Bearing in mind that this administration won the election and a lot of what they are doing is more-or-less what they campaigned on, I'm not sure democracy is at risk.
One can pick around the details, but for example with regard to the firings, voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening.
This is essentially democracy in action. Yes, the voters may come to regret their vote, yes they likely didn't understand what they were voting for, but that's the flaw in democracy we're aware of.
Is this what everyone wants? Clearly not. But democracy is about majority rule, not consensus.
When an election is canceled then one can talk about democracy dying.
But right now, Americans are just getting what the majority voted for. They may not necessarily like it, but they voted for it. And the lack of reaction by Republicans in congress suggests that they feel the best way to be reelected is to go along with it.
Like if or not, the "democracy" part is working well.
This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy.
Democracy had a bad reputation in the ancient world, because unconstrained majority decisions often led to terrible outcomes. In the modern world, democracy usually means liberal democracy, which includes things like the rule of law and constitutional protections. As a rough approximation, a constitution exists to prevent the government from doing what the voters want.
A constitution in itself a worthless document, and the checks and balances have no power. The power comes from conventions. Conventions on how the constitution should be interpreted and how the people in power should act within the constitutional framework. If too many people ignore the conventions and interpret the laws and regulations literally to their advantage, democracy will die. It died in the Roman Republic, and it has died in many modern republics. Plenty of authoritarian states maintain nominally democratic institutions. And many of them became like that in a way that was at least nominally legal.
Ultimately the checks and balances are also elected. Directly in the case of congress, indirectly in the case of the judiciary. (Mitch McConnell obstructed merrick garland and was rewarded for it.)
Of course unrestrained majority decisions lead to terrible outcomes. This is well understood, and has been demonstrated over and over recently (think Brexit.)
Democracy is objectively a flawed system for this reason. It has never promised to deliver the best, or even good, government. It is what it is.
I agree, this is a literal interpretation of democracy. It is "the will of the people". I'm not sure that anything else could still be even called a democracy.
> This is well understood, and has been demonstrated over and over recently (think Brexit.)
That is a matter of opinion. Most of what is terrible about Brexit is "the media hate it". Economic outcomes have been in line with comparable EU countries so the promised "project fear" disaster (e.g. the Treasury prediction of a collapse of the economy in the wake of a vote for Brexit - not even on implementation) did not happen.
One thing Americans don't seem to realize is that the current constitution needs to be rewritten once we get out of this mess. One of the consequences of dictatorships is that they deform the constitution for their purposes. It seems that republicans have done enough to deform the system in an irreparable way.
* Drop the electoral collage
* Proportional and/or preferential voting
* Term limits/retirement ages
* An independent electoral organisation with real teeth to prevent gerrymandering (and verify the election)
* Free and easy voter IDs (if ID are ever required)
* All election days are public holidays, with requirements to allow workers on the day to vote
* Compulsory voting (works in AU)
* Minimum number of polling booths per X people
* Absentee voting
* Changing to a parliamentary system where the president is a figurehead
Agree with many of these. But changing to a parliamentary system would make the GOP even stronger: they won the House popular vote in 8 of the last 13 elections, including comfortably both in 2000 and 2016.
But there is no such thing as an “independent electoral organization.” The Framers never credited the idea of an “independent” body that could be trusted to be somehow “above politics.” That’s why the constitutional government is like a game of rock paper scissors. Everything can be checked by everything else.
But the power Musk holds isn’t the result of him being rich, it’s because he has a populist cult of personality. The candidate who spent twice the money lost the election. Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers.
>Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers.
From Gallup [0]—top issues among all registered voters:
The economy
Democracy in the U.S.
Terrorism and national security
Types of Supreme Court justices candidates would pick
Immigration
Education
Healthcare
Gun policy
Abortion
^^Taxes
Crime
Distribution of income and wealth in the U.S.
^^The federal budget deficit
Foreign affairs
Situation in Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians
Energy policy
Relations with Russia
Race relations
Relations with China
Trade with other nations
Climate change
Transgender rights
^^Items under which "firing all federal workers" could conceivably fit, and that's a massive stretch. Still, even with that generosity granted, they're 10th and 13th on the list.
The thing is, the current situation is "more control by credentialed elites". Way more than at any point since at least WWII. It’s just that the elites are oligarchs who kneeled before Trump. He is the only one giving credentials.
Musk isn’t a credentialed elite—someone who holds power by virtue of attaining credentials to run an organization or institution with regulatory power. Musk holds power by virtue of having a populist cult of personality.
The credentialed elites are the Ivy League graduates who go work for government and do things like have the SBA make loans to minorities that white people aren’t eligible for: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/court-rules-biden-admin-di.... They’re the ones who see, for example, immigration and affirmative action as moral causes—even though most voters oppose both—and have injected those ideas into all our government programs, corporate HR, etc.
What happened is that a plurality of voters decided that they’d rather have billionaire industrialists in charge than the Ivy League pencil pushers.
Not sure how a "rewrite" would even work. Our current constitution does not have any provisions for discarding it and starting over. The amendment process requires too many states to agree for any sweeping changes. (We couldn't even get enough states to pass something as simple and seemingly uncontroversial as the equal rights amendment before it expired.)
And I think this is -- at least for now -- actually a good thing. Because if we could rewrite the constitution, I suspect it would be rewritten by the same kind of people who wrote the Project 2025 playbook.
Sarcasm aside, I'm seeing a lot of wackiness on both sides of the political spectrum lately. The Constitution is fine and provides provisions for changing it via amendments. You guys aren't involved in the political process at all, I caucused and was a delegate so I can tell you the system is fine and working as intended. Don't complain about it if you aren't even involved in the process. That just makes you look silly.
> This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy.
Attempting to run a democracy in a non-literal way seems like a recipe for disaster.
That seems to imply that citizens get to cast a vote and have their voice heard...unless those in charge decide the citizens don't know what is best for them.
As a country we picked Trump. For better or worse we made that bed and we now have to lie in it.
Folks on the left would do well to remember that the same unelected bureaucracy that declared “resistance” to Trump would destroy an AOC or Sanders presidency too. Ultimately, it’s a good thing if electing the President can effectuate drastic changes in the executive branch, because that’s the only real lever voters have for affecting the largest and these days most powerful branch of government.
To the contrary, in a modern, diverse country, it’s not tenable for the same people to keep running the government in the same way regardless of who wins elections. That was okay when we had a more homogenous, slower-changing country with widely shared values. That’s untenable today.
Engineering, statistics, science: these things do not change every four years. How to dig a trench or survey a boundary does not change. How to conduct clinical trials, combat disease, deliver mail: these things do not change.
What is not tenable today, or ever, is firing the people with these skills every four years and re-hiring replacements, to the extent that this happens at all, based on ideological tests.
This was a huge problem in the first Trump administration: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-burea.... Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now? If that’s genuinely the case, then there’s a place for the idea of a neutral civil service. But I don’t believe that’s the case, and that’s an unacceptable state of affairs.
> Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now?
Yes - every lawyer I’ve met considers it their professional obligation to work on their client’s behalf, even if it’s behaviour they personally disapprove of. This is especially true in government where the merit-based civil service is centered on following laws and policy.
Biden didn’t have those scary-sounding “mass immigration policies” - he asked Congress to pass much-needed reform but limited his actions to what was authorized under existing law.
Lawyers are highly political, as we saw during the Trump administration. The ABA, for example, has been peddling completely absurd ideas, like that rhetoric Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified.
The ABA is part of the merit-based civil service now?
Your second link supports my point: there were changes between administrations but many of the people who worked for Trump also worked for Biden, and they followed the policies given by the current president. That’s the role you accept in that job, trying to interpret those policy directives under the various applicable laws, and everyone who applies to be a civil servant knows that this can mean big changes from administration to administration.
> Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now?
This is precisely what lawyers do. They try to make the best argument for their client's case. If they do not want to make that argument, they let their client find a new lawyer (resign, if they work for the government). They don't make a shitty case because they think their client is wrong. (That being said, they cannot lie without professional repercussions.)
P.S. There were no mass immigration policies under Biden. You have been misinformed.
Government lawyers absolutely failed to represent the Trump administration as aggressively as they did the Biden administration. There are reports of political appointees having to follow PACER themselves because staff lawyers weren’t keeping them up to date on cases.
And yes, Biden enacted mass immigration policies. Revoking Trump’s EOs was one of the first things he did: https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_biden-signs-executive-orders-r.... He also granted TPS to hundreds of thousands of immigrants, created the CBP One app to facilitate illegal immigration, etc.
There's a good argument to be made that the role of bureaucracy in our government is to intentionally slow down change and even out the peaks and valleys as administrations change.
I'd be worried about the Chesterton's Fence problem when removing bureaucracy simply because we don't like that it gets in our way.
That’s not a role the framers ever envisioned, and it’s a bad thing to have in a democratic system. The government should be responsive—voting should result in visible changes to the government. A lot of the current polarization is due to the fact that people have been voting against globalization since 2008 and somehow we keep getting more of it. It’s dangerous in a democracy for voters to perceive that elections are just a suggestion to the bureaucracy that actually runs the country.
It’s also incorrect to assume that the bureaucracy averages out to the same place as the public. Public support for increasing immigration, for example, peaked at 35%. It’s never been popular. But we have been getting more of it for decades: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
That's a tough comparison to make. The framers lived in a drastically different world with regards to the size and scope of the federal government.
They design a federal government that was purposely hamstrung by the states. It was poorly funded, had no standing military, only briefly had a federal bank, and had very limited purview of authority that didn't fall down to the state level.
If we want to remove bureaucracy while also rolling back many of the federal powers created over the last century or so I'd be all for it.
Removing one without the other either seems pointless (bureaucracy without authority) or risky (authority without bureaucracy) in my opinion.
The "deep state" is just a scapegoat for stuff people don’t like or understand. It’s a way to dodge real issues. There’s no secret conspiracy—just a lot of people doing their jobs in a messy system.
The "deep state" is also used to refer to the relatively small number of unelected people who make some of the most impactful decisions on society with no voter input.
I don't know that I've ever actually heard someone talk about the "deep state" to refer to career bureaucrats just doing their jobs in large government orgs / a messy system.
I don't see how your reply is related to my comment.
I was not defining democracy. I was describing the common real-world usage of the term, which has a more specific meaning than simple majority rule. It is commonly used as a shorthand for "liberal democracy". Some Americans use "republic" for the same concept, but that's misleading in other ways. Partly because some countries that are commonly understood to be liberal democracies are constitutional monarchies. And partly because some actual republics (such as North Korea or the member states of the former USSR) do not match the concept particularly well.
I was also not talking about any specific constitution, but constitutions in general. They all come with implicit and explicit assumptions that must hold, or the system will not work as intended. If some entities are supposed to function as checks and balances to each other, they are expected to remain independent. If they choose to collude instead, nobody is capable of stopping them if they decide to twist the constitution beyond recognition or outright break it.
I said that a constitution on its own is worthless. That means a constitution cannot enforce itself. There must be some people who are capable and willing to enforce it. But if they are capable of enforcing the constitution, they are also capable of breaking it. Which means there must be other people capable and willing to act as checks and balances. And so on. The system may work as long as those people act within the expectations, complying with both the spirit and the letter of the constitution. But if they reject the expectations and start looking for loopholes to take advantage of, they may find some. If that becomes too common, the constitution becomes worthless, because the people who are supposed to enforce it no longer believe in it.
I think he took issue with your framing that democracy is interpreted. Judges don't interpret "democracy", that would be silly. Judges interpret the law.
I do agree with the general gist of the point you are making however. The Constitution itself holds no special power, it is the State's monopoly on violence that does.
If you vote, but your votes don't matter, you aren't a democracy. You are a democracy when your votes meaningfully influence policy. In that sense, we aren't even a democracy right now.
It's worth considering that Russia has elections too. They aren't meaningful for many reasons. Real opposition candidates might be assassinated, or a candidate might be run with the same name to confuse voters, etc.
Gerrymandering and unlimited campaign contributions are prime example's of how "It's all about how he comes to power" is correct, but your conclusion is flawed.
"In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they
saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same
thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways,
to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a
man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and
bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they
wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The
form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it
doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult
Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of
scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential,
because the planes don’t land."
America follows the apparent precepts and forms of democracy, but we are missing something essential because votes don't influence policy.
There is much more to the idea of democracy than voting.
The federal executive also doesn't set budgets, or choose which congressionally mandated departments will be open today, yet it's 2025 and it is doing exactly that. And back in 2020, it was conspiring to send fake electors to cast votes for itself, and to fix vote counts in Georgia. (Which you seem to think is also not a responsibility of the federal government, but the courts have called it an official, unprosecutable act, so here we are.)
Why do you think that a government that is not bound by the need to follow the law, and has already demonstrated malicious intent will... Actually follow the law?
I mean, to the degree in which I expect there to be an election in 2 years, and 4 years, I suppose that counts as optimism.
I've not seen any indication that elections themselves are under threat. Given that elections would happen at state level anyway (and absent disbandment of congress) those elections would elect senators and representatives. Which in turn have the power to remove a president.
So yes, I see nothing to suggest that elections themselves are at risk.
They've fired the people responsible for combating foreign interference operations (CISA), have positioned the FBI and DOJ to investigate political adversaries, and have set up the military to follow unlawful orders. Buckle up. I will be surprised if we have free and fair elections, if we have them at all.
If all but the most bubbled media have been brought to heel by billionaire owners or threats and the ordinary voters, the ones who sat out the last election or thought it was about the price of eggs, are exposed only to authoritarian-friendly propaganda, I don't have a lot of hope for the next elections.
> The state election board and a Donald Trump-appointed federal judge have dismissed Griffin’s argument that the missing information should invalidate votes.
The protests you speak of have already been dismissed (the last link in the quoted section).
Seems like the system is working as intended, even under ostensibly adversarial conditions?
> voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening.
Except that this is completely false. These haphazard cuts are a miniscule portion of the federal budget, even assuming they don't incur a whole bunch of second and third order costs. The exact same administration doing those is going to burn literal orders of magnitude more money on tax cuts for billionaires, border security theater, and other corrupt nonsense. Federal finances were in bad shape a year ago and are going to be absolutely horrid a few years from now.
Oh, I agree, finances are going to be poor. But these departments cost a lot more than salaries, so firing everyone does save real coin.
And it plays very well with an electorate who wants to see "big changes". That thr changes will hurt them is the point missed by most.
Killing federal departments also plays well with those encumbered by red tape. If there's no CFB there's no one getting in my way to treat customers badly.
USaid buys (bought) a lot of food from US farmers , so in effect that subsidy is going away (without the bad press). The money "going to Ukraine" was being spent at US munition suppliers, so really, it'll hurt those suppliers.
> they are doing is more-or-less what they campaigned on,
He campaigned on bringing prices down and exacting revenge. So far failing on the former and going strong on the latter.
This administration has made it clear that they think that the current President should have the power of a king, and the reign to match. We're in uncharted waters and there's rocks ahead.
I mostly agree. Trump is behaving in a way that's consistent with his prior rhetoric.
Where I disagree is that there may have been an expectation that the systems outside of "The President" would have stood up for themselves more, offered more resistance and slowed him down more. The slow-moving of government is (was though to be) it's own protection to some extent.
I'm not sure what evidence suggests that Republicans in congress would grow a spine to resist this. Conversely the evidence since 2016 suggests they actively applaud it.
The voters have voted out any congress people who resisted, sending a clear message that they want this path.
This may not be the pretty side of democracy, but it is democracy.
My point above (which I see is being downvoted) is not thst I see this as "good" , but rather that I see it as democratic. Everything going on is literally because the people voted for it. The stacking of the Supreme Court, the obstructionist behavior in congress, the tolerance for (Trump) crimes- this has all been rewarded, not penalized by voters.
If democracy is the will of the people , then what you see seeing is the power of that will.
Except it’s not really democracy. You have gerrymandered districts. You elect a leader not by who gets the most votes, but who wins a system that was designed for the benefit of white slave owners.
And of course, who really believes the election results when you have Trump saying that Musk rigged some voting machines in his favor.
Face it, the US no longer creates its government from the collective will of its citizens. They’ve replaced politicians with corporate backers for the actual corporations themselves.
Ugh, please stop calling this a "mandate". You don't have a mandate when you weren't even able to secure 50% of the total votes, and your main opponent only trailed you by a percentage point and a half.
I think if Biden had decided up-front that he wouldn't seek re-election, and the Democrats had been able to field a real primary, Trump may not have won. Instead we had an old man making blunder after blunder during his campaign, followed by a not-all-that-popular replacement that no one selected through the primary process, who only had a few short months to put a campaign together. Frankly I think it's impressive Harris did as well as she did.
Trump specifically disavowed Project 2025 when he ran and now is embracing it. He never said he was going to put an unelected billionaire in charge and disregard the Constitution.
> And the lack of reaction by Republicans in congress suggests that they feel the best way to be reelected is to go along with it.
They are worried about getting primaried and their primary opponent being financed by Musk.
He disavowed project 25, but it was written by all his inner circle, and he hired them into govt. So, if the voter believed him, well duh.
Musk was a big part of the inner circle before the election. His track record is well known.
In other words everything that is happening was predictable and predicted. Voters knew what they were voting for. Those who are surprised really weren't paying any attention.
> everything that is happening was predictable and predicted. Voters knew what they were voting for. Those who are surprised really weren't paying any attention.
The voters were kept away from these predictions. They were too spicy for mainstream media, not mainly because the media are in Trump's pocket (except Fox, OANN -- all the explicit propaganda outfits), but because people shoot the messenger when the messenger delivers bad news. They like hear about bad news afflicting other people. If it afflicts them, if it triggers their anxiety, they think, "You've made me feel bad. This is unpleasant. I'm going to go look at pictures of puppies and kittens."
Voters could not have known that Trump would make a concerted effort to do anything unconstitutional. This is nothing like he did his first term or any other Republican has ever done.
He is going after departments that are conservative darlings like the Defense department. I can’t remember any serious person saying we need to cut spending and fire people at the FAA.
If he had thought that voters wanted Project 2025, why would he disavow it during the campaign?
> Voters could not have known that Trump would make a concerted effort to do anything unconstitutional
Trump literally said that he would be a dictator on day one. I heard tons of interviews with Republicans saying they'd be ok with Trump acting like a dictator.
Republican voters knew Trump would do unconstitutional things, and they liked it.
Wasn't Doge floated before the election, with Trump embracing the idea?
Regardless, Trump has made a living as a (slimy) business man. No one should have heard his campaign speeches and taken them at face value.
He didn't even have to be lying at the time, he could have simply changed his mind. The man seems to be driven only by two motivations: his family and making deals. The first one is often seen as admirable or honorable, the second means you'll do whatever it takes to negotiate a situation where you're better off by whatever metrics matter to you (usually money and status).
Family is an interesting one, given five kids across three marriages, so the 'thought' is admirable and honourable, but he's unable to live up to it - which kind of educates us as to his ability to live up to his word, or his ability to deal with difficult situations calmly and rationally.
And having Musk alongside him entirely destroys the family angle (media-prop children aside).
That really depends on your view what the "right" setup for a family is. Historically that's a husband and wife with their kids, but that isn't the only approach by far.
My point there was only that he does seem to actually care about and love his family, especially (maybe mostly?) his kids.
Trump specifically ran saying he didn't agree with many of these plans.
His actions are consistent with cheaper federal government but not smaller federal government. Just a centralized executive government that does what he says.
The method is simple: say what you need to to get approval, do what you always wanted to do after you get it.
See also Kennedy walking back his anti-vaccine positions to get crucial votes out of Republican senators in committee and then promptly revealing he is still anti-vax.
So when he makes comments about at third term and claiming even more power... how consistent do you think that is with smaller federal government or continuing democracy?
Trump ran on saying whatever to whomever. his intentions though were obvious. He ran on cutting spending by 2 trillion. Where did people think this was going to come from? He ran on ending red tape. He ran on reducing regulation.
These days folk getting approved by the senate just have to show up. No one believes RFK when he says he's changed his mind on vax. I mean, these guys are lackeys, not stupid.
Democracy is about letting people who have no understanding, who pay minimal attention, who are easily led by media and populism, choose who should be in charge.
It is working as designed.
Do we need a better system? I'd argue yes. But all the others are worse.
If the population votes him a 3rd term, If they vote for congress who supports that- that is democracy. The people will get what they vote for.
We are literally seeing what "govt by the people" looks like. This is not democracy dying. It's democracy showing its flaws.
I'm not happy with the situation, but I agree with almost all of what you've said.
> Do we need a better system? I'd argue yes. But all the others are worse
I think there's a lot of room for improvement here. Eliminate the senate. Dramatically expand the house. Eliminate the electoral college. Sane district boundaries. Etc.
Perhaps the Democrats should consider letting their voters choose the candidate for once instead of anointing it. Nobody wanted Clinton except the DNC establishment, and then they lied about Biden until he was forced aside for Kamala at the behest of insiders.
> Perhaps the Democrats should consider letting their voters choose the candidate
Maybe Biden didn't want to go and it took time and pressure. They couldn't put together a primary by the time he did.
Did they lie? Probably. If Biden didn't want to go saying "the president is senile" would have helped Trump win.
Either way it doesn't matter. Trump was the candidate who lied (and still is lying) about widespread election fraud, not to mention tons of other lies that have become so numerous I'm numb to them.
Voters had a choice, Trump or Harris. Which is better (or which is the least worst option)
One can pick around the details, but for example with regard to the firings, voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening.
This is essentially democracy in action. Yes, the voters may come to regret their vote, yes they likely didn't understand what they were voting for, but that's the flaw in democracy we're aware of.
Is this what everyone wants? Clearly not. But democracy is about majority rule, not consensus.
When an election is canceled then one can talk about democracy dying.
But right now, Americans are just getting what the majority voted for. They may not necessarily like it, but they voted for it. And the lack of reaction by Republicans in congress suggests that they feel the best way to be reelected is to go along with it.
Like if or not, the "democracy" part is working well.