By David K. Shipler
Having
demolished much of the best scientific research supported by the federal
government, ignored congressional acts that created and funded agencies,
harassed the private sector into accepting racial discrimination, bullied media
corporations into self-censorship, erased historical truths, distorted
government fact-gathering, sent masked agents to grab immigrants, deployed
hapless national guard onto peaceful streets, and severely damaged the rule of
law and the constitutional separation of powers, Donald Trump and his
collaborators now turn their draconian radicalism against the country’s system
of free elections.
This is Phase
Three in the demise of democracy. Whether the Trumpists succeed remains an open
question, but they are laying the groundwork for what experts who have studied
dictatorships term “competitive authoritarianism.” It means that elections are
held but are manipulated so the opposition party has little or no chance of
coming to power, as in Hungary and Turkey.
The
elements of the effort are these:
Political prosecutions of opposition (Democratic) figures. Trump is mobilizing a complicit Justice Department to take revenge on critics by inflating minor or imagined infractions into criminal charges. The efforts against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James have been blocked so far by a federal district court judge and two grand juries of citizens honest enough to refuse to indict James, who won a major business fraud case against Trump. But the James case might be revived, and other prosecutions are in the offing.
In what The
New York Times calls “a nebulous and far-reaching” federal investigation,
former officials involved in bringing criminal cases against Trump are being
subpoenaed, with a grand jury empaneled in southern Florida to consider
conspiracy charges. Prosecutors of the January 6 rioters are also in
jeopardy. Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California, who led the first
impeachment prosecution of Trump, is under investigation. Senator Mark Kelly of
Arizona, a retired Navy captain, is being investigated by the Pentagon for his
part in a video by six Democratic lawmakers reminding military personnel that
they can and must refuse illegal orders. He could theoretically be recalled to
active duty and court-martialed under Article 88 of the Uniform Code of
Military Justice, which prohibits “contemptuous words against the President,
the Vice President,” and other officials.
Low-level
skirmishes involving elected Democrats have been magnified. Senator Alex
Padilla of California, who tried repeatedly to ask a question during a press
conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, was handcuffed and
pushed out of the room by FBI agents. Representative LaMonica McIver, who was
jostled in a scuffle with ICE agents as Democratic officials tried to inspect
an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, has been charged with
assaulting an officer—an accusation ridiculous to anyone who watches the video.
And so on.
The question is how far Trump will go in
ordering arrests and prosecutions, particularly of Democratic candidates who
have a chance of winning in key districts in November. The American atmosphere
is being contaminated by a miasma of concocted crimes fabricated by Trump,
Attorney General Pam Bondi, and other zealots. They are poised to use their
authority to indict and arrest whenever politically convenient. America’s
traditional rule of law is being shredded, barely held together by lower-court
judges and by Democratic politicians brave enough to endure threats to their
liberties and physical safety.
“But if they can’t be charged,” pledged
Ed Martin, a powerful Justice Department official, “we will name them. And we
will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people
that are ashamed.”
An obvious
flaw in this plan is that American culture no longer respects shame, as demonstrated
by the ho-hum reaction to Trump’s crude cruelty and blatant corruption. On the
other hand, millions of Americans have been so inured to the Trumpists’
perpetual lying that Martin’s approach could backfire into higher
voter turnout for the targeted candidate. In a tight election, you might even
wish to be accused by an administration reviled by your potential voters.
Yet there is an unseen impact that
can damage the future of democracy: the uncounted number of honest, decent
Americans who become unwilling to face the fear of running for office, of
prosecuting crime, of overseeing elections. A dictatorship seeks not merely to
punish precisely but to generate fear and aversion, a method of self-policing
that is already being felt as many Americans hesitate to demonstrate, to
criticize, or to resist through their institutions.
The November elections are likely
to suffer from other well-known methods of manipulation.
Disqualification of pro-Democratic
voters. Accomplished through purges of voter registration roles and voter
ID requirements that discriminate against low-income citizens who don’t have
driver’s licenses or other acceptable credentials.
Partisan and racial
gerrymandering. Mid-decade redistricting in Texas, while rejected
as race-based by a federal judge after days of extensive
testimony, was approved by the right-wing radicals on the Supreme Court. They
also seem poised, in a separate case from Louisiana, to deal a fatal blow to
the momentous 1965 Voting Rights Act by interpreting racial gerrymandering as
partisan. Under precedent, disfavoring a race is banned by the act but favoring
a party is not, even though race is often a proxy for party preferences. We
have a Supreme Court of Sophistry.
Democrats are likely to reply, as
they have by redistricting in California, which would provoke a race by both
parties to the bottom, landing well below good government. Republican-led
states will have a numerical advantage in tilting the House in their direction.
But there is some Republican resistance, as in Indiana recently, where
redrawing lines to put some pro-Democratic voters in solid Republican districts
would have forced comfortable Republican legislators to actually work to get
reelected.
Distortions in counting and
certifying votes. Newly empowered local officials in some states, including
Georgia, can refuse or delay their obligation to certify votes based on little
more than vague assertions of discrepancies. Pro-Trump election deniers have
populated a number of county boards in various states, raising the risk of
certification becoming optional and effectively erasing Democratic votes. How
widely this danger spreads, against the legions of honest election workers
courageous enough to stomach threats, is a question to be answered in November.
Court
challenges. Over time, the rigor of lower court judges in upholding the law
may be eroded by highly partisan nominees to the bench, a hallmark of Trump’s
second term. While the Republicans lost some 65 lawsuits aimed at overturning
the 2020 election results, a Trumpist strategy of remaking the federal
judiciary, which already succeeded at the Supreme Court level, is likely to
diminish the integrity of the lower courts as well.
Besides,
Trump operates mostly outside the constitutional system, while Americans who
resist still act within it—through the courts, through the ballot box, through
the street protests designed to raise consciousness about the dying democracy.
The patchwork of American resistance combines with the patchwork of acquiescence to Trump’s accumulation of semi-dictatorial powers. That gives no assurance that the democracy can be saved. Voting, which has always been the most effective means of protest, will be tested as a method of preservation in November and, more dramatically, in the presidential election 2028. Welcome to Phase Three.
You can watch my more detailed
discussion of the fate of American democracy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uohhPd04b4g&t=272s
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