America's Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent

[PSPS]

America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent

Trump was ineffective and easily beaten. A future strongman won’t be.

Zeynep Tufekci
Contributing writer at The Atlantic

Now that Joe Biden has won the presidency, we can expect debates over whether Donald Trump was an aberration (“not who we are!”) or another instantiation of America’s pathologies and sins. One can reasonably make a case for his deep-rootedness in American traditions, while also noticing the anomalies: the early-morning tweeting, the fondness for mixing personal and government business, the obsession with ratings befitting a reality-TV star—the one job he was good at.

From an international perspective, though, Trump is just one more example of the many populists on the right who have risen to power around the world: Narendra Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, my home country. These people win elections but subvert democratic norms: by criminalizing dissent, suppressing or demonizing the media, harassing the opposition, and deploying extra-legal mechanisms whenever possible (Putin’s opponents have a penchant for meeting tragic accidents). Orbán proudly uses the phrase illiberal democracy to describe the populism practiced by these men; Trump has many similarities to them, both rhetorically and policy-wise.

He campaigned like they did, too, railing against the particular form of globalization that dominates this era and brings benefit to many, but disproportionately to the wealthy, leaving behind large numbers of people, especially in wealthier countries. He relied on the traditional herrenvolk idea of ethnonationalist populism: supporting a kind of welfare state, but only for the “right” people rather than the undeserving others (the immigrants, the minorities) who allegedly usurp those benefits. He channeled and fueled the widespread mistrust of many centrist-liberal democratic institutions (the press, most notably) —just like the other populists. And so on.

But there’s one key difference between Trump and everyone else on that list. The others are all talented politicians who win elections again and again.

In contrast, Trump is a reality-TV star who stumbled his way into an ongoing realignment in American politics, aided by a series of events peculiar to 2016 that were fortunate for him: The Democrats chose a polarizing nominee who didn’t have the requisite political touch that can come from surviving tough elections; social media was, by that point, deeply entrenched in the country’s politics, but its corrosive effects were largely unchecked; multiple players—such as then–FBI Director James Comey—took consequential actions fueled by their misplaced confidence in Hillary Clinton’s win; and Trump’s rivals in the Republican primaries underestimated him. He drew a royal flush.

It’s not that he is completely without talent. His rallies effectively let him bond with his base, and test out various messages with the crowd that he would then amplify everywhere. He has an intuitive understanding of the power of attention, and he played the traditional media like a fiddle—they benefited from his antics, which they boosted. He also clearly sensed the political moment in 2016, and managed to navigate his way into the presidency, though that probably had more to do with instinct than with deep planning.

The rest: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/trump-proved-authoritarians-can-get-elected-america/617023/

[DBoon]

1. We may not be so lucky next time

[unblock]

2. Yup. All the ingredients for the next dictator are still in place

And the next one will look far superior to donnie and therefore will be much harder to defeat.

[marylandblue]

3. We are fortunate our first populist was Trump.

He is a warning. We have some to fix our society now. I hope we can.

[colsohlibgal]

4. Work To Go For Sure

We need to work toward trashing the Electoral College. Minus that no Trump. The Senate is the other anomaly.....places like Wyoming, Idaho, Montana...with populations less that many cities, getting the same two Senators as States like NY and California with populations larger than some Nations.

So much seems tilted against us, it’s like climbing uphill all the time.

Of course the other problem is social media manipulation.

[PatrickforO]

5. I'm complete with you on this.

Colorado voters upheld the National Popular Vote Initiative on November 3, which was great. With any luck enough state legislatures will pass similar legislation, and enough governors sign it into law to finally do away with that relic.

As to the Senate, it is simply ridiculous that a WY Senator represents 500,000 people, while one in CA represents 20 million. That's just totally imbalanced.

[marie999]

10. May be unconstitutional without approval from Congress.

Constitution Article I Section 10

[PatrickforO]

11. I would be confident moving forward that courts will uphold it.

States all have the ability to manage their electors and tell them how to vote. We are perfectly within our rights, as states, to tell our electors they must vote in accordance with the national popular vote.

But, we'll see, because I'm sure it will be challenged.

[marie999]

13. Do you really think The Supreme Court would find it constitutional?

[PatrickforO]

14. I am not a legal scholar, and it depends on how the attack on its constitutionality is set forth.

I actually looked into this to formulate this answer. This link is my source: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-xii/interps/171

My take on this thing, now that I've read this, is that the Constitution is silent on the relationship between the states and the electors, EXCEPT to say that states shall choose the electors. Nothing about the criteria of choice though - but we get one for each representative and our two US Senators, but the legislators themselves cannot be electors.

So, how the states choose the electors is the crux here. The precedent set is that several states, like my own state of Colorado, take a 'winner take all' approach where the electors are obligated to vote with the majority of voters in Colorado, not the nation.

This link has a really good state by state discussion on this issue: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/the-electoral-college.aspx.

After reading the two links above, my own opinion (and I'm an economist as opposed to being a lawyer or judge) is that the states can tell the electors to vote the way the state legislature says to vote. But, of course, I might well not be correct on this, particularly with today's post RBG Supreme Court.

Note that the NCSL link has a link to the National Popular Vote initiative for further discussion.

Sorry I couldn't be definitive here, but again, I was a staunch supporter of getting NPV signed into law in Colorado, and Colorado voters in fact upheld that November 3, which gratified me no end. The Electoral College is a holdover from slave days that should not be continued. But again, that is my opinion.

I believe this WILL be challenged in court when enough states pass it to circumvent the 12th Amendment.

Cheers!

[appalachiablue]

6. More from the article above:

> "The Supreme Court is solidly in their corner; they will likely retain control of the Senate; House Republicans won more seats than they were projected to; and they are looking at significant gains in state Houses as well, giving them control over redistricting for the next decade. Even better for their long-term project, they have diversified their own coalition, gaining more women candidates and more support from nonwhite voters.

And they have at their disposal certain features that can be mobilized: The Electoral College and especially the Senate are anti-majoritarian institutions, and they can be combined with other efforts to subvert majority rule. Leaders and parties can engage in voter suppression and break norms with some degree of bipartisan cooperation across the government.

In combination, these features allow for players to engage in a hardball kind of minority rule: Remember that no Republican president has won the popular vote since 2004, and that the Senate is structurally prone to domination by a minority. Yet Republicans have tremendous power. This dynamic occurs at the local level, too, where gerrymandering allows Republicans to inflate their representation in state legislatures.
..And it won’t be easy to make the next Trumpist a one-term president. He will not be so clumsy or vulnerable. He will get into office less by luck than by skill. Perhaps it will be Senator Josh Hawley, who is writing a book against Big Tech because he knows that will be the next chapter in the culture wars, with social-media companies joining “fake news” as the enemy.

Perhaps it will be Senator Tom Cotton, running as a law-and-order leader with a populist bent. Maybe it will be another media figure: Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan, both men with talent and followings. Perhaps it will be another Sarah Palin—she was a prototype—with the charisma and appeal but without the baggage and the need for a presidential candidate to pluck her out of the blue.
Perhaps someone like the QAnon-supporting Representative-elect Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who first beat the traditional Republican representative in the primary and then ran her race with guns blazing, mask off, and won against the Democratic candidate, a retired professor who avoided campaigning in person. Indeed, a self-made charismatic person coming out of nowhere probably has a better chance than many establishment figures in the party..

[Thekaspervote]

7. Can we please remember that this authoritarian was meant with the largest number of votes

Any candidate ever received...EVER! Despite the enormous but unknown amount of cheating.

Republicans everywhere turned against this kind of rule, Dems will not fall for it again. Dems went for dotard because he was an unknown, others stayed home because they didn’t like HRC or complacency. A strong dem candidate will chew up and spit out the likes of Tom cotton or ted cruz. one has already proven to do poorly on the national stage out of his deep red state. Tom cotton has never truly been on the national stage...sure he’s won in Alabama...so

This kind of article is just so defeating! As if we have no power. I think we just proved otherwise...or did I just dream it...NOT!

[marie999]

12. Republicans turned against Trump, not that kind of rule.

We may be lucky that Trump is the way he is. If he was more adept at being president and a human being, maybe not enough Democrats would have voted against him or even voted.

[vercetti2021]

8. Well that's depressing

Can we enjoy our victory?

[pfitz59]

9. "Flyover country" airwaves are dominated by Hate Radio.

All those hicks in their tractors, combines and big-rigs are fed a steady diet of "Libtard" hate. They also go to church in small towns with rabid anti-"Communist Socialist Radical Atheist" preachers. The poor suckers are bombarded with this shit 24/7. cradle-grave. Until we are able to bring back "The Fairness Doctrine", and be willing to enforce it, a large segment of the nation will be unreachable. Even now millions of Americans are only hearing that the election was a "fraud" and Biden cheated!