Status Quo Joe has a lot of endorsements-- mostly from politicians who are intensely disliked by progressives, from Senators Dianne Feinstein (CA) and Doug Jones (AL) and Governor Andrew Cuomo (NY) to a pack of hated reactionary Blue Dogs and New Dems like Stephen Lynch (MA), Ami Bera (CA), Tony Cardenas (CA), Vicente Gonzalez (TX), Kurt Schrader (OR), Lou Correa (CA), Charlie Crist (FL), Al Lawson (FL) and Filemon Vela (TX). Every one of them has a shitty voting record and every one of them is more like Biden than like a normal FDR Democrat. They are what makes the Democratic Party almost as disliked as the Republican Party; they are what makes it-- at best-- the lesser of two evils. And they are the heart and soul of the Biden endorsement cadre. Bleccchhh.How would you like to see an election campaign, tailor-made for Trump, that concentrates on who has a more disgusting family, who’s more corrupt, who lies more, who’s more likely to drift away into full-blown senility first? That’s the only kind of campaign Trump can win… and that’s what a Trump-Biden campaign would look like. Think about it and then talk with anyone who know-- grandparents, perhaps?-- who is considering voting for Biden in a primary or caucus. Professor Yascha Mounk, author of The People vs Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is In Danger And How To Save It, is predicting that if Trump is reelected, his second term will be worse, just like Modi’s has been in India. In fact, in an essay for The Atlantic yesterday, Mounk wrote that “In his first five years in office, Modi did considerable damage, both to the freedoms his critics enjoyed and to the security of the country’s religious minorities. Social-media mobs intimidated anybody who dared to criticize his government. Media outlets allied with Modi stoked fears about Muslim men waging ‘love jihad’ by marrying Hindu women. Mainstream newspapers that were once highly critical of Modi started to praise him with surprising regularity, and to criticize him with notable rarity. And in episodes of what Indians euphemistically call ‘communal violence,’ Muslims were lynched by angry mobs… After Modi won reelection with an even larger majority in the spring of this year, his government began to take radical action to unwind the secularism of India’s constitution, arguably doing more damage in the first months of its second term than it had in the previous five years. Some of the concerns about Modi that seemed exaggerated at the conclusion of his first term in office are now starting to look prescient.” (Be sure to listen to Mounk speaking in the video up top-- including his response to the question at the end.)
Many observers of India have been surprised that Modi has grown so much more extreme in his second term in office. But a comparison of populist governments around the world suggests that India is following a predictable pattern of what would-be authoritarians do when they win reelection.As we’ve seen in countries including Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, populist leaders are at first hamstrung in their ability to concentrate power in their own hands. Many key institutions, including courts and electoral commissions, are still dominated by independent-minded professionals who do not owe their appointment to the new regime. Media outlets are still able and willing to report on scandals, forcing the government to tread somewhat carefully.Once these governments win reelection, these constraints begin to fall away. As the independent-minded judges and civil servants depart, populist leaders feel emboldened to pursue their illiberal dreams.…In his first term in office, Donald Trump has done plenty of damage to the rule of law. His firm control of the Republican Party has made it virtually impossible for Congress to act as a check on the executive. He has exercised enormous influence over institutions ranging from the FBI to the State Department. And it is now evident that he has abused the powers of his office to damage the electoral prospects of his most likely opponent in the 2020 election.Even so, some of the most extreme predictions about Trump’s tenure in office have, so far, proved unfounded. Madeleine Albright’s warning about impending fascism in the United States, for example, seems a bit much: For all the tremendous damage Trump has inflicted on the institutions of the American republic, there are no stormtroopers in sight.Perhaps that’s why the fear and anger that propelled such big protests in the first months of 2017 seem to have dissipated. Neither the spectacle of Trump’s impeachment trial nor the children still held in cages at America’s southern border have inspired anything resembling the levels of mobilization that marked his first months in office. Many may assume that Trump’s reelection will bring nothing worse than four more years of the same-- terrible, to be sure, but by now imaginably terrible.Current events in India and Poland should shock Americans out of this complacency. Trump’s first term is at best an imperfect guide to the horrors that would await us if he manages to win a second one. When they are reelected, populists nearly always become more radical and more dangerous.
