Republicans

 Where Does American Democracy Go From Here?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/17/magazine/democracy.html?

Six experts discuss how worried we should be about its future. NYT. 

 

Longwell: I still try to really remain optimistic about the goodness and the decency of a lot of Americans and of parts of the Republican Party. I have to. I mean, the old Republican Party did support the Voting Rights Act. But there was this recessive gene in the party that went through the Pat Buchanans and Sarah Palins. The party would say, “Palin can have the vice presidency” — like, she’ll be a nationalist-populist type, and that’s going to sate this recessive gene. And of course, Trump turned it into the dominant gene.

But I don’t want to let Democrats off the hook entirely here. You know, when I started doing the focus groups, I would ask G.O.P. voters who really didn’t like Trump why they voted for him. And the No. 1 answer you would get was: “I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. I voted against Hillary Clinton.” A lot of that is the longstanding hatred Republicans have for the Clintons and probably a bit of sexism as well. But there is also a reaction to a Democratic Party that is moving left and has a more difficult time appealing to swing voters. It is increasing negative polarization: I hate their side more than I like my side. And the cultural-war stuff is so much of it now. Whether it’s critical race theory, defund the police or the fight over using pronouns, Democrats often sound like aliens to many voters — including Black and Latino voters. Republicans have been increasing their support among minorities, because often these groups are more culturally conservative in ways that wedge them off from the current Democratic Party.

 

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Just ask Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr. You guys know who is most worried about democracy being under attack?

Mason: Republicans.

Longwell: Republicans! There’s a good CNN poll on this that asks, do you think American democracy is under attack? 46 percent of Democrats said “yes,” 46 percent of independents said “yes” and a full 66 percent of Republicans said “yes.” That’s because Republicans labor under the delusion that the 2020 election was stolen. So they are the most concerned about democracy. The people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 thought they were fighting for democracy.

So “democracy” can be kind of an opaque term for voters. The public doesn’t really care about democracy the way we are talking about it in this conversation. And one of the reasons I reach for politics as the best solution is that there has to be a lever by which we defend democracy by winning elections.