Dangerous cracks in US democracy pillars
www.brookings.edu
The pillars of U.S. democracy—free elections, the rule of law, and anti-corruption efforts—face threats under the new Trump administration.
  • Three of the seven pillars of democracy laid out in the Democracy Playbook 2025—protect elections, defend rule of law, and fight corruption—have been put under acute stress by the actions of the new Trump administration.
  • While there have been resistance efforts from across sectors, such as civil society organizations, media, and state officials, there is a need and opportunity for more efforts to preserve and strengthen the cracking pillars of democracy.
  • crusa187@lemmy.ml
    47·
    5 days ago

    No, you’re wrong to blame voters. It’s the responsibility of parties like the Democrats to campaign and win votes. They are not owed votes.

    Fuck around by aiding and abetting genocide, campaigning with the Cheneys, offering absolutely nothing to the working class, and planning to do nothing different from one of the most unpopular administrations ever - and you’ll find out that people won’t vote for you.

    • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      6·
      5 days ago

      You’re both right to some extent. Both sides are guilty in this. As MLK said, the biggest threat to equality is not the white supremacist but the white liberal who cares more about a negative peace than true justice. If the 50% of voters who never vote did something, we could not only have kept Trump out of office, but we could vote out the corporate Dems who prevent any actual change from occurring.

      At the same time, those corporate Dems keep pushing the right farther and farther into extremism with their strategy of “vote for me because I’m not the other guy” and take for granted that people will vote for them anyway. It’s the oldest campaign strategy out there, because it works, but when you fund the most extremist of your opponents and appeal to the middle, you just end up pushing the entire political spectrum to one side. And that’s exactly what the Dems do. They even go so far as to fund the most extremist candidate in their race to set up an easy win. A lady wrote a book on how she did that, and then she lost to that same extremist in the very next election.

      Protest votes are ineffectual, and so is not voting because at the end of the day, the leaders of the Dems think that they’re safe and the status quo won’t change, and it doesn’t matter whether they got less votes than last time, so long as they’re in office. We need a sweep of radical leftist candidates to shake the very foundations of the party if we expect to see any change.

    • venotic@kbin.melroy.org
      52·
      5 days ago

      Yes I will blame voters still.

      Look, there is no excuse for anyone to not know whether or not they’re being lied to. They had ALL YEAR if not FOUR YEARS to know and work in ways to prevent a Republican take-over. And you know what? They failed themselves once again in catastrophic fashion.

      You don’t really know how elections work, apparently.

      • crusa187@lemmy.ml
        52·
        5 days ago

        Biden did keep one of his promises, to donors: “nothing will fundamentally change.” He delivered on that, and by the end of his term oligarchs and corporations held more power over our system of government than ever before.

        Elections work by campaigning to win, and democrats failed spectacularly on that front. They are not owed votes, that isn’t democracy.

      • EmpireInDecay@lemmy.mlEnglish
        42·
        5 days ago

        Democrats didn’t fail, fail suggests they even tried. Trump, as president, is a direct indictment of the Biden presidency.