Editor’s note: David Moats, an author and journalist who lives in Salisbury, is a regular columnist for VTDigger. He is editorial page editor emeritus of the Rutland Herald, where he won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials on Vermont’s civil union law.
[A]s midterm elections loom, the stakes grow higher with each passing day, and many voters see the election as a referendum on democracy itself.
But then democracy is always at stake in a democracy. The nation’s history constitutes a struggle that has been continuous from the beginning, with ebbs and flows, victories and defeats, and democratic aims realized only imperfectly.
The threats to democracy took a chilling and extreme turn during the past week with the wave of pipe bombs sent to critics of President Donald Trump. By Friday a suspect had been arrested, but in the previous days authorities had intercepted 13 packages with bombs targeting leading Trump critics, including former President Barack Obama.
Sen. Patrick Leahy’s office issued a statement reminding voters that he has had precautions in effect since 2001 when his office and that of Sen. Tom Daschle were targeted by anthrax sent in the mail. Leahy said on Thursday that the anthrax attack 17 years ago made him “all the more determined to speak out” and that those he has talked with about the recent bombs told him that efforts at intimidation would have “the opposite result.”
Beyond the frightening new reality of bombs in the mail, the list of threats to democracy is long. And if one takes a step back, a broad anti-democracy movement, international in scope and pernicious in its effects, comes into view.
That it is international in scope is evident from Russia’s interference in elections in the United States and elsewhere. But the anti-democracy movement has a long homegrown history. One of its obvious manifestations is the voter suppression campaign that began immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court declared in a case from Shelby County, Alabama, that racism was sufficiently over so that states with a history of discrimination need not obtain federal approval before changing their election laws. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously declared that abandoning a law that had demanded fairness on the grounds that fairness had been achieved was like abandoning an umbrella during a rainstorm because it had kept you dry. As soon as the ink was dry on the court’s ruling, states, including Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, began to explore ways they could put obstacles in the way of black voters.
The voter suppression campaign is a new kind of Jim Crow. Leahy has introduced legislation to restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act. His spokesman, David Carle, noted that in past years renewal of the Voting Rights Act has had broad bipartisan support, but Leahy’s bill to renew the act’s protections has not gained the support of one Republican. It is a sign of the reach of the anti-democracy movement, which this year in close elections could tip the balance. Leahy pointed to the purging of voter rolls in Georgia where the secretary of state is now the Republican candidate for governor.
If anti-democracy is a movement (perhaps it should be called “antidem” to match the “antifa” designation of anti-fascists on the left), how can it possibly be justified? There are always pretexts, such as illusory fears of voter fraud, but the political impetus behind anti-democracy goes deeper. It is twofold. First, there is the deeply rooted bigotry that underlies the fear of African-American equality. Second, there is the cold calculation made by a minority party that it would have to take extraordinary measures to hold onto power.
At the time of the Great Recession, Republicans saw that the failures of their policies and leadership might well consign them to the sidelines for a generation or more. That is what happened to the GOP in the 1930s following the Great Depression. Rather than accept that fate, the party undertook a campaign to undermine President Barack Obama and the recovery he was trying to lead, and it intensified efforts through voter suppression and gerrymandering to cement its hold on power, even when in the minority.
The anti-democracy movement found its champion in Trump, who has degraded politics in the nation through habits of falsehood and intimidation to the extent that calling his statements lies does not even faze him or his party. The truth or falsehood of his assertions appears to be irrelevant to them. Instead, words have become weapons to be deployed against the enemy. And if words are weapons calculated to destroy, then it is not a giant leap until the weapons deployed are actual weapons with the power actually to destroy.
Thus, the pipe bombs. Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin has underscored the importance of recognizing the bombs for what they were: attempted assassinations. We have traveled a long way into the pit of democratic dysfunction when a whole slate of political leaders is targeted for murder. Imagine the chaos and fury that would have been unleashed if Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or any of the others had been killed. And it is worth noting that five of the 11 targeted officials were African-American.
Minority rule and violence are linked in our history. One of the most enlightening books on the subject is Sean Wilentz’s monumental history “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.”
Wilentz shows that, while the Civil War was about slavery, it was also about democracy. The plantation aristocracy that depended on slavery to amass its wealth was a narrow slice of society that could not survive without thwarting democratic rule. America’s struggle in the first half of the 19th century involved not only the question of whether slavery would endure, but whether or to what degree democracy would survive. If the Revolutionary War secured the nation’s independence from Great Britain, it was only the first step toward a system with broad participation serving the dignity of the individual, rather than serving the interests of a tiny class of slaveholders. Thus, the American revolution continued through the Civil War and, 100 years later, through the civil rights movement. It continues today as we determine whether blacks should continue to suffer police brutality and whether immigrants should be treated as second-class citizens. And why was it that Puerto Ricans — American citizens — do not have a vote in federal elections?
Simple mathematics was not on the side of the slave power. In some places blacks outnumbered whites, and during Reconstruction the promise of democracy helped some freed slaves gain elected office. That was before Southern whites managed to impose a new reign of terror on the black population. The new memorial to lynching victims established in Montgomery, Alabama, gives vivid evidence of the violence employed to thwart democracy. It documents more than 4,000 murders over about 50 years, which amount to between one and two lynchings a week. These took place in virtually every county of the South, as well as in the North.
In the same way, mathematics does not favor the Republican Party today. Yet today the greatest friend of the anti-democracy movement could well be public indifference. Will the voters be indifferent to Trump’s unwillingness to guard against Russian interference in the election? Will they be indifferent to the plundering of the public purse and the corruption of public officials working for private gain? Will they be indifferent to continuing assaults against the right of free speech, an independent justice system, scientific knowledge and truth? Will they be indifferent to racism and sexism practiced by the executive and abetted by congressional Republicans? Will they be indifferent to the ignorance and selfishness deployed to thwart action on climate change and many varieties of pollution?
Stories are always written about cynical voters who have decided their votes don’t matter, but during this election season, stories are also being written about the millions of voters hoping to blunt the anti-democratic forces promoted by the president. The enthusiasm gap is supposed to favor Democrats, but the structural impediments to a free and fair election remain. As Nov. 6 approaches, long traditions of oligarchy and demagogy continue to depend on voter indifference. Vermonters are among the most engaged voters in the nation, and many are as frightened as they have ever been about this election’s potential outcome. For many Nov. 6 can’t come too soon.
Democracy is at stake.
