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Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
“At 2.24pm, sitting alone, Mr Trump issued a tweet attacking Mr Pence and fueling the riot . . . One minute later, the United States Secret Service was forced to evacuate Mr Pence to a secure location at the Capitol. When an advisor at the White House learned this, he rushed to the dining room and informed Mr Trump, who replied, ‘So what?’”
That is an extract from the recently released report by the special counsel, Jack Smith, into the storming of the US Capitol on January 6 2021. Many of Donald Trump’s supporters will regard rehashing that report — just as Trump is sworn in for a second term in office — as irrelevant. They argue that the American people delivered their verdict when they went to the polls in November. The Democrats campaigned on the idea that Trump threatens democracy. Trump won a clear victory nonetheless.
That raises an interesting question. Why was “democracy in danger” not a winning argument?
One theory is that voters simply do not care that much. A poll taken just before the presidential vote showed that 76 per cent of Americans believed that US democracy was in danger. But just 7 per cent believed that democracy was the most important issue in the election.
While majorities of both Republicans and Democrats agreed US democracy was under threat, they seem to have very different views of where the threat is coming from. For the Democrats, the threat is Trump; for Republicans, it is censorship by a “woke” elite.
That disagreement highlights an important distinction that I heard made recently by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an Indian scholar, in a lecture at the London School of Economics. Mehta argued that there were two competing understandings of the word “democracy” in contemporary politics. The first sees democracy as a method — a way of resolving disputes or clashes of values. The second sees it as a way of empowering citizens — the will of the people.
As Mehta sees it, “democracy needs both values and empowerment”. But when voters feel thwarted, rather than empowered, by the political system, then they can jettison liberal values in favour of a strongman who promises to get things done. An illiberal version of “democracy” then emerges, which — in the name of the people — attacks the checks and balances that are crucial to liberal democracy.
That seems to be what is happening in the US. An opinion poll last week found that two-thirds of Democrats and 80 per cent of Republicans believe the government serves itself and the powerful over ordinary people. Large majorities distrust both Congress and the media.
Trump has risen to power by promising to be the strongman leader who will break the power of the corrupt elite and “make America great again”. He has repeatedly claimed that the US system is “rigged” and controlled by a “deep state” that torments ordinary Americans. In 2016, Trump told the Republican convention that the US system allowed “the powerful [to] beat up on people who cannot defend themselves”, claiming that “I alone can fix it”.
In his most recent campaign, Trump portrayed all the court cases against him as simply evidence of the machinations of the deep state. He promised Americans who felt similarly persecuted that “I am your retribution”.
In certain places, at certain times, strongman rule and illiberal democracy can be popular. In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele has suspended basic rights, imprisoned 83,000 people under state of emergency laws, sent troops into congress and is accused of allowing torture, murder and forced disappearances. But crime rates in El Salvador have plummeted and Bukele won re-election in a landslide.
El Salvador’s leader pithily summed up the credo of illiberal democracy when he told the UN: “Some say that we have imprisoned thousands, but in reality we have liberated millions.” Bukele has been praised by leading supporters of Trump, including Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson.
One possible development to watch, as Trump takes power, is if the incoming US president seeks to emulate Bukele or Hungary’s Viktor Orbán by declaring a state of emergency that would allow him to suspend the normal operation of the law. If Trump seeks emergency powers, liberals will sound the alarm. But they should be braced for the possibility that many ordinary Americans, like ordinary Salvadoreans or Hungarians, might approve.
If supporters of liberal democracy want to win the political battle, outrage and resistance will not be enough. They will have to defeat the arguments of the strongman leaders and the illiberal democrats.
President Biden belatedly began the process in his farewell address from the White House, when he warned that the US was being taken over by an oligarchy. Liberals must also demonstrate that strongman rulers tend to empower themselves and their cronies rather than the people. Corruption is the almost inevitable result.
Over the coming months and years, Trump’s opponents will have to relentlessly spell out what the consequences of oligarchic power and strongman rule are for ordinary Americans. There is likely to be plenty of corruption and self-dealing to point to.
If Trump’s opponents can make their case, and at the same time protect the integrity of the electoral system, the liberal version of democracy can still ultimately prevail.
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