Evan Osnos | Why Democracy Is on the Decline in the United States

12 March 20

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Evan Osnos | Why Democracy Is on the Decline in the United States

Evan Osnos, The New Yorker
Osnos writes: "The latest edition was published last week, and, as you might expect, it recorded the fourteenth straight year of deteriorating freedom around the world; sixty-four countries have lost liberties in the past year, while only thirty-seven registered improvements."

reedom House, the Washington-based think tank, opened in 1941, with a mission to counter isolationism in America and fascism around the world. It was conceived as a bipartisan project; the honorary chairs were Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, and Wendell Willkie, who had been the Republican Presidential nominee in 1940—and lost to Roosevelt’s husband. Over the years, Freedom House studied a broad spectrum of threats to freedom, from McCarthyism to Soviet oppression. Since 1973, it has published “Freedom in the World,” an annual country-by-country report that has been called the “Michelin Guide to democracy’s development.”

The latest edition was published last week, and, as you might expect, it recorded the fourteenth straight year of deteriorating freedom around the world; sixty-four countries have lost liberties in the past year, while only thirty-seven registered improvements. (India, the world’s largest democracy, has seen some of the most alarming declines.) Its assessment of the United States is also disturbing. In 2009, the U.S. had a score of ninety-four, out of a hundred, which ranked it near the top, just behind Germany, Switzerland, and Estonia. In the decade since, it has slipped eight points; it now ranks behind Greece, Slovakia, and Mauritius. Looking at the United States, Freedom House analysts note the types of trends that they more customarily assign to fragile corners of the globe: “pressure on electoral integrity, judicial independence, and safeguards against corruption. Fierce rhetorical attacks on the press, the rule of law, and other pillars of democracy coming from American leaders, including the president himself.”

Explaining what, exactly, accounts for this decline is the work of a growing body of literature. Much of it focusses, of course, on the tenure of Donald Trump, but, interestingly, some scholars and advocates tend to identify a point of origin well before the election of 2016. According to Protect Democracy, a legal-watchdog group dedicated to combatting the rise of authoritarianism in America, “the growth and spread of democracies that defined the 20th Century peaked in the early days of the 21st; since 2005, the state of democracies around the world has receded.”

One of the most frequently cited theories for this change is depicted in what’s known as the “elephant graph.” The graph, which the economist Branko Milanović popularized, in 2013, is, in fact, a chart that shows income growth by stratum (or, in technical terms, by “percentiles of the global income distribution”) in the twenty years leading up to the 2008 global financial crisis. The graph got its name because it looks like an elephant: on the left, there is a plump body of rising incomes—China, India, and other beneficiaries of globalization—and, on the right, a rapidly rising trunk, which reflects the spectacular fortunes of the world’s top one per cent. The most politically significant part of the elephant is in between: the bottom of the trunk, which shows the stagnant incomes of American and European working and middle classes. Those groups have proved to be fertile bases of support for populist rebellions against democratic traditions that, from their vantage point, now appear false or obsolete.

Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, cites the elephant graph as part of the reason for America’s democratic decline. “But I think finance only tells part of the story,” he said, “because there are other factors that need to be accounted for.” Instead of invoking an elephant, Bassin visualizes a volcano. “At the base, there are massive underlying conditions that are changing in the same way that the Earth’s tectonic plates shift—climate, migration, globalization, tribalism—and lava flows into the base of the volcano. At the layer above, you have what I think of as accelerants, like the rise of social media—things like Russian interference—and democratic distortions—like partisan gerrymandering.” The cumulative effect of those accelerants, he said, has been to fuel skepticism about the functioning of American democracy, because they have warped or thwarted the effect of the popular will. Bassin continued, “At the very top of a volcano, there are supposed to be a bunch of checks and balances that hold back the heat and force. But we have a Congress that has basically abdicated its congressional obligations of oversight of the executive, and an executive who openly claims to be above the law. So you’ve got the lava exploding out the top of the volcano.”

It’s a bleak image, but, in Bassin’s view, the metaphor also contains the promise of some realistic interventions. In the three years since Protect Democracy started, he said, “We’ve been able to have some success at the top of the volcano, where it’s narrow, trying to fix some of those checks and balances.” The group has filed a range of legal actions that have resulted in national injunctions, including blocking Trump’s use of emergency powers to build the border wall, and Administration efforts to slow low-income green-card holders from gaining citizenship. In December, Protect Democracy organized a statement, which eight hundred and fifty legal scholars signed, asserting that the President had committed impeachable offenses.

In some other countries that have registered a decline in democracy over the past decade, such as South Korea and Poland, demonstrators have flooded the streets in opposition. In the United States, by contrast, the largest public protest in the name of democracy was on the first day of Donald Trump’s Presidency. The erosion has been gradual enough that many Americans have become inured to it, numb to the alarm. First, they stopped paying attention to the tweets. Then they found it easier to ignore the rallies and the random acts of transgression. American legal activists seeking to stop the slide documented by Freedom House consider that, since Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial, he has entered a more audacious phase. In the latest gesture of pressure on the press, the Trump campaign has sued the Times, the Washington Post, and CNN, for libel.

There are still eight months to go until the election, with no obvious check on the President’s behavior in place. Many experts fear that Trump will veer even further from the traditions of American governance. Bassin suspects that he will, but also thinks that Americans are gaining a new awareness of their own role in preserving democracy. “There’s been a phenomenon throughout the Trump Presidency of people casting about, looking for a savior,” Bassin said. “Was it going to be Robert Mueller? Jim Mattis? John Kelly? And, of course, all of those figures have let us down because, at the end of the day, the Founders understood that the only ultimate savior for the experiment of self-government is the savior described in the first three words of the constitution: We the people.”

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Bill de Blasio and Bernie Sanders attend a rally in Manhattan, N.Y., Oct. 30, 2017. (photo: Getty)

Bill de Blasio | The Democratic Primary Isn't Over, and Neither Is Bernie Sanders' Candidacy
Bill de Blasio, NBC News
De Blasio writes: "The only way to beat President Donald Trump in November is for Democrats to be self-critical about what went wrong in 2016 and fix those mistakes."

There are still millions of votes to be cast and thousands of delegates to be awarded. Don't let anyone tell you my friend Bernie is done for.

We failed to connect enough with the working-class voters who should be the backbone of our party. We didn’t get enough young people and voters of color out to the polls. And we underestimated the power of an energized political movement — both on the left and the right.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and not former Vice President Joe Biden, is the antidote to each of those problems in 2020 — but political pundits have all but declared the Democratic primary over and the latter the winner.

That, despite the fact that there are still millions of ballots to be cast and more than 2,300 delegates to be awarded as of Wednesday morning. But they are foolish to dismiss my friend Bernie so easily. Remember this time last year? CNN had him sixth in its rankings of Democratic contenders, and they weren’t alone in counting him out of the top tier. Still, he’s once again proven conventional wisdom wrong and is still very close in the delegate count with Biden — much as he was at this point in 2016.

Plus, there’s a critical voting bloc that could help put him over the top: Hillary Clinton’s primary voters. As a 2016 Clinton delegate and a 2020 Bernie endorser, I have a simple message to voters who powered her winning campaign years ago: Come on over! The water’s fine.

I supported Clinton in 2016 for the same reasons many people did: After working with her for years and managing her 2000 Senate campaign, I’d seen firsthand her tenacity, extraordinary intellect and unrelenting drive to get things done. I know she would have been a great president — but it didn't happen, and, as Democrats, we need to understand that the mistakes we made then, we cannot afford to repeat now.

Those of us who supported Clinton in 2016 and are working with Bernie now often hear three common misconceptions from voters to explain why they are considering Biden even if they like a lot of things about Bernie's positions.

For instance, we often hear some version of “I want someone who’s actually electable” — and we ask people to think about who’s really pushing the “Bernie’s too far left” narrative. It’s not real voters, but the establishment political class and pundits who worry they’ll lose their privileges and influence. It’s James Carville saying he's "scared to death" of Bernie and longtime members of Congress gossiping to CNN about his lack of institutional support.

Here’s the truth: Most of those people don’t understand how politics work anymore.

Today’s voters don’t care about newspaper endorsements or whom the party leaders most want to work with. They care about who will help them afford health care or take on climate change and they vote accordingly. So let’s listen to the people — the young and the Latino voters Bernie has inspired , the polls that show him beating Trump in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the general election and the 56 of 60 national polls going back more than a year that show Bernie winning the general election. If you’re pragmatic about winning, vote for Bernie.

We also hear people say stuff like, “I want someone who gets things done,” because, for the past four years, the media has ignored decades of Bernie’s record. They’ve branded him as a stubborn, uncompromising outsider who puts ideology ahead of results. It’s an easy caricature — and it’s dead wrong.

In Burlington, Vermont, when he was elected mayor, he led a renaissance by working with people across the political spectrum and was voted one of the best mayors in America by U.S. News and World Report in 1987. And for 30 years in Congress, he’s been a reasonable, respected member . He reached across the aisle to work with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs, and singlehandedly got $11 billion added to the Affordable Care Act for community health clinics in poor areas.

Bernie’s values will never change — and that’s a great thing. But he has shown over and over again he’s not naive about how government works. He’s gotten truly meaningful things done.

Finally, and most confusingly, we've heard people say, “I want someone with heart and empathy.” I understand the perception that Bernie can sometimes be a curmudgeon and I can’t lie — he’s guilty as charged. But there is also a deep warmth and humanity to both Bernie and his campaign. He connects with real people because he is real.

Watch his town halls and see for yourself how people who interact with him react with him. Really watch the next Bernie rally, including the speakers before him. There is a feeling of love in his campaign — a moral argument beyond policy that is unique in our politics. There is a beauty to how he speaks about the power of fighting for someone you don’t know. His campaign has tapped into a humanity in each of us, and that really matters.

And one more key point for a lot of Democrats reading: For decades, progressives in our party have come along for the ride when the party nominated a moderate. We worked our butts off for nominees who didn’t fully align with our own vision for the party and the country, because we knew that moderate Democrats were far better than Republican alternatives. Now it’s time for moderates to return the favor.

Bernie, not Biden, is the answer to the many of the mistakes we made as a party in 2016. He can reach the working class, inspire young voters and lead a powerful movement to take back the White House. It’s not too late to vote for him to be our party's nominee; this is not remotely over yet. Come join us and let’s get it right in 2020.

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Seattle policemen wearing protective gauze face masks during the influenza pandemic of 1918. (photo: Getty)

Coronavirus Is Very Different From the Spanish Flu of 1918. Here's How.
Gina Kolata, The New York Times
Kolata writes: "It was a disease so awful that it terrified people for generations."

The fear is similar, but the medical reality is not.

The 1918 flu pandemic, thought to be the deadliest in human history, killed at least 50 million people worldwide (the equivalent of 200 million today), with half a million of those in the United States. It spread to every part of the world, affecting populations in Japan, Argentina, Germany and dozens of other countries.

Maybe most alarmingly, a majority of those killed by the disease were in the prime of life — often in their 20s, 30s and 40s — rather than older people weakened by other medical conditions.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty)

Senate Republicans Block Emergency Sick Leave Bill as Coronavirus Outbreak Spreads Across US
Clark Mindock, The Independent
Mindock writes: "Senate Republicans have blocked an emergency paid sick leave bill aimed at helping deal with complications stemming from the coronavirus outbreak, arguing that the federal government should not foot the bill for the measure that Democrats claim is a public health imperative."
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Dr. Jason Johnson. (photo: Michael S. Schwartz)

MSNBC Contributor Dr. Jason Johnson Out at The Root After Misogynistic Anti-Bernie Screed
Maxwell Tani, The Daily Beast
Tani writes: "Weeks after being benched by MSNBC after making misogynistic comments about Bernie Sanders supporters, Dr. Jason Johnson is out at digital outlet The Root."
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Former military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning speaks to the press ahead of a Grand Jury appearance about WikiLeaks, in Alexandria, Virginia, May 16, 2019. (photo: Getty)

Chelsea Manning Attempted Suicide in Jail, Is Recovering, Lawyers Say
Dell Cameron, Gizmodo
Cameron writes: "Imprisoned activist and former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning attempted suicide on Wednesday in the Alexandria, Virginia, jail where she's been held for a year following her refusal to testify before a federal grand jury investigating WikiLeaks."
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The Greenland ice sheet south of Ilulissat. (photo: Ian Joughin/IMBIE)

Polar Ice Caps Melting Six Times Faster Than in 1990s
Damian Carrington, Guardian UK
Carrington writes: "The ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica is tracking the worst-case climate warming scenario set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists say."
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