{"id":92352,"date":"2022-02-05T17:08:41","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T15:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=92352"},"modified":"2022-01-28T14:10:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T12:10:08","slug":"19-05-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=92352","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Coups All the Way Down"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s Coups All the Way Down<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

ZAID JILANI<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi listen during a prayer vigil on the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riotSTEFANI REYNOLDS\/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Nonstop dramatics about the GOP threat to democracy is part of an attempt to cement Democratic Party hegemony, not ensure election integrity<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

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The Democratic Party\u2019s message ahead of the 2022 midterms appears to be simple: Vote for us or democracy gets it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m worried that if Republicans win in the midterm elections, that voting as we know it in this country will be gone,\u201d\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0Washington Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell during a recent MSNBC appearance. \u201cThis is not only the most important election. If we don\u2019t get it right, it could be the last election.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Across the progressive Democratic messaging infrastructure, the party and movement have rebranded themselves as the protectors of the democratic ideal, which, in their telling, is on the verge of extinction.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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President Biden\u00a0has warned<\/a>\u00a0that GOP election laws that would, among other things, require voters to\u00a0write down<\/a>\u00a0their state ID number on absentee ballots, are the equivalent of \u201cJim Crow on steroids,\u201d while more or less\u00a0comparing<\/a>\u00a0Virginia\u2019s Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin to a Capitol rioter.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Heads of influential progressive political action committees\u00a0worry aloud<\/a>\u00a0that we will see a swing of \u201cpower to Republican politicians, which ends American democracy.\u201d Liberal opinion columnists\u00a0lament that<\/a>\u00a0the GOP is plotting to \u201ctake control of more and more of the apparatus of voting to ensure that Republicans can never lose.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But if you sincerely value liberal democracy\u2014not just majority rule but open debate and the protection of individual and minority rights\u2014it can be hard not to notice the irony: A political movement that has worked so hard to censor and marginalize its opponents in virtually all institutions is claiming that it now represents the vanguard of democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I\u2019m not pointing this out to prove to progressives that they are just a bunch of hypocrites who don\u2019t really value liberal democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I\u2019m writing this because I am worried about democracy in the United States. I won\u2019t validate Biden or Swalwell\u2019s outlandish claims about democracy ending in the next election or Jim Crow reasserting itself in GOP-run states, but I do think it\u2019s deeply unhealthy that so many people in our country distrust the news media, public institutions, and their elected representatives.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Take Swalwell, who ominously predicted that a GOP victory in the midterm elections\u2014leaving the Democrats in control of the executive branch, of course\u2014would mark the extinction of American democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When Twitter decided to\u00a0ban<\/a>\u00a0Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene because she espoused skepticism toward COVID vaccines, genuine advocates for free speech and open debate were outraged. How can a private company that runs the modern public square, the equivalent of a public utility, unilaterally decide to silence an official elected by the people?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has been\u00a0skeptical<\/a>\u00a0of bipartisan congressional oversight of Silicon Valley,\u00a0criticized<\/a>\u00a0Twitter for shutting down what he called \u201cconstitutionally protected speech.\u201d But Swalwell was unsympathetic to Greene losing her right to speak on the platform. \u201cKevin McCarthy hates free markets. He wants government to have absolute control over private businesses,\u201d\u00a0he thundered<\/a>. \u201cIs there a word for this?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Suddenly, the defender of democracy transformed into an advocate for corporate control of public debate, using an argument that wouldn\u2019t be out of place in a Milton Friedman tract. As hypocritical as it was, it was hardly surprising.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year we saw Twitter work with Facebook to\u00a0suppress<\/a>\u00a0the spread of a\u00a0New York Post<\/em>\u00a0story about Joe Biden\u2019s son Hunter. The announcement that the story would be throttled on Facebook\u00a0came from Andy Stone<\/a>, a Facebook communications staffer who previously worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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No prominent Democratic elected official protested the suppression of the story, which quickly became a bigger story than the content of the\u00a0Post<\/em>\u00a0article itself. And why would they? It was clear that, in this case, the Democrats weren\u2019t after democratic legitimacy but political hegemony. They stood to benefit more from having the world\u2019s most powerful digital communications companies actively suppress speech that could assist their political opponents than from standing by the principle of freedom of expression.<\/span><\/p>\n

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“It was clear that, in this case, the Democrats weren\u2019t after democratic legitimacy but political hegemony.”<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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It was hardly the only anti-democratic move that benefited the Democrats in 2020. Just ask the Green Party. The minor left-wing group fielded its own presidential candidate that year, a trade unionist and environmental activist named Howie Hawkins.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In state after state, Hawkins and the Green Party faced legal challenges from Democratic Party-linked operatives and attorneys trying\u00a0keep him<\/a>\u00a0from even appearing on the ballot. With a 5-2 Democratic majority, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned a Republican judge\u2019s ruling that Hawkins could stay on the state\u2019s ballot, due to Hawkins\u2019 \u201cfailure to closely follow nomination procedures,\u201d\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to CBS. When I asked Chris Robinson, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Green Party whether they thought the Democrats were sincere in their embrace of democracy, I got a brief response: \u201cThe answer is, \u2018No!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One piece of evidence the Democrats use to claim that democracy is on its death bed and the Republicans are to blame is the widespread conservative denial of the legitimacy of Biden\u2019s election victory. It\u2019s certainly true that former President Donald Trump unleashed and perpetuated a storm of falsehoods about the integrity of Biden\u2019s victory. There were not mountains of fraudulent ballots cast in the 2020 election.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But denying the legitimacy of the elected president is a more common partisan feature of America\u2019s messy democracy than Democrats would like to admit. A University of Massachusetts Amherst\/YouGov poll from December 2021 found that just\u00a021%<\/a>\u00a0of Republicans believed that Biden\u2019s victory in last year\u2019s election was \u201cdefinitely\u201d or \u201cprobably\u201d legitimate. Overall, 68% of Americans shared that view (and 91% of Democrats).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But a July 2001 Gallup poll found that just\u00a048%<\/a>\u00a0of Americans believed Bush won the 2000 race \u201cfair and square\u201d; among Democrats, that number dropped to 15%, and among African Americans, it fell to 8%. Democratic rejection of the legitimacy of the incoming Republican president skyrocketed again after the election of Trump. Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis said in January of 2017 that he didn\u2019t\u00a0consider<\/a>\u00a0Trump a \u201clegitimate President.\u201d The same month, millions of Democratic-leaning Americans launched a \u201cresistance\u201d movement designed to urge their elected officials to obstruct Trump. By November 2018, YouGov found that\u00a0two-thirds<\/a>\u00a0of Democrats believed that it was \u201cdefinitely true\u201d or \u201cprobably true\u201d that \u201cRussia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Much has been made of the riots of Jan. 6. While these riots did in fact represent a deadly rejection of the results of the 2020 election, the way some Democrats responded exemplified the anti-democratic, pro-hegemonic tendencies of the party. Dozens of Democratic members of Congress\u00a0backed a resolution<\/a>\u00a0to expel House Republicans who voted against certifying the election results\u2014an anti-democratic move aimed at taking away the right to choose one\u2019s federal representative from the citizens of those districts.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What was long understood as a symbolic protest vote suddenly became tantamount to treason, provided that it was Republicans doing it this time rather than Democrats\u2014some of whom\u00a0voted against certification<\/a>\u00a0of the Republican president-elect in 2000, 2004, and 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even the Democrats\u2019 much-touted voting reform bills\u2014which they say are essential to keep Republicans from suppressing votes and ending democracy\u2014would do little to enhance participatory democracy in the United States. A bigger problem in the U.S. system than access to voting polls is that the major parties are both deeply unpopular; the 2016 election featured two of the most\u00a0unpopular candidates in modern history<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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One solution to this would be to move to a multiparty system. Some type of proportional representation system would allocate seats to parties based on the percentage of the vote they get in elections. Germany\u2019s notably consensus-driven system, which is based on mixed-member proportional representation, allows voters to cast two votes: one for a political party and one for the legislator of their single-seat constituency. You could easily imagine a Congress made up of five or six parties under such a system. The Democrats could choose to support a shift to proportional representation, yet doing so would reduce the party\u2019s own power. There is a bill in Congress that would at least make it a little easier to start new parties: the Fair Representation Act. As of this writing,\u00a0it has just eight sponsors<\/a>\u00a0(all House Democrats).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Again, if the goal is hegemony rather than democracy, all this makes sense. The Democrats are more than happy to push for things like giving Washington, D.C. statehood in the name of democracy because it will give their party more seats in Congress. They are less likely to support democratic reforms that could benefit parties other than their own.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Following Virginia\u2019s gubernatorial election, the Democrats and their allies in the media had an opportunity to celebrate the democratic process. Anger about schools policy had helped drive large voter turnout during an off-year election; the opposition party was able to win a clear majority and mandate for governing.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Republicans broadened their electoral base and built a multi-ethnic ticket; Virginia\u2019s new lieutenant governor will be a Jamaican American immigrant named Winsome Sears and its attorney general a Cuban American named Jason Miyares.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Yet the immediate response from progressives was to try to delegitimize the electorate that brought Youngkin, Sears, and Miyares to power. Progressive pundit Michael Eric Dyson appeared on MSNBC to\u00a0lament that<\/a>\u00a0Sears just gives Republicans what they really want, which is \u201cwhite supremacy by ventriloquist effect.\u201d Sears, viewers were told, is an example of a \u201cBlack mouth moving\u201d to communicate a \u201cwhite idea.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nikole Hannah-Jones, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0journalist who spearheaded the 1619 Project, was embittered by the parent-led movement that objected to critical race theory-infused curricula in Virginia schools.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t really understand this idea that parents should decide what\u2019s being taught. I\u2019m not a professional educator. I don\u2019t have a degree in social studies or science. We send our children to school because we want them to be taught by people who have expertise in the subject area,\u201d\u00a0she said<\/a>\u00a0during an NBC appearance.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The idea that schools are accountable to their communities is one of the oldest democratic concepts. Public education has always been governed by a social contract between parents and the government. Hannah-Jones, one of the leading progressive minds in the country, doesn\u2019t see the value of participatory democracy in this arena. Education should be the purview of experts\u2014and only as long as they agree with Hannah-Jones and other progressives.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This elitist and anti-populist ethos increasingly permeates virtually all institutions that progressives control in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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From\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u2014which doesn\u2019t employ a single opinion columnist who openly supported Trump, who received 75 million votes in 2020\u2014to America\u2019s universities, where liberal faculty\u00a0outnumber<\/a>\u00a0conservative faculty by as much as 12 to 1, progressive organizations often don\u2019t practice what they preach when it comes to pluralism, liberalism, and democracy. They are set up as lopsided organizations that represent just a small sliver of American public opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This ideological rigidity is enforced by a progressive turn against freedom of speech, the cornerstone of liberal democracy. In 2018, 40% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans\u00a0believed<\/a>\u00a0the government should work to restrict false information online; by 2021, 65% of Democrats agreed that the government should do so, while just 28% of Republicans did. An even higher percentage of Democrats (76%) now agree that tech companies should restrict false information, whereas 37% of Republicans agree.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the way to bridge our deficits of trust isn\u2019t to censor and repress. That will just push people to seek out other avenues of expression and organization. Do we really think that conservatives who admire public figures like Greene or Trump will just change their worldview after they\u2019re booted off social media? Won\u2019t they just follow them into even more niche channels where they get even less exposure to other points of view?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The way to enhance our democracy is to make it more inclusive and more representative. That means that the leading newspapers in the country shouldn\u2019t be virtually devoid of nonelite views. It means our social media platforms should embrace free expression and open debate. It means Congress should pursue electoral reforms that open the system to more voices and more choices rather than simply promoting whatever bill will help the party in control get the most seats. It means we must stop trying to delegitimize the victories of politicians with whom we disagree, whether it\u2019s Biden, Trump, or Youngkin. It means listening to parents who are interested in what their children are taught in school.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Liberal democracy is a fragile system because it rests on the principle that we will respect the right of democratic representation even for those with whom we strongly disagree, and even for those who say things that are demonstrably false. In today\u2019s America, progressives are failing that test as much as conservatives are.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Zaid Jilani<\/span> <\/strong>is a freelance journalist who has previously worked for UC Berkeley\u2019s Greater Good Science Center, The Intercept, and the Center for American Progress. He also writes a newsletter at\u00a0inquire.substack.com<\/a>.<\/strong> <\/span>He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and received his master\u2019s from Syracuse University. He is originally from the Atlanta area.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s Coups All the Way Down ZAID JILANI House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi listen during a prayer vigil on the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riotSTEFANI REYNOLDS\/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES Nonstop dramatics about the GOP threat to democracy is part of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92352"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92765,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92352\/revisions\/92765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}