The Trump-Mandami Era

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The WSJ published an article on Friday, based on last week’s elections, rightly titled: Americans See a Government That Can’t Solve Their Problems. Here’s the opening line: “U.S. elections are sending a consistent message: Americans are deeply frustrated with their government’s inability to solve problems.”

This is a theme I’ve been writing about for a decade or so now, based not just on what’s happening in the US, but with democratic governments across the West. There has been pervasive dissatisfaction with government, no matter which parties are in power, for the last 10-15 years across most Western democracies. Governments no longer seem able to deliver for large segments of their populations on the economic, social, and cultural issues many of their citizens consider most urgent.

At least two phenomena that characterize our democratic era have emerged from this pervasive dissatisfaction. One is that politics has become extremely turbulent, as voters regularly throw out of office those in power in the search for alternative parties or figures they believe will deliver needed change. Second, voters are drawn to political outsiders and more extreme options on both the right and the left.

The appeal of Trump and Mandami is surely a reflection of all that. In addition, the communications revolution is almost certainly central to their success. It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump winning in 2016 without cable television and Twitter (as it was known then). Similarly, social media was the dominant messaging tool of Zohran Mandami’s campaign.

Here are some thoughts from the closing of one of my articles, Democracies in the Age of Fragmentation, on these issues:

With so much attention on misinformation, we do not yet recognize that the new information age has helped make political fragmentation a defining feature of, and a major challenge to, democracies today. This fragmentation is both the effect and cause of the perceived inability of democratic governments to deliver effective governance.
Perhaps this fragmentation is a temporary fact of democratic life. Perhaps, though, our era will be one in which new technologies will enable many more people to engage in forms of politics, individually and in groups or parties. Opposition to government action, or demands for the government to act or act differently, will be easy to mobilize and constant. Politics and government will be continually turbulent, but less able to deliver effective responses on the issues roiling the day….

[T]he importance of effective government is often ignored in political and legal theory. But if democratic governments cannot overcome the profound challenge political fragmentation now poses and deliver on the issues their citizens find most urgent, dysfunction and distrust could give way to worse.

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“Why Democrats Could Win the Redistricting War”

redistricting

Nate Cohn for NYT’s The Tilt: Republicans have had an advantage in this year’s redistricting wars because they control the redistricting process in states with more Democratic-held congressional seats.

But this advantage is starting to look shaky — shaky enough that it’s possible to imagine how Democrats could fight the redistricting wars to a draw ahead of the 2026 midterms, and perhaps even win them by the 2028 election.

What’s changed? Much of the Republican advantage stems from the significant constitutional limitations on gerrymandering in blue states. But now Democrats are demonstrating the ability — and the will — to amend blue state constitutions to allow for partisan gerrymandering. If they do so in enough states, they could redraw enough Republican-held districts to turn the redistricting war in their favor. This outcome may still be unlikely, but this week’s elections have made it easier to imagine.

On Tuesday, California voted to amend its state constitution to enact a new Democratic gerrymandered map, potentially costing Republicans up to five districts. The ballot measure was expected to pass; what was more surprising was the margin. While many votes remain to be counted, “Yes” leads on redistricting by 28 points, 64 percent to 36 percent. That’s a wider margin than Kamala Harris’s 20 point-win in the state in 2024….

It’s important to emphasize that Democratic lawmakers haven’t indicated their intention to try to amend state constitutions in any state besides California and Virginia. But if even light blue Virginia is willing and able to amend its constitution to allow gerrymandering, it’s no longer safe to assume that other blue states won’t do the same thing. There have been rumblings of similar efforts in states like New York and Colorado. If those or other efforts ultimately materialize and succeed, it’s possible that Republicans, not Democrats, will ultimately lose the most seats from redistricting by the time the 2028 election rolls around.

It’s too early to lay out a specific redistricting scenario. There are many layers of uncertainty, including which red or blue states will redistrict or amend their constitutions, how far their gerrymanders might go, and the fate of the Voting Rights Act. Together, there’s an enormous range of possibilities.

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“Gavin Newsom Just Proved It: Voters Want Democrats to Fight Fire With Fire”

Real Right to Vote, The Voting Wars

I have written this piece for Slate. It begins:

If Democrats and those on the left want to draw one lesson from the lopsided 64–36 victory of Proposition 50 in California earlier this week, it is that the public understands that these are not normal times, and that to get democracy on track again in the U.S. it may take some drastic, norm-breaking measures. If in the period after Donald Trump’s tenure, Democrats retake control of the House and Senate and secure the presidency, bold election reform that protects both free and fair elections and voting rights must be on the table….

When Democrats had control of both houses of Congress and Joe Biden was in the White House, the House passed and a majority in the Senate passed both the John Lewis Voting Rights Amendments Act and a broader package of election reforms. But Democrats, especially Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, were not willing to make an exception to the filibuster to get a final vote for the legislation in the Senate, meaning that this legislation died. That was a costly mistake.

In an age when voters see Donald Trump breaking norms to solidify his power and move the country toward authoritarianism, trying to just return to normal after Trump and pretend the last decade-plus of threats to democracy did not happen is not a good strategy. It will just leave more openings for the next would-be authoritarian. Proposition 50’s decisive victory shows that voters are enthusiastic about breaking norms, if doing so can achieve national partisan fairness and to counter the many anti-majoritarian features of American democracy.

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