Is the 2020 election the last chance for American democracy?

[Deleted member 31923]

In case you missed Obama's speech, he issued a warning that our democracy is at stake in the 2020 election.

Obama’s Democratic convention speech gave a clear warning: Democracy is at stake in 2020

"That’s what’s at stake right now: our democracy."

www.vox.com

Do you agree with this? In other words, could America survive another 4 years of Trump before he end up as the next Russia? Or is it already too late? We are certainly slipping into fascism under Trump, but my fear is that Trump will lay the groundwork for fascism even if he cannot finish the job. That's because he's dumb and often gives away his intensions, like when he got himself impeached. However, a "smart Trump" may come along after him and end our democracy for good. Trump's cult will still be there waiting for a new tyrant to follow, and they only have to get some independents and swing voter on board. The electoral college/Senate disadvantage for Democrats will do the rest. So even if Biden wins, he's only a stopgap to fascism. I hope this doesn't happen, but it feels inevitable unless Biden can make some major structural changes (court packing, adding DC/Puerto Rico as states, Voting Rights Act, etc.).

 

[papermoon]

I don't know about last chance, but it's late-stage critical

 

[MrCheezball]

Garbage poll. I'm sorry but we aren't even close to fascism.

 

[Xando]

You might be able to vote but it won't matter like in russia

 

[platocplx]

Garbage poll. I'm sorry but we aren't even close to fascism.

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yeah we arent, until states start to fall.

 

[JJDubz]

Weigh the interests of any community or individual against a corporate entity in the United States. Corporatocracy has been here for yeeeeeears.

Our representatives can't pass the most mundane support systems to act as a government should act--as an extension of society to improve lives.

 

[Deleted member 31923]

Garbage poll. I'm sorry but we aren't even close to fascism.

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I added a poll option for you.

 

[Sordid Plebeian]

That's a pretty cynical poll, even if Trump wins again it's not the end all be all. It's not like all his opposition will disappear and resign their power to him

 

[chezzymann]

Extreme poll. Wheres the option of "America is going to get more deranged, anti science, and racist (as usual) but our basic democratic systems will still be in place even if they may be hamstrung by gerrymandering and USPS interference"

 

[jph139]

It's not going to be a "last chance" either way. But if the Democrats can't win, and win big at all levels, they can't even set up the temporary walls to protect the various American institutions.

We need to weaken the Republican stronghold on the Senate, we need to protect against gerrymandering during the next redistricting, we need to codify the norms that executive power can just ignore. Those are the bare minimums to protect against a slide into authoritarianism, if we can't get them in the next couple years, it's going to get harder and harder to walk things back.

 

[Deleted member 31923]

Extreme poll. Wheres the option of "America is going to get more deranged, anti science, and racist (as usual) but our basic democratic systems will still be in place even if they may be hamstrung by gerrymandering and USPS interference"

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Well, I tried to add your poll option, but apparently there is a character limit. So people have to read your post to see the rest of the poll option.

 

[Radd Redd]

I don't think it's a last chance but it clearly shows over 40 percent of the voting population gives very little fucks about democracy as long as their side wins.

If Trump wins again.

 

[RadzPrower]

I don't know about fascism specifically being the end result, but I don't expect the U.S.A. to exist as we know it by the end of my lifetime.

I don't see a future where it is not either authoritarian or there's been a major upheaval.

 

[The Unsent]

Extreme poll. Wheres the option of "America is going to get more deranged, anti science, and racist (as usual) but our basic democratic systems will still be in place even if they may be hamstrung by gerrymandering and USPS interference"

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What you said sounds really bad, to be honest. It makes me question what 'in place' even means.

 

[djplaeskool]

It could get better
It could get worse
Personally, I don't think we've crossed the Rubicon quite yet.
There's still fight left to fight, so let's not give in to doubt and nihilism.

 

[Gartooth]

Cynicism is what Republicans are counting on. We need to fight harder than ever before.

 

[spam musubi]

Garbage poll. I'm sorry but we aren't even close to fascism.

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What is your definition of fascism and why doesn't it include:

-Thousands of minorities in camps where they get raped and are left to catch covid
-Military being deployed into cities to whisk away protesters in unmarked vehicles
-Military/police using Geneva convention violating riot control measures on peaceful populace
-voter suppression measures in many flavors
- intentionally making a pandemic worse for financial and political gain, especially in states that represent a threat to you
-colluding with a hostile foreign government to meddle in an election
-platforming and praising literal nazis

there's a lot more but honesty it's tiring to think of

 

[collige]

I think you could make a pretty strong case that democracy never really "worked" in america in the first place

 

[Deleted member 3017]

Trump isn't the problem, he's the symptom. 35-40% of US citizens genuinely don't care about democracy. So I'd say we're in a pretty dire situation, regardless of the election outcome.

But obviously Biden is the infinitely better choice, regardless.

 

[Deleted member 8579]

It's not going to be a "last chance" either way. But if the Democrats can't win, and win big at all levels, they can't even set up the temporary walls to protect the various American institutions.

We need to weaken the Republican stronghold on the Senate, we need to protect against gerrymandering during the next redistricting, we need to codify the norms that executive power can just ignore. Those are the bare minimums to protect against a slide into authoritarianism, if we can't get them in the next couple years, it's going to get harder and harder to walk things back.

Click to shrink...

This is the key issue.

Democrats can turn things around but they need all levers and going at lightspeed to change it and not just status quo, long lasting, big changes that don't give Republicans an inch. Voters to need to turn out at every election for eternity, never ever take it for granted.

 

[The Unsent]

I think you could make a pretty strong case that democracy never really "worked" in america in the first place

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The electoral college is like some nonsense card game. You won millions of more votes, but "they're the rules"

 

[Log!]

The country has been utterly broken for a long time, Trump just exposed just how broken it is.

 

[CatAssTrophy]

In the movies where someone's driving a car or a space ship or something really fast so they can barely clear a gap that was closing ahead of them, and at the last second they do....

That's what this election feels like to me, but I don't have any kind of confidence that the ship/car is going to make it in time and not slam into the barrier and explode. If that happens, Trump is going to fully lock down the country from having any kind of effective "democracy" at all. USPS privatized, any/all mail in voting eliminated, poll restrictions, and generally all of the things he's been slowly doing this first term will be cranked up to 11 since the jig is up and he knows he's been found out. There won't be any reason for him to hide his intentions anymore.

 

[Greg NYC3]

Trump isn't the problem, he's the symptom. 35-40% of US citizens genuinely don't care about democracy. So I'd say we're in a pretty dire situation, regardless of the election outcome.

But obviously Biden is the infinitely better choice, regardless.

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A better way to put it is that 35-40% of US citizens thought that democracy was great until it stopped working for them. The GOP has had every opportunity to change with the times and broaden its appeal to win elections but has chosen instead to subvert democracy little by little to maintain their power. If they're able to steal this next election then that's it, there will be no going back.

 

[Haze]

Lmfao what. Idk how you can look at the Dems giving us a Biden/Harris ticket and not seeing this as a worst-case scenario for this election cycle.

Trump is neoliberalism's greatest triumph and even if Biden does win, we'll get another Trump in the next 8 years that will upend any marginal improvements the Dems make and exacerbate any pro-capitalist policy they implement.

Biden/Harris is a shit tier damage control ticket. But how long will the our elections be a harm mitigation decision? Clinton was damage control. Obama was damage control.

We're stuck in a never ending cycle of 4-8 years of fascism and 4-8 years of welfare capitalism. One hand washes the other and nothing changes for more than a few years while thousands of people die.

 

[iksenpets]

It's badly, badly damaged right now, but I think salvageable it's you get a wave election against Trump. But another 4 years of pushing career civil servants out and replacing them with stooges, completing the GOP capture of the courts, and the GOP getting to regerrymander at the state level to better protect their seats against the ongoing suburban realignment seems fatal. Maybe it could still be pulled out. And maybe it's already too late. But a big win now seems the best shot left.

 

[Midnight Jon]

Idk how you can look at the Dems giving us a Biden/Harris ticket and not seeing this as a worst-case scenario for this election cycle.

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genuinely rules how it's august and we still have this tier of take

 

[RecRoulette]

Kind of delusional to think that America was perfect until Trump getting elected spun things out of control.

If anything it just brought to the surface things a lot of folks already knew.

 

[CatAssTrophy]

A better way to put it is that 35-40% of US citizens thought that democracy was great until it stopped working for them. The GOP has had every opportunity to change with the times and broaden its appeal to win elections but has chosen instead to subvert democracy little by little to maintain their power. If they're able to steal this next election then that's it, there will be no going back.

Click to shrink...

Much better way to put it than I did, tbh.

Americans, leading up to Trump, were frustrated with government not working for them, and they wanted a change. They had 3 options: elect someone that will give us more of the Obama years with some slightly improved systems, try to fix the system so it works for them and *everyone*, or completely break it and put someone in power that will just give them the things they want by force.

Enough people were convinced to choose the latter of those and we got Trump. Now that he's been just forcing things to happen for his "team" and they are disillusioned into thinking he's been actually benefiting them, they want more of that. So democracy no longer matters to those people. For the rest of us we seem to overwhelmingly want the system to be changed, but unfortunately we're being given someone who's just going to give us more of the pre-Trump years with a cherry on top.

As people used to say in 2016 and the first few years of Trump that I think needs to make a comeback- "when Trump 'jokes' about things, BELIEVE HIM". When he says he's going to try for "another 4 years", we need to assume he's going to try and remove term limits like his idol Putin. When he talks about locking people up and that some people are terrorists etc, we need to believe he's going to start abducting anyone that speaks out or resists including journalists. Only if we are prepared for his worst would we be able to survive another 4 years of him.

Sorry to be a downer this morning. I'm just very pessimistic right now.

 

[KingK]

I honestly think we'll get there in the coming decades regardless. I don't think it's guaranteed, but the future is looking really, really grim.

I'm really concerned that climate change and the massive migrations of people from the global south that will happen later this century will only accelerate the drift towards fascism that we're seeing already in most Western nations.

Just look at what the Syrian refugee crisis has done to EU politics. Now imagine an exponentially larger refugee crisis that persists for years/decades as vast swaths of the planet (mostly in poor/developing counties) become basically uninhabitable.

 

[Deleted member 7279]

GOP is way off the rails as always and the Democrats are starting to get more cozy with voter suppression so it is pretty much dead regardless

 

[Digital Dinosaur]

The US has been a democracy in spite of its best efforts to not be one.

Trumpism is the most dire assault on democracy so far, but I still don't think the country is destined to descend into permanent fascism and dictatorship. Rather, Trumpism and the GOP are showing us how real the threat is. They are a harsh lesson that America is not special and magical.

The thing is, demographically America isn't really built to become an overall dictatorship. The people who have come to desire authoritarianism because democracy won't result in them dominating are too big to ignore, yet they don't have a path to becoming a majority of the population.

So we are left with a fundamental and seemingly unsolvable divide. America is two countries. One that believes in democracy, and one that increasingly wants fascism so long as fascism keeps one group on top. And these two halves cannot live together. One half will always be pushing to install a new dictator, every single time, in every election.

 

[The Albatross]

It's not truly "the last chance," but our institutions will be completely an utterly broken in every concievable way come 4 years. Gotta give him credit, Trump ran on dismantling the administrative state, and he has done that. I think a lot of people were naive to what a "burn it down" methodology really means.

This cover story from the April issue of the Atlantic is really required reading:

The President Is Winning His War on American Institutions

How Trump is destroying the civil service and bending the government to his will

www.theatlantic.com

And bare in mind, it was written/published basically *before* the COVID pandemic really hit America, so COVID is only a passing mention in a final paragraph.

 

[mbpm]

The last time we had a new hope in a candidate it turned out surprisingly easy to stymie/reverse his changes.

I don't have as much faith with this new ticket either.

But we have a more informed populace now (in the people who have the info). Although we also have a more deranged right wing too. I really don't know so I'll default to pessimism.

Something I heard on a pod was about how the fall of empires isn't often dramatic. It's that things that we as a society always knew were supposed to work, simply don't anymore and that keeps happening. With Republicans focusing on rotting away our organizations they're giving a good shot at it. Some, of course, never worked for people of color.

 

[MonadL]

No I think that ship sailed when Republicans almost unanimously decided not to remove Trump during the impeachment trial. Once Republicans regain power that's probably the ballgame.

 

[Deleted member 31923]

Just realized that November 3rd was not the election date in 2016 like the poll says, it was November 8, 2016. More evidence we need a national holiday for voting day to make it simple.

 

[Kinggroin]

I think we'll have another chance in four years

 

[Hollywood Duo]

No, no matter how bad things can get they can always improve. Look at all the former Soviet countries and Germany for example. They lost democracy for like 40 years but it came back.

 

[Keldroc]

GOP is way off the rails as always and the Democrats are starting to get more cozy with voter suppression so it is pretty much dead regardless

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Knock this absolute bullshit off. What a load of garbage.

 

[bye]

Garbage poll. I'm sorry but we aren't even close to fascism.

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fascism is already here. where have you been

 

[SasaBassa]

This will be it for a generation if it goes to Trump. The thing about proto and eventually full fascism is that it doesn't last forever once the foundation comes undone. The protests will be in every urban centre tired of being ruled by the outnumbered, electoral-college-empowered idiot rural citizens unable to give up racism.

It'll be the end of pax Americana if Trump wins but the silver lining is that democracy will only be dead for 40 years here.

Luckily, we have the ability to very much influence this outcome. Mobilize your asses and your friends asses' and your families' asses, folks.

 

[SpaceCrystal]

GOP is way off the rails as always and the Democrats are starting to get more cozy with voter suppression so it is pretty much dead regardless

Click to shrink...

Stop this, dude.

 

[PeskyToaster]

It's never the last chance until the last person gives up. Trumpism must be defeated and then the work begins. The war against regression and abuse of power will never end but that's the way it has always been. If Germany can recover from Nazism then we can recover from Trumpism.

 

[Codeblue]

It's become pretty clear that our checks and balances don't actually work and half the country will support a facist. Unless Biden takes some dramatic measures to change this, it's only a matter of time.

 

[nightstalker962]

The USPS fuckery is the nail in the coffin. Things are going to get ugly in November if there's no clear winner.

 

[Deleted member 31923]

No, no matter how bad things can get they can always improve. Look at all the former Soviet countries and Germany for example. They lost democracy for like 40 years but it came back.

Click to shrink...

Germany is a good example, but not all former Soviet countries are given that Putin just had another person poisoned and plans to be President for life. Plus, I'm in my late thirties, so 40 years of fascism takes me to the end of my life and is just plain terrifying.

 

[Deleted member 7279]

Knock this absolute bullshit off. What a load of garbage.

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Stop this, dude.

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Democrats do it too. They are just more sneaky about it and want to do it in the primary rather than the general election like the GOP. You have state parties purging registered voters, having incredible rules for switching party allegiance (like having to do it a ridiculous amount of time before the actual primary), and having multiple primaries that all go toward the same general election. All of this stuff leads to people being unable to vote in a primary election or to fewer people participating in the process.

The GOP tactics are super obvious and blatant with ridiculous voter ID stuff, the poll tax for felons in Florida, and closing of polling places, but to say that only one party engages in this practice or that I need to be quiet for bringing it up is not great.

 

[Hollywood Duo]

Germany is a good example, but not all former Soviet countries are given that Putin just had another person poisoned and plans to be President for life. Plus, I'm in my late thirties, so 40 years of fascism takes me to the end of my life and is just plain terrifying.

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Yeah I think it goes without saying it would be terrible.

 

[Midgarian]

American democracy hasn't existed ever. Anyone that thinks otherwise is deluding themselves and is ignorant of American History.

 

[Tbm24]

It's certainly one of its last chances to show it actually gives a shit about it. Genuinely I will be planning my exit from the US if this country fails a second time and re-elects him.