Another election year, another existential crossroads for American democracy. Every possible warning sign is blinking red as Donald Trump openly pledges to govern as an autocrat and abandons all pretense of normal democratic politics. And yet he still may win.
I have to admit, I find the heaviness of all this quite difficult to accept. And I suspect I’m not alone.
But whenever I feel overwhelmed, I try to remind myself about a different election. Last fall, in Poland, a pro-democracy coalition shocked the world by ousting an autocratic party that had governed for eight years. Polish voters did what seemed impossible: they threw out a deeply entrenched, antidemocratic government using the mechanisms of democracy. In doing so, they showed us all how a pro-democracy coalition wins: by being a pro-democracy coalition. It sounds simple, but it’s critical. If a broad spectrum of society puts aside policy and political differences and unites in the face of an autocratic threat, democracy tends to endure. If the pro-democracy coalition fractures, democracy often does too.
For all of us, this is the task for 2024. We must keep the pro-democracy coalition together. Otherwise, authoritarianism will prevail.
The threat: more than just an antidemocratic candidate
A new report from Democracy Fund finds America’s democratic convictions are shockingly fragile. In short, most Americans are dangerously quick to abandon democratic ideals, especially when partisanship is on the line.
That’s why, in a new piece laying out what we need to do in the year ahead, Deana El-Mallawany, Justin Florence, and Jess Marsden (who together lead Protect Democracy’s impact work) emphasize questions that are bigger — and arguably more foundational — than just the outcome of this election. In their view, our task is not just to defeat autocrats at the ballot box, but also to stay united behind the principles and institutions of democracy while we aim to do so.
I encourage you to read the whole piece. In it, they identify three tests that the pro-democracy coalition must pass.
Ensure a free & fair election
The first test is simple: the election itself. No, not the result. The process.
As we learned in 2020, we cannot afford to take free & fair elections — and a peaceful continuation or transfer of power — for granted.
An essential task for the pro-democracy coalition this year is to protect the election itself. Election subversion, an intentional effort to manipulate election results to ensure a particular outcome, remains a major threat in 2024.
We expect such an effort would include some combination of three strategies. First, spreading disinformation to erode voter confidence and to seed specific fraud narratives. Second, direct interference by officials or private actors in election processes, including by injecting chaos and uncertainty as pretext for disregarding the outcome. And third, direct attempts to overturn the result of the popular vote at some point in the certification process, either in favor of the loser or to simply declare the result uncertain or unknowable. All of this may be made easier by an ongoing wave of election subversion legislation at the state level.
This effort may also involve a wide variety of other tactics to try to sway the election, including intimidation and violence directed at voters or election officials; mass eligibility challenges, public records requests, or baseless litigation attempts to disrupt the ability of eligible voters to vote and election officials to do their jobs; or even attempts to compromise voter rolls or destroy ballots and/or election equipment.
Thankfully, they explain, there are a wide variety of things we can do now to protect the election from subversion. This includes hardening our elections against violence, intimidation and digital attacks, as well as being prepared to implement new safeguards — like the Electoral Count Reform Act — to ensure that the will of the voters stands.
Keep the rule of law separate from politics
The second test is a bit more complicated. It’s not just that an autocratic former president is running again, it’s that he’s also facing serious criminal charges while he does so:
For the first time in history, our judicial system must weigh criminal charges against a former president while he runs for office. Accordingly, democracy now depends on the justice system’s ability to weigh those charges fairly, swiftly, and free from political influence — in either direction.
Our system is built on two bedrock principles: first, everyone is entitled to a fair trial and a presumption of innocence (including a former president), and second, no one (not even a current candidate) is above the law. The best way to protect both of these, especially in the context of the election, is for all relevant legal proceedings involving Donald Trump to proceed quickly to their respective conclusions, well before ballots are cast.
There will be significant pressure to conflate these legal processes with the stakes of an election, to treat our courts as simply extensions of a political system. The pro-democracy coalition cannot allow this to happen, and we must remain committed to the rule of law as an institution separate and distinct from electoral politics.
Moreover, as they write, Trump’s various legal proceedings are far from the only challenges facing the rule of law. His campaign pledges are highlighting the significant vulnerabilities in our system, gaps that any future autocrat could exploit.
Many possible future attacks on the rule of law — from weaponization of the Department of Justice and abuses of the presidential pardon power to civil service purges and spending abuses — are well understood today. We can and should use all opportunities this year to strengthen the rule of law, especially as it provides guardrails against future attacks.
Make this the last existential election
Finally, the third test Deana, Justin, and Jess identify is perhaps more hopeful. It goes without saying that we can’t keep asking the electorate to vote like their democracy depends on it forever (even if it does!). And just because we are fighting to avoid the worst consequences of our democracy doom loop, that doesn’t mean we can’t simultaneously work to break out of it through reform and re-imagination.
Democracy depends on healthy competition between multiple candidates and parties committed to playing by the rules. For democracy to be real, voters need to be able to choose between at least two reasonable and responsible choices (and ideally, in a country as large and diverse as the United States, even more than two). And so, just as the coalition works to defend democracy in the short term, we must also work to break the doom loop and to put our democracy back on the path to healthier competition, better representation, and more pluralistic politics.
There are healthy ways to build this multi-partyism from the ground up, not the top down. And while we will certainly not succeed in fully reforming our electoral system by the end of 2024, we can make important progress and momentum that begins to shift the tide.
There is real progress being made in various places to advance reforms, like fusion voting and proportional representation, that could marginalize the autocratic faction and bring back healthy, productive ideological competition. If we keep this momentum up, we may even be able to make this our final existential election — the last time (for now) that the pro-democracy coalition needs to put aside its differences to protect our freedoms and self-government. This optimism, as Deana, Justin, and Jess write, is essential in its own right:
[A] reform agenda will help us build a democracy that delivers for people in the ways that matter to them most, thereby reinvigorating American faith in democracy. Without faith that our political system can meet the moment, citizens’ willingness to do the hard work of democracy — participation, listening to others, and compromise — will falter. So we must give our democracy the best possible chance of delivering on its promises: that it can solve tough problems, that it can ensure everyone’s voices are heard, and, critically, that it can continue to grow and improve.
Because while the relatively widespread degree of disillusionment and malaise in American politics is both understandable and worth taking seriously, the path to improving every issue that voters care about — the economy we work in, the climate we live in, the schools our kids attend, and the freedom to live the lives we want — has to happen through our democracy, not by bulldozing or circumventing it.
Part of the function of democracy is that it is dynamic; that it is capable of fixing its deficits and making itself better. We cannot lose that faith.
Trump trial timeline alert
Returning to this week’s developments, yesterday the DC Circuit heard arguments in Trump v. United States — the Special Counsel’s case against Trump around 2020 election interference. Trump’s outlandish arguments for absolute immunity from the law have rightly received significant attention. His lawyers’ claim that the president could order a rival assassinated and not be prosecuted shows how absurd his position is, and the court is highly likely to reject it. But those celebrating the likelihood that Trump loses this appeal may be missing the forest for the trees: Trump’s main defense strategy is to run out the clock. And on that front, he’s winning, whether or not his appeal succeeds. As Kristy Parker and Justin Florence explain in Just Security, the most important question from Trump’s appeal may be whether the DC Circuit agrees to a timely issuance of “the mandate” — an arcane appellate procedure that will determine how long Trump can freeze his trial.
On that note, there’s a growing chorus of voices calling on the federal judiciary to protect the public’s interest in a swift resolution. See Paul Rosenzweig, Ruth Marcus, Jesse Wegman and Randall Eliason. And in a remarkable open letter yesterday in The Bulwark, 19 former Republican members of Congress urged speed over delay: “Perhaps in no other case in American history is the public’s interest in the swift and fair administration of criminal justice as great as it is here.”
What else we’re tracking:
If you missed it in December, I strongly recommend this wonderful piece from Sherrilyn Ifill on unraveling and renewal: How America Ends and Begins Again.
In case you need even more evidence that pro-democracy coalitions succeed, political scientist Kurt Weyland has a new preview of his forthcoming book, asking how threatened democracies survive. The answer? “Institutional checks, balances, and opposition mobilization.”
While the threat to our democracy runs deeper than Trump, that does not make backsliding inevitable. Jamelle Bouie this week grapples with the ways Donald Trump is unique and how nothing about our democracy crisis is pre-written: Imagine if Trump Loses.
My colleague Jen Dresden and I have a January 6th piece in the excellent substack The UnPopulist on political violence and democracy. Read it there (and subscribe for more great resources. This week they also have a useful piece from Rachel Kleinfeld on how both right- and left-wing autocrats are bad for the economy.)
From December: The wave of election subversion legislation in various states is (of course) still advancing, even though much of the attention has died down. Read more here.
A final note, this is the first edition of what will hopefully be a growing and evolving weekly briefing. We would very much appreciate any and all tips or feedback on how to make this better and more useful. My direct email is ben [dot] raderstorf [at] protectdemocracy [dot] org.
It’s going to be a long, hard year — but it could well be a turning point for the better. We’re grateful to have you with us, whatever happens.