt to intervene militarily in Democratic cities against a supposed BLM insurgency ended up with a mostly symbolic presence of Gen. Milley by Trump’s side. (Milley has since been threatened with execution for treason, typically ignored as Trump just being Trump.)

The principle of No Taxation With Representation is alive and well, with the rich people seeing sales taxes and FICA not even counting as taxes (recall Mitt Romney’s leaked remarks about, what was it?, the 47%.) If Trump abolishes more taxes on the rich and guts Social Security and even gets creative enough to institute a national VAT to pay for his gigantic military, by that standard, that is the advance of freedom—not unconstitutional. I completely disagree, but again, that’s me.

I suspect the only thing that can save US democracy long term is if enough people on both sides get so disgusted by the system that they vote for independent candidates to the point where the establishment has no choice but to reform the antiquated system.

I find myself strongly agreeing with Chris Bertram @11 – the Senate alone arguably makes the US a non-democratic country, merely a constitutional/rule of law state with strong electoral features. The problem is that these electoral features, given their imperfection, make it a highly unstable polity. I’d genuinely be unsurprised if the US no longer exists as a geopolitical entity in its current form in the next 10-20 years (if not sooner).

I also think the “Russianisation” of US politics is also the most likely outcome if Trump wins, with John Roberts smoothing the way (its tempting to make the comparison to Valeriy Zorkin, but Zorkin never really had the practical power to block Putin’s authoritarianism.) Bezos’ pre-emptive bending of the knee reminded me and a lot of other Russianists of early 2000s Putinism but that’s grossly unfair to the oligarchy of that period. Putin had to actually arrest Khodorkovsky, after years of struggling with Borozovky and Gusinsky, and was a capable political operator who was physically and mentally vigorous. Bezos’s actions are more akin to offering obeisance to Yeltsin sometime after his third heart attack.

@qwerty
The short answer is that giving more power to the executive you are giving more power to unelected people, because the parliament is more democratic than the executive (moreso if the parliament is elected with direct proportionality).
The more you give power to the executive the more you empower inner party bureocracy VS the voters.
If you look both at the soviet system and at the fascist system, both were systems that overpowered the executive VS the parliaments.

Also if you look at italian fascism in particular, Mussolini did use this kind of rhetoric where he represented the real citizens VS a corrupt elite, but in reality it was quite bull.

Take also the example of this party, that is an obvious example of populism and anti-politician rethoric, and had obvious links with fascism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Man's_Front

I, for one, did not see anything objectionable (other than feeling the odds of that possibility were quite low) in Stephen’s first comment, and was surprised by JQ’s strong reaction to it. I hate the thought of another Trump presidency, but not strongly enough to overcome my sense that a violent reaction to it would not improve the situation. A violent reaction to his presidency would probably be welcome to Trump. I think most non-Trump voters are capable of seeing that.

JimV @33: delighted to find that one QT commentator has taken my point. What the odds on the possibility, I don’t know.

But as for JQ’s comment that “Any protest against Trump will be used as an excuse for Enabling Acts and Stephen will be cheering him on”; a scholar and a gentleman would either retract that with an apology, or provide some shred of evidence for it.

I deeply regret that I may here be disappointed.

John Q @ 36

I must admit I find the exchange most troubling. Yet another bit of evidence that ’tribalism’ is enveloping us all? Are we now required not only to be right (as opposed to wrong) but to be right (as opposed to wrong) in the right (as opposed to wrong) way? [My repeated parenthesised phrase is intended to forestall any misperception that I am here using “right” in any political sense.]

I don’t see why you can’t take Stephen at his word after he went on to explain his views further in response to your first response to his first remarks.

How often does he have to say that he very much hopes Trump isn’t elected, but that he fears there might be a hostile reaction to that election that could make for lots of trouble for anti-trumpists and for the US as a whole further down the road? Does that merit the continued implication that he might be using “standard rightwing description[s]”?

What’s the problem with just admitting you over-intepreted his words, that you were indeed wrong about that, that you’re happy to accept his correction, and saying that your sorry?

Best wishes, r

Wonderful graph–and a lot of it dead-on. I really appreciate your empathy for us, at least those of us that give a damn about something close to democracy, and believe me I am fighting for the health of my own life and soul before this coin-toss of an election. My only hope is that the polls have so over-corrected for getting Trumpists into them in 2024 because of their 2016 and 2020 undercounts that they consequently undercount Harris’ support. Again, thanks for this.

The short answer is that giving more power to the executive you are giving more power to unelected people, because the parliament is more democratic than the executive (moreso if the parliament is elected with direct proportionality).
The more you give power to the executive the more you empower inner party bureocracy VS the voters.

That depends on how the electoral system works. Several US states either have now or recently have had a situation where a Democratic Governor directly elected by majority popular vote has been obstructed by a legislature with a Republican majority elected by a minority of the vote through intensively gerrymandered electoral boundaries. In such a situation the executive has more democracy behind it than the legislature.

The flowchart’s main utility is as a coping mechanism. Something to hold on to. We all want to somehow know the odds.

This makes me wonder whether there were US voters in, say, 1844 or 1884 or 1916 who wanted to know the odds and whether back then, in the absence of opinion polls, there were other ways that people formed estimates. If people coped then without knowing the odds, shouldn’t people now be able to use similar coping techniques?

@MisterMr 38: “So when a premier says that s/he represnts “the people” vs the corrupt political class, generally s/he is bullshitting and ignoring a large part of the really existing people.”

I feel, intuitively, that where populist politics is practiced and not suppressed, the premier/president who represents the corrupt political class is unlikely to be elected, and certainly won’t be re-elected. Consequently, the president is likely to represent some portion of “the people”: college graduates or uneducated, rural or urban, blue collar or professional-managerial. And this seems more democratic than the corrupt political class that represents the oligarchy and no one else.

@MisterMr 38: “The reason is that a parliament represents ideally all factions in a country contemporaneously”

Speaking of the US, empirically, in a typical opinion poll the congress usually gets 16-18% approval. Cholera would get more, probably. The president, otoh, even the current one, has respectable 35-40%. Notice that he, the current president, is trying to practice populist politics, to represent (if clumsily) the educated, professional-managerial segment, by canceling their student loans.

@qwerty 47

” in a typical opinion poll the congress usually gets 16-18% approval. Cholera would get more, probably. The president, otoh, even the current one, has respectable 35-40%.”

This is because there is a psychological tendency to immedesimate in either one or the other candidate, whereas “congress” is perceived as a mass of unknown bureaucrats.
But this is likely a marketing effect, the same logic that political campaigning will try to make our guy look like a hero and the other guy dislikeable on a personal level, often neglecting actual policy points and going for the emotions.
So this tendency is actually a problem for democracy.

“And this seems more democratic than the corrupt political class that represents the oligarchy and no one else”
there are two or three problems with this:
First, isn’t the president also part of the political class?
Second, won’t the president rule through bureaucrats and underling, who are also part of the political class? Plus if the system gives more power to the president, underlings will be selected for personal loyalty, which makes it even more likely that they will be crooks.
Third, since pure direct democracy (i.e. everyone votes for everything everytime, like citizens in ancient Athens) is not possible practically, won’t a class of professional politicians aways pop up in a democracy? (this third point is somewhat linked with the second).

Stephen@26: “No, I’m not. I’m talking about violent anti-Trump protests, if he is elected – which I very much hope he won’t be – having the potential to make a bad situation worse, in a way not considered in JQ’s flowchart.”
John (and I) can still be right about the flawed basis for your reasoning, even if you are opposed to Trump. There are so many reasons to oppose him, and it is possible to hold incorrect, even Trumpian, assumptions about protesters, while quite rightly opposing Trump for the many other reasons he is completely unsuited to be president. It is probably more productive to analyze the reasons why the assumptions that appear to be embedded in the thought you expressed are wrong.

In other words, let’s contemplate the usefulness and dangers of resistance. Whether Trump is elected legitimately, or assumes power through a coup, I don’t think one can say that protests will make the situation worse, in general. Obviously, for those directly involved the details, such as who, what, when, where, will mean everything. The protests will possibly become violent as protesters are killed (as Trump plans to do), but this is going to happen anyways, regardless of what Democrats or the Left plans to happen.

Trumpists aren’t Russians passively hoping Trump will save them if they keep their heads down. They are more like Brownshirts, looking to break things and hurt people. And he will give them what they want. If protesters don’t make themselves targets, they will find other targets. They already have long lists of targets.

“(i) Anti-Trump protestors engage in rioting and arson, successfully overturning a Trump victory. I regard the likelihood of this as negligible. No Democrat of any importance would endorse such actions, whereas they are virtually certain in the opposite case.”

You are saying that if Kamala wins, anti-Kamala protestors will engage in rioting and arson, and will successfully overturn a Kamala victory? Because that is exactly what you said.

Joe

Harry @50

He’s not courageous but he IS stupid and incapable of admitting he’s lost or acting strategically to minimise his punishment. He’ll fight tooth and nail to the bitter end.

I just flatly disagree here. The vandalization of Monument Avenue wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t done by right-wing provocateurs; it was done by rioters working with a friendly city government dominated by Democrats. The setting afire of one of the key historical archives (the Daughters of the Confederacy building) wasn’t an accident, and it seems unlikely that it was done by right-wing provocateurs. And the Democratic reaction certainly looked like endorsement to me – declaring the Lee statue an “imminent danger” to destroy it without normal oversight mechanisms, renaming Fort Lee, not making the slightest attempt to charge the rioters and vandals with crimes, and so on.

If riots bring an end to democracy in the United States, that will be bad because the end of democracy in the United States would be bad, not because riots are always bad. Sometimes riots are bad and sometimes they are good. Riots which bring about the overthrow of a dictatorship and its replacement by democracy could be good, not because rioting is good but because replacing a dictatorship with a democracy is good.

Having monuments to Confederate leaders is bad and getting rid of them is good. Naming things to commemorate Confederate leaders is bad and changing those names is good.

Reports of American democracy are greatly exaggerated. I like democracy. I’m glad we’re approaching it in the US. Before 1965 the Us was not committed to democracy especially with a totalitarian south, Ever since 1965 Republicans have been trying to kill American democracy. Really hoping this attempt fails

Qwerty, which definition of demagogue do you agree with?
1. “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power” or
2. “a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times” (Merriam-Webster, 2019).

Hint. We are not in anncient times.

From;
“Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump

Jennifer Mercieca 2020
…
“Donald Trump’s campaign speeches and other rhetoric seemed on the surface to be simplistic, repetitive, and disorganized to many. As Demagogue for President shows, Trump’s campaign strategy was anything but simple.

“Political communication expert Jennifer Mercieca shows how the Trump campaign expertly used the common rhetorical techniques of a demagogue, a word with two contradictory definitions—“a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power” or “a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times” (Merriam-Webster, 2019). These strategies, in conjunction with post-rhetorical public relations techniques, were meant to appeal to a segment of an already distrustful electorate. It was an effective tactic.

“Mercieca analyzes rhetorical strategies such as argument ad hominem, argument ad baculum, argument ad populum, reification, paralipsis, and more to reveal a campaign that was morally repugnant to some but to others a brilliant appeal to American exceptionalism. By all accounts, it fundamentally changed the discourse of the American public sphere.”

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/174/monograph/book/76805

@William S. Berry 56
Apologies, by “immedesimate” I mean “identify”.
The idea is that successful politicians manage to make a personal emotional connection with voters, at a pre-rational level. “Congress” as a whole doesn’t, ant this is the reason the presidency will generally have more approval than congress.

@qwerty 52
I don’t think 80% of the people are stupid, I think 100% of the people, including me, are irrational 80% of the time: rational thinking only happens when we are very concentrated, most of the time we rely on intuition and gut feelings because it is the normal way the brain works, rationality is probably a learned ability.

JohnQ @ 59: you say that you “will apologise for the suggestion that you would welcome a Trump victory and dictatorship”. I was hoping that you would actually apologise for your claim that “Any protest against Trump will be used as an excuse for Enabling Acts and Stephen will be cheering him on”. To my mind, that is rather more than a suggestion.

But look: in the matter of Trump we are basically both on the same side, even if you don’t or didn’t realise it, so I accept your tentative offer of an apology in the spirit in which it ought to have been meant.

If I might give some friendly advice: if you suspect somebody of having a hidden, encoded message in what they say, it would save a great deal of time and trouble if you asked them whether that message was what they really meant. If they say it was, you have then a sound basis for opposing them: if not, not.

As I say, we are on the same side, so as a peace-offering I provide an article from the Guardian (not, surely, the normal reading of a Trump supporter) on one of the lesser-known glories of Australia: the astonishing displays by which some of your spider males attract females and deter rivals. Toxic masculinity, of course, but still memorable.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2024/oct/26/web-designers-tiny-peacock-spiders-depicted-in-all-their-glory-in-pictures

And I still forgot 4) The notion that Congress is somehow a political class that represents only itself is directly contradicted by the fact that each representative was popular on election day. The true democratic objection to Congress is that de facto the constituents represented are the local elites (sometimes big money from outside elites,) something accomplished by a multitude of methods, both legal (regulations favoring the Democrats and Republicans while hampering third parties with actual programs, unequal representation) but also illegal (widespread corruption in the police/security services, manipulation of the news media, the tacit rule that big shots don’t get prosecuted.)

MisterMr: “giving more power to the executive you are giving more power to unelected people, because the parliament is more democratic than the executive”

This seems backward. In a democracy, the executive are not “unelected people”, otherwise let’s not call it a democracy. Giving more power to the executive can be good or bad depending on the circumstances. I’m confident Harris is winning the election but she likely won’t have a Senate majority and I worry about that. She probably won’t be able to do the smallest thing, and voters will punish her (and not Republican sabotage) for not being able to do anything.

What you are hinting at is separation of powers. The executive needs power to be able to govern and parliament and the judiciary need to be able to effectively control the executive and uphold the rule law. What authoritarians do is they try to dismantle this separation, which is what Meloni is now attempting with her constitutional reform, but she can only do this because parliament is willing to go along with its own disempowerment, which really mystifies me.

Meloni’s argument that the reform is needed to ensure stable government is refuted by the fact that she herself is leading a stable government. I’ll be surprised if Italians go along with this in the referendum but maybe nothing surprise anymore.

@Tm 71

In my experience, by giving more power to the executive VS the legislative, you are giving more power to the internal hierarchies of the parties, those hierarchies are what I meant by “unelected people”, the premier himself or herself obviously is elected in the USA (in Italy he or she is selected by the parliament actually so they are not directly elected).

In my experience, by giving more power to the executive VS the legislative, you are giving more power to the internal hierarchies of the parties …

I don’t doubt this is true in many cases, but it depends on the details of the individual case, it’s not automatically true, as the counterexamples I mentioned earlier illustrate.

steven t johnson 69
“As an institution Congress is Democrats and Republicans”

I disagree. Congress is many things; but Democrats and Republicans is the least of it, imo. I would say that as an institution Congress is mostly Sponsors and Lobbyists. Individual congresspeople (who you think are popular, rather than the least despised of the two options offered), are not important to the institution. Those of them who refuse to play the game will be primaried (McKinney), or redistricted out (Kucinich).

I take J-D’s point, but, “now this one person gets to do whatever they want for a few years because they were elected” isn’t democracy.

It is, nevertheless, less undemocratic (which is equivalent to being more democratic) than ‘these people get to do whatever they want even though a majority voted against them’, which was part of my point, the point you say you’re taking.

@J-D 77
Sure this is not always true, however, I think that tendentially (that is in the mayority of the cases) it is true.

@TM 80
This logic applies also to members of parliament, but less. It is the same problem of the first past the post system: both fptp and increased power to the executive create a winner take all situation, where it is extremely important that parties enforce internal party discipline.
Think what would happen today if a democrat congressman endorsed Trump, or a republican Harris: they would be more or less lynched by their own party because winning this single election is too important.
In a system where there is proportional representation, and less power to the executive, there is much less of a winner-take-all situation, so there will be less pary discipline and more acceptance for internal disagreement.

On the long term, as acceptance for internal disagreement wanes, the number of options voters can take diminishes, which makes things less democratic overall.

somebody@72 cites the particular example of Mitch McConnell, relying on polls. As I have already noted that polls are closer to factoids than facts. I am even less convinced that the hypothetical reconstruction of the collective Kentucky Republican mind is a fact, not believing in collective minds nor mind reading. I will add that seniority is power in the US political system. In addition to the multitude of advantages built into the system for incumbents of any stripe, the ability to provide constituent service due to the power of this seniority itself becomes another advantage of incumbency.

qwerty@72 to my eyes restates the notion that any local district is not represented if the entire Congress doesn’t do what the local plurality (rarely a majority by the way) what they supposedly want—again polls are more factoids than facts—then they aren’t representative, not popular. The angle is different, essentially claiming that the two parties are not brands, both aiming to sell to the same donor class(es.) This is undescriptive of everyday reality, to say the least.

That raises the questions of why the system has evolved to preserve the power of the “Sponsors and Lobbyists” by means of laws and customs ensuring there are two brands without political programs in any meaningful sense. Or for that matter why rich people should care about the representatives at all. It is not clear how unpopular politicians can serve their personal “Sponsors and Lobbyists” if all they have to offer is their lack of support? That’s why it’s so important to primary or redistrict etc. politicians who want to carry out what they view as popular policies in defiance of the “Sponsors and Lobbyists.”

Overall, I suggest the more parsimonious hypothesis is to view elections in this system are seeing which candidate can sell the more or less pre-determined policies desired to the donor class. In the local districts the winners were those who sold themselves as servants of their constituents and in that sense were “popular.” (That those constituents were first and foremost “Sponsors and Lobbyists” is the point of limiting choices to two non-programmatic brands both committed to bipartisanship for the donor class(es.) The contempt for Congress as an institution is the contempt for the other party that is blocking their party from doing their will (insofar as they have formed one in actually articulated policies, something both parties strive to prevent.)

What’s going on, in particular by comparison to Trump predecessors like Nixon, is the increasing numbers of big money people who seem to see the problem as, politicians who can wave their popular mandates around as they push their policies never go far enough to really satisfy the donors, especially for the money they put in. The pols even do things for personal rivals of this donor or that, even waste money on the lower orders with unprofitable social spending. That I think is why Trump is actively favored by so many people who might be expected to have a proprietary interest in good government, and more are indifferent.

The qwerty tack, insofar as any of it is coherent, seems to be to claim that the Trump is the Hero to clean out the “political class,” a uniformly corrupt and decayed gang only in it for the money, yet simultaneously all powerful to block the salvation of the country and committed enough to pursue the conspiracy against true America at all costs. qwerty personally doesn’t expand much on the last aspect, but how else to explain why qwerty hasn’t noticed that only one party/brand has taken to selling the otherwise inexplicable notion that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are Marxists. Whether it’s that madness or the whole QAnon/adrenochrome koolaid doesn’t matter to qwerty, because as far as I can see, qwerty recognizes that those guys are on qwerty’s side.

And lastly of course, the notion there are no “Sponsors and Lobbyists” for presidents is, charitably…words fail me.

J-D,

Yes, you are right with regard to the special case of heavily gerrymandered US state legislatures. But that isn’t the global norm, nor what MrMister appeared to be referring to.

@J-D 77
Sure this is not always true, however, I think that tendentially (that is in the mayority of the cases) it is true.

Yes, but why is that so?

But the events of recent years suggest that even “working” democracies can be far more fragile than was once believed. Przeworski, long a voice of optimism, once believed that it would be essentially impossible for a democracy like the United States to collapse. But today, not only does he see real reason for concern about the health of American democracy, he said in a recent interview, he does not see an obvious way to protect it from being weakened further.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/magazine/democracy-elections-game.html

@MisterMr 90
you might’ve misunderstood my comment. Multiple fake “socialist” parties with slogans identical to those of the real socialist party are not created to be elected to the parliament and promote anti-socialist policies. They are not meant to get enough votes to get to the parliament. Their only purpose is to split and diminish the socialist vote. I think this is pretty common.

“But the events of recent years suggest that even “working” democracies can be far more fragile than was once believed.”

I don’t know what “was once believed” but we really need to get it into our heads that the postwar perdiod with its relative political stability and mass prosperity is an extraordinary outlier compared to most of recorded history. We grew up in this environment and tend to take it as natural but there is no reason whatsoever to believe that it will continue let alonge get better. In fact lots of reasons to expect, and fear, the opposite.

One aspect of this I like to highlight in discussion among leftists is that the belief espoused by many self-described radicals that if we destabilize “the system”, something better will emerge, is completely unwarranted and is just another expression of the superstitious belief that history moves in the direction of progress.