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Tag: democracy
Kamala Harris

These Republicans Know Harris Must Beat Trump To Save Democracy

Presidential elections of yore were not like this one. Would the media kindly get that into their collective skull? Many journalists seem to think that the reluctance of Kamala Harris to sit down for searing in-depth interviews on "the issues" is a major issue.

The one she did with CNN rested on the old gotcha questions. Harris said that she's now for fracking and that the border is orderly thanks to the president's executive order. Furthermore, she would sign the strict border bill that Donald Trump had killed to keep the issue alive. She's been saying this for months.

The only truly important issue in the presidential election of 2024 is existential. Can America survive as a democracy; that is, can it be saved from a mentally declining Donald Trump intent on falsifying vote totals, having already tried to do it through violence? He's already threatening to contest the election that hasn't happened. And the only way to put an end to that extortion is to beat Trump soundly in November.

Sure, we good-government types feast on detailed policy papers. But what we can gather about the vice president, much of it based on the Biden administration in which she serves, is that Harris is moderate on most things. Should she be elected, there will be reason to harp, make no mistake. (I look forward to that day.) Most important: We know that if she loses, she will concede.

In the meantime, our political traditions are facing code red.

What should bother us more than the price of hamburger is the prospect of ending four centuries of democracy dating back to the New England colonies. But if the economy is deemed all that matters, the indicators confirm far stronger economic growth under Biden.

Trump tells the MAGA masses they're not seeing what they're seeing — that dictators get the job done. On the contrary, democracies offer the best economies: Businesses need stable political institutions and the rule of law to flourish. And when the elected government pursues policies antithetical to economic prosperity, the voters can replace the leaders.

That's the argument advanced by "VCs for Kamala." These venture capitalists hold that strong, trustworthy institutions are a feature, not a bug, of American capitalism.

Growing numbers of smart conservatives now see MAGA as a threat, not only to democracy but to the survival of the Republican Party. A Republican hasn't won the popular vote in a presidential election since 2004. And the bizarre characters Trump foists on the party as down-ballot candidates — Kari Lake in Arizona, Mark Robinson in North Carolina — seem destined for easy defeat.

Leading conservatives are not only urging followers to withhold their vote for Trump but to vote for Harris. As former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger memorably told Democrats at their convention, "I am proud to be in the trenches with you as part of this sometimes awkward alliance that we have to defend truth, defend democracy and decency."

He hasn't given up the Republican label and told listeners that "Whatever policies we disagree on pale in comparison with those fundamental matters of principle, of decency, and of fidelity to this nation."

A group called "Republicans Against Trump" is spending over $11 million on television ads and billboards reading, "I'm a former Trump voter. I'm voting for Harris."

What Harris can do for the country is take Trump off our backs, and it appears that she could do it. So what if she passes on interviews that distract from the one big thing, which is securing the democracy.

How one feels about gas prices might matter in normal elections. This election is not normal.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Likely Trump Treasury Appointee Would Wreak Havoc On World Economy

Likely Trump Treasury Appointee Would Wreak Havoc On World Economy

Many Democrats, political and legal experts have warned that a second Donald Trump presidency would likely mean the end of American democracy, based on his proposed policies like mass deportation through force of the National Guard, and using the Department of Justice to target his political enemies.

In a Sunday, August 4 report published by Politico, reporter Gavin Bade highlights another aspect of a second presidency that would also be a danger to democracy — former top Trump trade official, Robert Lighthizer.

Foreign Policy columnist Edward Alden, in May, wrote an article about Lighthizer, titled, "The Man Who Would Help Trump Upend the Global Economy, asserting: "As President Donald Trump’s trade representative, he turned the United States away from six decades of support for a rules-based, multilateral trading system and toward a robustly nationalist approach."

Alden added:

Even as most of Trump’s former officials have denounced him as unfit to be president again, Lighthizer has kept the faith—seeing in Trump, as many others do, a flawed vessel for some greater public good. He remains one of Trump’s top policy advisors in the 2024 campaign and would be set for a bigger job—likely Treasury secretary—if Trump wins in November. Lighthizer’s mission of transforming not just U.S. trade policy but broader U.S. international economic policy is just getting started.

Likewise, Bade warns in his article, "If Trump wins in November, Lighthizer is poised to pursue an even more disruptive set of policies next year, one that is already raising alarms in foreign capitals, on Wall Street and among many economists."

Additionally, Bade reports:

According to four former Trump officials, granted anonymity to speak about sensitive personnel issues, Lighthizer is a candidate for a number of senior roles in a second Trump administration, from Treasury or Commerce secretary to a second turn as USTR, or as an economic adviser or even White House chief of staff. His profile rose further last month with the selection of Ohio Sen. JD Vance as Trump’s running mate, a committed protectionist who aligns with Lighthizer ideologically.

The Politico reporter also notes that Lighthizer isn't only friends with Republicans.

"Even Democrats on Capitol Hill, who fought Trump doggedly on other policies, often found common ground with Lighthizer," Bade notes.

"But even some lawmakers who like Lighthizer personally, like [Rep. Richard] Neal (D-MA) and [Senate Finance Chair Ron] Wyden (D-OR), are wary of his more aggressive second-term agenda, which many economists warn could spike inflation and threaten the American economy’s leading role among world nations."

Neal told Politico, "Those plans, including higher tariffs across the board and moves to decrease the value of the U.S. dollar, entail 'an awful lot of risk without a proper assessment.'"

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

With Progressive Wins In UK And France, Liberal Democracy Is Far From Dead

With Progressive Wins In UK And France, Liberal Democracy Is Far From Dead

French voters defied the expectations of pollsters on Sunday as a progressive alliance soared to victory over right-wing nationalists in the country’s legislative elections. On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron, whose own centrist party came in second, refused the resignation of France’s prime minister. A new government is expected to emerge from a coalition of the progressive New Popular Front, which took the greatest number of seats, and Macron’s Ensemble alliance. Forming that coalition government may not go smoothly, but the nationalist National Rally was relegated to a third-place finish.

Marine Le Pen, the de facto leader of National Rally, had promised to curtail French support of Ukraine, end birthright citizenship, block immigrants from accessing social services, and align France with Russia. But on Monday, National Rally leaders found themselves complaining that progressive parties had cheated as they faced another cycle in the political wilderness.

The result follows a landslide victory for U.K.’s center-left Labour Party, which sent the Conservative Party packing after a 14-year hold on the British government. Labour leader Keir Starmer was sworn in as the new prime minister shortly thereafter, and the more progressive leadership promises to repair more than a decade of damage done to the national health care system, raise the minimum wage, provide free meals to schoolchildren, improve environmental protections and public transportation, and create a new, publicly owned energy company.

In other words, despite the rising threat against democracy in many places around the world (and at home), liberal democracy isn't dead just yet.

There has been story after story suggesting that liberal democracy is on its last legs. That’s been particularly true over the last few years when authoritarian populists celebrated and supported by Russia have dominated reports on election cycles, both in America and Europe.

Stories continue to herald the rise of a new authoritarian right in Europe, but the nationalist leaders who often dominate headlines share one thing in common: They usually lose. Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform U.K. party, may have given a so-called “victory speech” following his country’s elections, but his party took just 14 percent of the vote. That’s more than Reform earned in previous elections, but the result earned them only five seats in the U.K.’s 650-seat House of Commons—five seats that are worth a lot less without a right-wing government in charge.

Germany’s far-right Alternatives for Germany party may have increased its support in the last round of elections, but it still earned less than 16 percent of the vote in the European Parliament elections held on June 9. That’s slightly below what polls showed a week from the election, and far below what they showed a few months earlier.

Outside of Europe, Mexico celebrated a substantial progressive victory last month, when Claudia Sheinbaum and her left-wing Morena party took the highest percentage of the vote in that nation’s democratic history. In India, parties on the left overperformed expectations, though they failed to displace a right-wing leader.

The pundits ready to play taps for democracy in Europe need to take off their funeral suits because it doesn’t seem like liberal democracy is going anywhere this week. If anything, it’s the right-wing parties that have emerged from recent elections rattled by voters who moved to install more progressive leadership. It seems like nationalists may have had their big moment in 2016 with the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in the United States and the shocking vote for “Brexit” in the U.K.

Since then, Brexit has been recognized as a mistake, with recent polling showing that most Britons want to rejoin the European Union's single market, and now voters in the U.K. have kicked out the Tories, who were responsible for the Brexit vote. And in the U.S., voters held up their end in 2020.

Now we just have to do it again.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

'New York Times' Ripped Over Conservative's Smug 'Why Vote?' Op-Ed

'New York Times' Ripped Over Conservative's Smug 'Why Vote?' Op-Ed

On the Fourth of July, the New York Times opinion section chose to publish an op-ed from a Michigan resident making his case to not vote in the 2024 election. One democracy expert slammed the national paper of record for its decision to run the essay.

The column, titled, "Why I Don't Vote. And Why Maybe You Shouldn't Either," is by Matthew Walther, who is a contributing editor to The American Conservative. With a noticeable tone of disgust, Walther describes the term "civic duty" — which voting rights advocates often use when making the case to participate in the electoral process — as "off-putting."

"If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, civic duty is surely the first. Some version of the civic-duty line is trotted out by the sort of do-gooder who hands out voter registration forms to strangers — an activity I find as off-putting as I would an invitation to sit down and fill out a handgun permit," he wrote.


Journalist Stephen Wolf posted an excerpt of the essay to his X/Twitter account with the text: "This is what the New York Times chose to publish on Independence Day just one week after the Supreme Court ruled that Republican presidents are above the law."

While quote-tweeting Wolf's post, history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat — an expert on democracy and authoritarian governments around the world — admonished the national paper of record for its decision to publish Walther's column.

"This is just very sad and frankly just what the Autocracy Doctor ordered," she tweeted. "Not voting is a vote to let others decide your fate, and we know that many elections are decided by relatively few votes. The goal of many autocracies is 'demobilization': people detaching from politics so they don't resist."

The backlash the Times has received over Walther's op-ed comes after the paper was excoriated by supporters of President Joe Biden for its editorial calling on him to drop out — while notably remaining absent on the continued candidacy of former President Donald Trump despite his 34 felony convictions. Earlier this year, a Times journalist speaking anonymously to Politicoconfided to the publication that the paper's publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, had an axe to grind against Biden for so far declining to do an exclusive sit-down interview with the Times.

"All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,” the Times reporter said. “It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.”

The Philadelphia Inquirerrecently trolled the Times' editorial board by running an editorial of its own with a title almost exactly replicating the title of the Times' editorial, except switching out Biden's name for Trump's.

"[T]he debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump," the paper argued. "Trump told more than 30 lies during the debate to go with the more than 30,000 mistruths told during his four years as president. He dodged the CNN moderators’ questions, took no responsibility for his actions, and blamed others, mainly Biden, for everything that is wrong in the world."

If 2016 and 2020 are proper indicators, it's likely the 2024 election will be decided by just tens of thousands of votes across five or six battleground states — including Walther's home state of Michigan. The combined Electoral College votes from Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin gave Trump the 270-vote majority to win the presidency in 2016. He won those three states by fewer than 80,000 total combined votes. Biden's 2020 electoral vote majority was decided by less than 45,000 total votes spread across Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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