It's pretty clear that the voting rights act is dead, partly due to Biden's inaction as this article shows. And still the soft left, including DSA, simply in effect relies on Biden to hold back the growing threat. And the "hard" left simply pretends the threat doesn't exist. In action, they are just the same as the soft left. This growing threat will also strengthen these same far right, nativist forces in Europe.
June 9, 2021 at 8:04 a.m. PDT President Biden is traveling to Europe, where he will make a rousing case that the rebounding United States is prepared to lead the global struggle between democracy and autocracy. Biden has been consulting “How Democracies Die,” which he sees as a seminal text illuminating this struggle. Meanwhile, Biden is taking a hands-off approach to Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on voting rights. The president has reportedly not urged Manchin to reconsider his opposition to his party’s sweeping package of voting reforms or to ending the filibuster, which probably dooms it. This juxtaposition signals a deep tension. Biden has spoken searchingly about the extreme right wing authoritarianism on the march in this country and the serious dangers confronting our democracy. But it’s not clear how seriously he takes his own rhetoric on these matters. Biden’s trip to Europe comes as the United States is sending conflicting messages about the durability of liberal governance and democracy. A New York Times analysis neatly sums this up: Mr. Biden, who will arrive for a series of summit meetings buoyed by a successful vaccination program and a rebounding economy, will spend the next week making the case that America is back and ready to lead the West anew in what he calls an existential collision between democracies and autocracies. Our disastrous response to covid-19 raised serious questions about our state capacity and ability to solve large public problems. But now Biden will cite the success of the vaccine rollout — and passage of a huge economic rescue package — as evidence that liberal democratic governance can deliver, if fitfully. But how credibly can Biden act as a spokesman for democracy itself? The Times piece reports that some European observers fear the forces unleashed by former president Donald Trump’s takeover of an already-radicalizing GOP could easily recapture power, not just by winning the 2022 and 2024 elections, but by doing so largely through anti-democratic means: “They have seen the state of the Republican Party,” said Barry Pavel, the director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at The Atlantic Council. “They’ve seen Jan. 6. They know you could have another president in 2024.” As the Times reports, European officials “note that Mr. Trump’s grip on his party is hardly weakening.” Biden himself hopes to cite those governing successes as proof points for U.S. democracy’s durability. As a Biden adviser told the Wall Street Journal, he’ll argue that democracy is proving it can “still deliver” in a “way that people will feel.” But the Journal also reports that Biden wants to go further in promoting democracy abroad: Mr. Biden’s views, aides and associates say, have been influenced by the book “How Democracies Die,” by Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, which warns that democracies frequently break down through a steady weakening of institutions rather than a government overthrow. As it happens, Levitsky and Ziblatt are among the 100 leading democracy scholars that recently signed a powerful statement arguing that U.S. democracy is in serious trouble. As they argued, escalating Republican efforts in many states to entrench minority rule and capture election machinery for potentially nefarious purposes threaten severe democratic backsliding and even more egregious manipulation of future elections. Without passage of sweeping democracy protections such as those in the For the People Act, the scholars say, those Republican efforts will “call into question whether the United States will remain a democracy.” Yet despite all this, Manchin told Politico that Biden has not yet privately leaned on him to support these reforms. And there’s no sign Biden has urged reconsideration on the filibuster. To be fair, it’s unclear how much direct pressure on Manchin would accomplish. But Biden’s long history as a Senate institutionalist would give him the credibility that might prevail upon Manchin. Either way, as Ron Brownstein documents, we just don’t have a clear sense of Biden’s urgency here. So I asked Ziblatt, who co-authored Biden’s cherished book about democracy, what he thinks Biden should do. Ziblatt noted that Biden appears driven by a “theory that if the economy recovers and covid is under control, this will take some heat out of the rage of the radicalizing right.” That’s consistent with reporting, noted above, that Biden will say recent governing successes demonstrate liberal democracy’s rebound. But it’s not enough. “Changing the rules is critical to compel Republicans to begin to behave as a fully democratic political party,” Ziblatt told me. “The first rule that needs to change is the Senate filibuster. This is the choke point that prevents all other reforms.” This radicalization is appearing at both the elite and mass levels. In addition to GOP entrenchment anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic tactics everywhere, many GOP candidates are openly campaigning on the notion that election outcomes need not be respected as legitimate. That tendency is visible throughout the party. Meanwhile, a polling roundup from William Saletan shows large swaths of GOP voters believe the election was stolen from Trump and are relieving him of responsibility for inciting a violent effort to disrupt his democratic removal from power. That comes as GOP lawmakers are concertedly burying the truth about their party’s implication in that outbreak of mass political violence. Biden seems conflicted on these matters. In his inaugural, he forthrightly depicted violent right wing radicalization as a severe threat to democratic stability. But when Republicans were purging Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for urging her party’s deradicalization, Biden sounded disoriented and mystified about the GOP’s true nature. If Biden is taking his own democracy-versus-autocracy framing seriously, that means fully grappling with the threat at home. “If they’re not successful in protecting voting rights in the United States,” Ziblatt told me, “it obviously puts us in a very weakened position to make the case for democracy globally.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/09/biden-europe-trip-vaccine-rollout-manchin-voting-rights-gop/ -- *“Science and socialism go hand-in-hand.” *Felicity Dowling Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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