An NBC News poll conducted Aug. 12-16, 2022, asked if the investigations of Trump should continue. The results were: All voters, 57% yes; Democrats, 92% yes; Independents, 67% yes; Republicans, 21% yes. Read story here, see detailed poll results here.
The poll shows about three-fourths of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, which is little changed over the last year. Biden’s approval rating (42% approve, 55% disapprove) hasn’t budged this year, despite recent legislative and other successes. A fairly consistent 50%-54% have held negative views of Trump since early 2017; negative views of the Republican Party have held steady in the mid-40%s. The public rates the Democratic Party about the same.
As for what Americans worry most about, “threats to democracy” leads the field (21%), followed by “cost of living” (16%), “jobs and the economy” (14%), “immigration and the border” (13%), “climate change” (9%), “guns” (8%), “abortion” (8%), “crime” (6%), and “coronavirus” (1%).
I won’t try to interpret this here, other than observe that concern for the condition of our democracy makes sense, because you can’t do anything about other issues if you can’t choose your government or your vote doesn’t count. And here I’ll make a prediction: Virtually every Republican election denier candidate who loses this fall will claim refuse to concede and claim the election was stolen.
Meanwhile, Liz Cheney says, “I’m going to be very focused on working to ensure that we do everything we can not to elect election deniers.” (See stories here and here.) That’s a massive task, because GOP primary voters nominated a slew of election deniers. And Cheney’s Wyoming primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, immediately began lying about an election she won by claiming Cheney didn’t concede, when in fact Cheney called Hageman to concede and congratulate her on her victory less than 15 minutes after the polls closed (read that story here).
Character, integrity, and honesty still count for something among the majority of Americans. The majority are not Republicans.
What’s becoming increasingly obvious is that Republicans are leaving the reservation en masse. Unable to get what they want under the existing system, because they’re in the minority, they’ve rallied behind a lawless, lying demagogue who talks up violence; they’re refusing to accept election results, fabricating tales of “stolen” elections, and threatening election officials and workers; they’re arming, engaging in “civil war” rhetoric, and committing scattered individual acts of violence (ramming cars into Black Lives Matter protesters, etc.).
A large society like ours, that is a “melting pot” of ethnicities and religions, and whose citizens hold sharply conflicting views on a wide range of issues, can still work and remain peaceful if the political system accommodates everyone and provides safety valves for frustrated groups to let off steam. The most obvious safety valve is the chance to win the next election; and accommodation works principally through a political process of negotiation and compromise. The structure of our government system also provides political minorities with a limited veto over the actions of the majority, which provides another safety valve. But this system was never intended to allow the minority to rule over the majority, a political arrangement that has led to conflict and civil war in other countries (e.g., Syria).
American democracy has always been messy, but doesn’t have to work perfectly, or with precision. Frankly, “well enough” is good enough for it to endure, as history shows. One of its features is dividing power between the federal system and states, which enables groups lacking a national majority to get their way in places where they have local majorities; and there’s always been tension over that, with Republicans pushing hard in recent years for less federal and more state power, where conservatives have disproportionate power — magnified by gerrymandering state legislatures.
In that respect, the Supreme Court is flat-out wrong to prohibit federal judges from intervening in the rigging of legislatures. This leads to such anti-democratic obscenities as Wisconsin’s 2018 state assembly elections, where Democrats won 54% of the aggregate votes, but Republicans “won” 63 of the 99 assembly seats (details here). But even more important than allowing such distorted outcomes, the Supreme Court’s posture on gerrymandering upsets the delicate system of checks and balances crafted by the Founding Fathers.
The larger danger to America’s system is that Republicans have rejected negotiation and compromise, and now they’re rejecting elections too, and toying with legitimizing political violence. And by many appearances, they don’t want accommodation of their views, they want to impose their unpopular views on the majority. Ordinary Americans not caught up in the partisan swirl are right to feel nervous about this, and worry about how far it might go.
America has seen anti-democratic movements, and political violence, before; but not since the Civil War has any group acquired the political power and following that the loose collection of Christian nationalists, white supremacists, federalist conservatives, and far-right fringe conservatives comprising today’s GOP has. Internal democracy within the GOP also has failed; the demand for orthodoxy in thought, and loyalty to Trump, has become nearly absolute. Non-conforming Republicans are ostracized and driven out of the party.
Our best protection is rule of law. In fraught circumstances like these, we can save democracy only by enforcing the laws protecting it. That means the investigations of Trump should go forward over the objections of Republican politicians and voters; it also means prosecuting Capitol rioters, other acts of political violence, and threats against public officials and servants; and doing everything possible to ensure that when those who reject our democratic system fight the law, the law will win. It also means putting public offices responsible for safeguarding democracy, rule of law, and elections in the right hands.
On that score, Liz Cheney is right: Election deniers have no business holding public office. Every citizen worried about our democracy needs to turn out to vote, and help make sure they don’t. With so many election deniers on this fall’s ballots, this isn’t an election that anyone should sit out.
We can, and should, do this without infringing on the legitimate rights of Republicans and Trump supporters. They can still vote, win elections, speak their minds freely — and should be able to. No one on the left or in the middle is discussing taking those rights away from them. None of those rights are imperiled by justified and objectively conducted criminal or civil legal actions against individuals who defy the rules of our democratic system in order to bring it down.