Not many people are interested in looking back at 2020. Fortunately, I rounded out the year with two pieces about what 2020 means looking forward – specifically, for the political future. Both were written more-or-less together in the first few days after the election, but they offer fairly different takes – both from each other and from the conventional wisdom – on what the election meant and where we’re headed.
One addresses how the Democrats fared in 2020 (actually, very badly) and why that may be good for the country’s future. The other concerns how democracy overall fared in 2020 (actually, quite well) yet the future of democracy itself – at least, as generally conceived – bodes ill … but that might not be so bad, either, if we start thinking about democracy differently.
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LOOKING FOR A GREAT PARTY? |
The germ of The Next Great Party System, published on Smerconish.com, arose when I noticed on election night that Joe Biden was faring worse than projected with Hispanic voters not just in Miami-Dade, FL (which had been clear for weeks to anyone following the polling), but also in counties along the Rio Grande in Texas. As more data emerged over the next few days, it became clear that both Biden and Democrats generally did less well with minorities and suburbanites than the party had come to expect. “The usual reasons for assuming a ‘Blue Shift’" in Sunbelt states like Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, I wrote, “are the growth of both the metropolitan and Hispanic populations – arguments also extended nationally to the assumption that the country has an ascendant progressive majority due to both the growing urban/rural split and increasing diversity. Both of those rationales should be given serious reconsideration after this year's election returns.”
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I’ve long argued that Democrats were placing a bad bet by relying on suburban voters as the party’s future – and this election proved that argument correct. Suburbanites turned on Trump personally, more-or-less since they can’t stomach having their children seeing his vulgarity as a role model, but otherwise embraced Republicans for most offices. |
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As I noted in this piece, “most Americans continued to say they approved of Trump's handling of the economy and believed he would do a better job than Biden. … In the end, their economic futures mattered more than Trump's missteps over Covid-19, personality, lies, and social pathologies.”
But what of Democrat’s decline across-the-board with Americans-of-color? I run through several of the ideas suggested to explain this – minorities tend to be more religious and socially conservative than generally recognized, Latin Americans’ distrust of “socialism,” and the attraction of the false machismo of would-be caudillos like Trump – but ultimately settle on a broader problem Democrats have, suggested by a leading GOP-pollster friend of mine: The divide in American politics is now based largely on educational levels, and the resulting perceived elitism of Democrats is turning off working-class Americans of all colors. “A growing, not-insignificant number of Americans of color find liberals' increasing economic elitism and interventionist policies less appealing than a traditional GOP prescription of equal access to a laissez-faire American Dream,” I wrote. “As American culture becomes less fixated on race as a relevant differentiator, it should not be surprising if today's racial minorities become more like the rest of the country, particularly suburbia, in the diversity of their politics.”
While Democrats remain the party of the ascendant and growing demographic groups – a good position to be in – the 2016 results indicate that their position within these demographics is eroding. Not good for Dems – but perhaps better for the country:
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The emerging pivot point in American politics, then, may not be quite what either progressives or Trumpists might want it to be. It will be the moderate voters who reject the attitudes and anger of what has become the Republican base but dismiss what they see as Democrats' big-government answers…. The good news is that this realignment appears to be centered on economic issues, which are more susceptible to compromise than cultural concerns. The bad news is that no-one yet has figured out how to bring together cultural conservatives and cultural liberals to fight for the rights of those dispossessed by the New Economy. Unfortunately, that will be most of us.
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My tenth biennial election analysis, “Il tempo dell’iperdemocrazia” – or, The Time of Hyperdemocracy – appears in this month’s Aspenia. Because you can’t otherwise get this article online (or in English), and it represents my definitive statement as to where I think the world stands today, I extract it here at some length:
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Let me state a bold claim: This is a golden age of democracy.
That runs counter to the conventional wisdom of the last four years that there is a rising tide of authoritarianism sweeping across the globe, and especially the United States…. While authoritarians themselves have been on the ascendance in many countries the last few years – not to mention pre-existing autocrats in others – there also has been widespread democratic opposition in virtually all these countries….
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In fact, while many view as authoritarian the right-wing populist movements worldwide that have helped to elect authoritarians like Trump or worse on almost every continent in recent years, these movements are in fact broad-based, grass-roots, and anti-elite – in short, highly democratic: They’re just not very liberal; there’s a difference.And that points to the crucial issue: It’s necessary to define what is meant by “democracy.”
We have to date defined it too narrowly – as a particular set of political and governmental arrangements. We should view it as something much broader.
Today’s technology is making it possible for a wider range of individuals to obtain essentially what they want, tailored to their own wishes and needs. [All of this is] a reflection of a world in which digital technologies from the Internet to blockchain are increasingly disaggregating, decentralizing, and distributing all economic activities.
In that sense, our economy is becoming much more democratized. Other areas of life are becoming more democratized, as well, perhaps less happily, such as the use of force…. On the other hand, the Cambridge Dictionary uses “[t]he online degree program” as an example of “the purest democratization of education.”
Democratization, in short, is all around us, in virtually every human activity, and rising, thanks to the ascendance of digital technologies.
But it should be clear from these non-political examples that “democratization” doesn’t necessarily mean either liberalization or the defeat of authoritarianism. The democratization of force positions non-state actors as serious threats not only to states but also to other individuals. The democratization of communications media from a mass enterprise to a “social” one has turned out to be, in fact, quite anti-social, empowering individuals to shout down and shut down those with whom they disagree, from trolling to Denial Of Service attacks. The multiplicity of information outlets is undermining authoritativeness – and authority – making it possible for everyone to live within their own perceptual reality, separating us from each other and allowing us to “cancel” those we dislike totally and permanently from our lives; the arrival of widespread virtual reality will only deepen these phenomena. The democratization of most areas of life has not fed greater tolerance or liberal behavior.
Similarly, all the aforementioned technologies have done little if anything to diminish the ancient tension between individualism and authoritarianism…. [T]he serious risk of an authoritarian technology future should not to be dismissed. The leading tech giants tend to monopoly; perhaps most dangerous among these is Amazon, which is essentially “fencing the commons” of the marketplace itself, turning the entire economy into its private property. Big data processing capabilities and the surveillance nature of almost all online interactions make it possible for corporations (and governments) to know you better than you known yourself, to channel and manipulate your decisions. It is arguable that in this not-so-distant future, individual choice will in fact be nothing of the sort.
In all these ways, in fact, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish these private actors from governments – which takes us to the main point: Everything that’s been said so far about every other area of human activity today is equally true of governments…. In this new digital world, territory matters less and less. Not only can services be provided regardless of where the customer is located, but it also won’t even matter where the “government” itself is located.
As governments and their nation-states become less about territorial monopoly and more about competitive service delivery, this will bring increasing pressure from other, better governance providers. Once “customers” can start choosing amongst governmental providers, why not non-governmental providers of such services, as well? Citizens will be able to choose between “communities” for their policies instead of choosing between policies for one’s community.
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In fact, they largely do so already…. Over the last 44 years, Americans have essentially sorted themselves geographically by economics, culture, ideology and politics. The same is largely true in other countries, too.
The result is that electoral democracy hardly matters any longer, except in nationwide votes: State and local elections are largely foregone conclusions. People now choose their governments by moving – to California, say, or Idaho – not afterward in elections.
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The cost of moving – whether people or goods – has been declining throughout history; with digital technologies, it approaches zero. This will make it even easier for people to opt out from (or into) governments as they choose – as with other products and services. This represents a very democratic future – just not in the way we normally think of it. |
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I also recently discussed some of the downsides to all this in another piece, “The Rise of Vetocracy,” mentioned in my last newsletter. Put all these together, and you have the basis for part of the book I’m planning to spend part of 2021 writing; if anyone else ever reads it, you’ll be able to say you read it first here!
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And with that, it’s time to move forward to a new, and better, year for all of us.
As always, I welcome your comments and feedback on my blog.
Best,
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