In favour
American democracy is teetering on the brink. While Biden’s election may delay the ultimate fall of Rome, it won’t prevent it. Why? Because Trump was a symptom, not the cause, of America’s slide towards kleptocracy. This means that while the 45th president’s departure from the White House might slow the collapse of the world’s oldest republic, it won’t reverse the trend.
Why is America’s democracy so brittle? The reason was articulated most recently in a report by the Center for American Progress, which argues that demographic changes across the country — making it more educated and less white — spell the eventual end of the Republican party’s capacity to prevail in free and fair elections.
Women, people of colour and other marginalised groups disproportionately favour Democrats, and soon the vast majority of the electorate will be comprised of these groups who — if they get out and vote — will carry the day every time.
No wonder the Republicans are running scared, though Democrats should be, too. If one party has the numbers to ensure they always win, the other side will feel cheated and try to exert their will some other way. Say, by cheating or blind support for “their” leader whatever he says or does.
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Even violence and civil war are possible if the disenfranchised truly feel there is no other way to make their voices heard.
Or the Republican party could change. There is nothing inevitable about women or people of colour turning their backs on conservative and populist parties. But inclusion won’t be easy. The terrible truth is that the exclusion and scapegoating of marginalised groups is what makes others — say, the infamous Trump base — feel they belong.
Could it happen in Australia? Some say no, but I disagree. Australia is different to America in a number of ways, but the similarities are striking. They include the visible absence of gender and other forms of diversity in the Liberal/National Parties, and the embrace of bigoted tropes, candidates and policies since the John Howard era to neutralise the electoral threat posed by Pauline Hanson and other racist parties.
Like the US, Australia is a multicultural nation with more than a quarter of our population born overseas. Our electorate is also polarised in a way that media academic Denis Muller attributes to the influence of News Corp in both countries.
Then there’s the growing income and wealth inequality in Australia that, while less stark than in the US, still sees the top 1% of Australians live in households with an average weekly income 26 times that of the bottom 5%.
Against
Hold on Tiger! Trump destroyed American democracy? The US has just had one of the most free and fair elections in its history, with turnout that — in a country where voting isn’t mandatory — topped the charts. In fact, Trump got more votes than any US President before him. Only problem for him is Biden got even more.
According to the international observers invited by the US State Department to monitor the 2020 vote, it all went down with barely a hitch. Given free and fair elections are the cornerstone of democracy, claims that US democracy is hurting, or that Trump is the cause of the imaginary decline, are fanciful.
Australia’s democracy is in good shape too. The success of the national cabinet process — which saw cooperation between the conservative federal and mostly Labor state governments — in orchestrating Australia’s effective response to COVID-19 is only the latest example of how effectively our system works. And while contempt for political leaders among Australians is high, so is our appreciation of the freedoms our democracy delivers. According to the 2019 Freedom in the World report, Australia ranks sixth of 86 independent nations that display the qualities of a liberal democracy.
Does all this mean that advanced democracies like Australia’s can’t do better? Not at all. As the authors of the Democracy 2025 report argue, the “legitimacy gap” that has opened up between the ideals of democracy and what Australians feel their democracy delivers provides an “urgent wake-up call” to Australia’s political and civic leaders.
Democracies are always declared to be in crisis, according to a parliamentary paper on the subject. And as our political forebearers have warned us as far back as the fourth century BC, the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.
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Democracy is always at risk. Democracy needs the politicians to play by the accepted rules, not just the law. Yet it is often tempting to break the rules, such as by not taking responsibility when things go wrong, lying and covering up, being secretive, pork barrelling etc. And it is tempting to push each of these actions just a little bit further than last time.
Democracy also requires that the public demand the politicians play by the rules. If we let it slide then it will just get worse.
That also used to be the media’s role. Shining a light in the murky corners so the voters knew what was going on.
Which is why the Coalition panders to Murdoch ($40 million to Sky TV) and tries to gut the ABC.
The ABC are a propaganda unit unto themselves and there is no excuse for their blatant political bias and activism. Have you seen any proper coverage of the US Election fraud lawsuits (Georgia thismorning for example), or the Open Senate Hearing in Pennsylvania yesterday. I havent. And yet I saw three entire four corners episodes dedicated to Trump and Russia collusion. If the ABC cant even up the equation then good riddance to them as they are no longer my, and so many others, ABC.
It wasn’t remotely an ‘öpen senate hearing” . It was a stunt set up by the so-called Policy Committee of the Republican members of the Pennsylvania state senate (upper house in other words) . Half a dozen people plus Rudy Guiliani in a 3.5 star motel in Gettysburg – not the state capital nor at all official. The amateur air only enhanced by a Trump phone call that was heard by the room only by holding the mobile phone he’d called up to a microphone.
Your exaggerations ruin your argument and your bias about the ABC somewhat destroys your claim that it is!
Which of the evidence presented do you dispute?
I believe that where the hearing was held is the same location where Abraham Lincoln made a speech at the end of the Civil War. That was stated by one Senator at the commencement of the hearing from memory.
Still awaiting the Release of the Kraken, me.
Come on, Sidney, why are we waiting…?
It is as though the worlds media is operating under a fascist ruler who is forcing suppression to opposition to any facts negative to Biden and the Democrats. So who is the fascist leader pulling the strings. What is being held over the heads of those within the media to get them to comply?
JMNO, the media should be doing exactly as you say “Shining a light in the murky corners so the voters knew what was going on.”
There is a media blackout going on across the world.
Fascist leaders reveal yourselves!
We know who your minions are, but who and where are you?
Sir, this is the McDonalds drive-through.
You know Jimbo your problem is that you have been reading that trash that poses as news in the Murdock press of which the Australian is a shining light of high class journalism for too long. The only useful purpose served by the Australian is as fish and chip wrap, and then that.s insulting fish and chip waste.
You also need to wean yourself off the comedy act know as Fox news and it would be much better re-named as Donkey’s News for simpletons.
Hey here is another for you even though a ‘little’ dated, ‘a Red under every bed”
If you live under a rock then you might believe the authors claim.
The US has just had one of the most free and fair elections in its history
Give us a break Crikey.
I believe that the quote was ‘in ITS history’ which is correct, especially since it is supported by. the most of the population that have actually voted.
Yes, Jimbo, and the official who confirmed that the election was free and fair was fired for contradicting Trump (and releivingly, while the Republicans successfully overturned state bans on open carry of weapons at polling stations, I haven’t seen any suggestions that there was actual voter intimidation on election day).
However, what the article misses, and you have skillfully highlighted, is that while the election itself was run successfully as a free and fair election, Trump has successfully convinced a significant percentage of his followers that the election was “stolen” and has spent the last 6 months undermining democracy in the USA before and since the election. If 40% of people believe that an election was rigged, there is no longer confidence in democracy, no matter how correctly the election itself is run. HINT: Telling your supporters months BEFORE an election that the only way we can lose is if the election is rigged or the other side has cheated, is not how elections or democracy works.
The likes of Sky News Australia reporting that President Trump “testified” at a gathering of Republicans held in a hotel ballroom, while they clap whenever he says anything supporting the Republican party or stating that the election was stolen, does not make that an official event (Hint 2: if TESTIFYING before a judiciary or official government enquiry, that behaviour would be closed down very quickly).
As for the alleged voter fraud etc, any of Trump’s legal teams have failed to prove any systemic fraud in any court of law so far, and most when asked if they are alleging fraud, will not even go that far because unfounded statements (or lies) in a court of law, will stop lawyers being able to actually practice law in the US.
I am guessing that you probably won’t actually believe anything I have written above. The point though is that Trump has successfully undermined confidence in American democracy – no small feat. He has done it by following a lifelong habit of telling lies for his own benefit, and whilst he will constantly say he has evidence, it is never produced (birthers anyone?). He is a con-man, and he has been his whole adult life. He once said “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.“, it turned out he could fail to act in any meaningful way on a pandemic, politicise any meaningful responses, resulting in the death of more than 200,000 American citizens in the lead up to an election and more than 70,000,000 people would still vote for him. He is a better con-man than I ever gave him credit for, but it will still be sad if his biggest legacy is the loss of confidence in democracy.
Very well said, and I agree completely. But that democracy in the US was already breaking, if not already broken, is evidenced by Trump ever being in a position to a) nominate and stand; and b) get elected, in the first place. The rot had already set in well before Obama and Bush 1 & 2, but Trump certainly manipulated an already corrupted system for his own benefit, and further exposed and widened the flaws and cracks in a democratic system that was already crumbling.
Yes, American democracy has been long damaged, although I am not sure that any person being able to nominate and stand is a reflection of that, as that may well be a democratic right only forfeited in extreme cases. However, when the courts have allowed those in power to gerrymander, the Republicans have used the courts to disenfranchise swathes of voters whose demographic they think will mostly vote against them, and Mitch McConnell’s pride in being the “grim reaper” of the senate, all reflect a badly damaged democracy long before Trump came to power – add onto that Trump deliberately removing the confidence of a substantial percentage of people that the election process itself has now been rigged and allows the side that overall has not been disenfranchising the population to cheat, and Trump has potentially taken it to the next level. If the right person had done that in the right way, then some of the systemic flaws of their democracy may have been repaired, but the divisions have been set up in the latest actions that will make any real attempts to fix the democratic system appear to be partisan and cheating… more or less in support of the article title (and very much simplifying things), Trump has taken a damaged democracy and (possibly) destroyed it.
Machiavelli couldn’t have written that more accurately.
John Howard did not neutralise Hanson he stole her base, a bipartisan support of immigration after WW2 had left Xenophobes to vote on other policy, when he saw Hanson affecting his vote he grabbed Tampa and Xenophobia with both Hands and the Dog whistling has never stopped since.
Despatched that unguided Abbott missile to go after her – using Terry Sharples – paid for by a slush fund of which one of the trustees was Costello’s pater-in-law, Peter Coleman….. To look after/salvage her voting cargo while Hanson was “otherwise engaged”.
There was a Pryor cartoon at the time showing Hawke & Keating on the street seeing a derelict with distinctive teeth & eyebrows rummaging in a garbage bin for scraps labelled ‘racism’ & ‘xenophobia’.
How we larffed in such innocent times and thought, “Can’t happen here!”.
Oh pleeeez, not a regular column for this sort of deracinated pabulum – bad enough that there are two today with Kier Semmens’ equally bland broth.
It is not permitted to react to grundle’s cri de cœur – Comments are switched off on this article, of course they are – when he goes right up to this organs’ Wittenberg PC church door and then bottles it.
Unlike Helen Razer who was kicked out of that door.
Likely an editorial decision, don’t you think?
Helen is still occasionally going strong on Twitter .Unfortunately,her health hasn’t been of the best lately ..Crikey, she still wants to know about where some of her due Super is..
Yes, she is not a happy camper. Rightly so!
The life of the freelance is not a secure one.
Is it, Guy?
I got so annoyed by the comments being off for that one I put Crikey down for a few hours.
Draco, you’ve been here long enough toknow that certain topics have a distressing tendency to invoke wrongthink and are thus unsutiable for the unswashed subscribers.
Pabulum gets my vote for Macquarie Word of the Year.
But if that’s the most the average voter can digest, what hope real democracy?
It dies from lack of nutrition?
Superficial on both sides.
LIke most commentaries at the moment, it overlooks the way the US has been engineered so the 0.1% steal most of the new wealth, and most people are hurting and know it. They want someone to change the system, or smash it. Biden is still the problem, not the solution.
Australia’s version? The Coalition has gone beyond corruption to actual capture by mining, gambling, arms, etc and they are about making us like the US (!). Labor lost its way decades ago and for some time has been a lumpen obstacle to reform … and survival. It just goes along with most of the Murdoch/Coalition destruction of what was once a reasonably fair-go country.
I thought Shorten had good policies at the last election, which was stolen by Morrison and the idiots who voted for him.
Agree, and yes the LNP is going the way of the GOP, i.e. being ‘owned’ corporate donors and libertarian ideologues.
Worse, Australia also cops the same architecture of influence helped along by Koch Networks e.g. IPA, CIS etc and constant promotion of radical right libertarian socio-economic policies through media and via MPs, along with pro conservative Christian and/or white nationalist dog whistling.
The same media where Australia is in a worse position, cf US, for diversity, depth and breadth e.g. NewsCorp/Sky, 9Fairfax and 7 dominating legacy media with its above median voting age audiences in regions (like US mid western strategy to leverage ageing/monocultural demographics); viewing the ABC as a threat to influence.
One of the main targets in the US is packing and manipulating the legal system and judiciary at state level with GOP appointees for the long term who can be used to bypass democracy, i.e. wind back or throw out legislation (when house votes are insufficient) e.g. environmental controls, minority rights, abortion, voting, guns, religion etc..
But what to DO????
To paraphrase, “The Electorate has failed the Country. It must work very hard to regain trust. Until then a new, more Worthy People will be selected.”
The Lights are going out all over the, soi disant, democracies, mostly due to the indolence of citizens.
Deracinated pablum; soi disant; are you showing off Indunn?