President Joe Biden is right. The so-called MAGA movement, led by
Donald Trump, is a direct threat to democratic self-government in the US.
“Too much of
what is happening in our country today is not normal,” Biden said in
Philadelphia last week.
اضافة اعلان
“Donald Trump
and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very
foundations of our Republic.”
The proof is
everywhere you look. Of the 540 Republican nominees on the ballot nationwide
this year, 199 deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, according
to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight. An additional 62 candidates have raised
doubts about the legitimacy of the election, and 118 candidates did not answer
the question.
Pro-insurrection
candidates lead the Republican ticket in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania —
key presidential swing states — and Trump-aligned Republican activists are
targeting election officials across the country with harassment and threats of
violence.
On the more
respectable, suit-and-tie side of the MAGA movement, both the Claremont
Institute and the right-wing Honest Elections Project (the latter of which is a
production of Leonard Leo, former vice president of the Federalist Society, an
influential conservative legal group) have submitted amicus briefs to the
Supreme Court on the side of North Carolina Republicans in a case that could
give state legislatures the power to unilaterally change election laws unbound
by state courts or even the state Constitution.
The goal, as was
clear when lawyers from the Trump campaign pushed this “independent state
legislature” theory both before and after the 2020 election, is to create a
path by which Republican state lawmakers can toss out results they do not like.
It is not for
nothing that the author of the Claremont brief is none other than John Eastman,
one of the legal architects of the plan to keep Trump in office against the
will of the voters.
“When performing
federal functions, the legislatures of the several states are not operating
pursuant to state authority,” Eastman writes, “but rather pursuant to federal
authority, and cannot be constrained by anything in state law or even a state
constitution to the contrary.”
A large part of
the Republican Party is, as Biden says, working to ensure that the next time
Trump is on the ballot, he cannot lose. For Biden’s critics, however, there is
nothing — not even overwhelming evidence of MAGA subversion — that justifies
his sweeping condemnation of Trump and his followers.
“I was stunned
at how divisive this speech was last night,” said Gov. Glenn Youngkin of
Virginia, a Republican who has kept his distance from Trump even as he
campaigns for candidates in Michigan and Nevada who believe the 2020 election
was stolen or who question the result.
Trump is the chosen candidate of reactionary billionaires and fanatical opponents of racial and gender equality for a reason. Strip away the thin veneer of “populism” and what you have in the Trumpified Republican Party is an old-fashioned movement to restrain democratic self-government for the sake of capital and hierarchy.
One view of
Biden’s speech says that if the president is serious about the threat to
American democracy, he should sacrifice key political, policy, and ideological
goals for the sake of unity with conservative opponents of Trump. Another,
similar view says that Biden should have made a more Lincolnesque appeal to the
“better angels” of MAGA Republican voters, rather than condemn the entire
movement as essentially anti-American.
Neither argument
really lands. Preemptive concessions on critical issues might appeal to a
handful of conservative Republican dissidents, but they will outrage and
demoralize Democratic voters at a moment when Democrats stand a meaningful
chance of holding their majorities in Congress. The simple truth is that the
best way to undermine and weaken the MAGA movement at this moment is to win
elections. It makes no sense, then, for Biden to deliberately undermine the
Democratic Party’s ability to do just that.
Should Biden
have used more conciliatory rhetoric? No. He was divisive — just as he was when
he called MAGA Republicans “semi-fascist” the week before — but this is a
moment that calls for a perfect contrast between the two parties. If Trump is
leading an assault on the institutions of American self-government and if that
assault implicates much of the Republican Party, then there is no way that
Biden can make his defense of the constitutional order without dividing people.
What matters is
the nature of the divide. To divide against a radical minority that would
attack and undermine democratic self-government is to divide along the most
inclusive lines possible. It is to do a version of what Franklin Roosevelt did
when he condemned “organized money”, “economic royalists”, and the “forces of
selfishness and lust for power”.
It is also a
version of what Abraham Lincoln did when, in his first inaugural address, he
took aim at those who would subject the country to minority rule.
“A majority held
in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing
easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only
true sovereign of a free people,” he said. “Whoever rejects it does of
necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism.”
“You have no
oath registered in heaven to destroy the government,” Lincoln added, “while I
shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it’. ”
If there is a
critique to make of Biden’s Philadelphia speech, it is that he did not say
enough about the sentiments behind the MAGA movement’s contempt for democracy.
In that sense, it was a missed opportunity.
Trump is the
chosen candidate of reactionary billionaires and fanatical opponents of racial
and gender equality for a reason. Strip away the thin veneer of “populism” and
what you have in the Trumpified Republican Party is an old-fashioned movement
to restrain democratic self-government for the sake of capital and hierarchy.
That is why
anti-democratic ideologues like Peter Thiel have poured millions of dollars
into backing Trump and his allies, who hope to turn MAGA into something that
outlives and outlasts the former president.
It is not that
Trump and the Republican Party are opposed to voting and elected office in and
of themselves; it is that they are opposed to a more equitable distribution of
wealth and status, which a robust democracy — and only a robust democracy —
makes possible. They are opposed to anything that might undermine the
domination over others of people like themselves.
Biden and the Democratic
Party should make this clear — much clearer than they have so far. The struggle
for democracy is the struggle for human equality is the struggle for a fairer
economy is the struggle for the rights of workers and the dignity of labor. And
if the enemies of democracy are fighting their war on every possible front, its
defenders should, too.
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