Remember John Roberts’ logic for gutting the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, which Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared to “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet”? This is very much like that. 2/

Many people in blue and purple states were convinced that American democracy was acutely threatened, made its defense their overriding concern in the 2022 midterms – and it was *just* enough to fight off the assault on the political system and democratic self-government. 3/

That assault, however, is ongoing – the forces behind it and the party that is elevating them got themselves a bloody nose, but they will keep trying; it is still raining. But Shadi Hamid wants everyone to stop worrying and relax. He wants us to throw away the umbrella. 4/

The fact that this brand of utterly uninformed, intellectually inadequate, and historically illiterate commentary still has credibility among centrists and self-proclaimed liberals is one of the main reasons why I remain very skeptical about democracy’s prospects in this country. 5/

What is it Hamid wants? “Democratic minimalism.” We dissected the many flaws of this idea in our recent "Is This Democracy" episode on Reactionary Centrism - an ideology of intellectually empty, anti-“Left” status-quo fundamentalism which he epitomizes. 6/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-this-democracy/id1652741954

Like many of his reactionary centrist brethren, Hamid will occasionally acknowledge there might be a problem on the Right, but is focusing all his energy on the threat from the “Left.” He is obsessed with the idea that democracy has been captured by the progressive / “woke” agenda. 7/

His preferred vision of “democratic minimalism” stipulates that democracy doesn’t – and shouldn’t – entail any substantive commitments: It’s just a set of procedures that produces no good or bad outcomes, just outcomes. He wants to separate the “liberal” from the “democracy.” 8/

At its core, this is just a very empty form of reflexive anti-“alarmism”: “You say democracy is in danger? Well, watch me redefine the term in a way so that it actually isn’t and then declare that things are fine! Ha!” A festival of empty semantics and misleading abstractions. 9/

As many others have noted, even by that empty, hollowed-out definition, Republicans clearly are threatening democracy: They do *not* accept majoritarian rule, they consider the political opponent fundamentally illegitimate and won’t accept the transfer of power after an election loss. 10/

More importantly, democracy absolutely entails substantive commitments. Not specific policy outcomes on taxes or regulations etc. But if it doesn’t mean that political power is derived from, and legitimized by, the people, it means nothing. That idea comes with a ton of commitments. 11/

If you put this in political form, you get a system that respects popular sovereignty by instituting majoritarian rules as well as equality of all citizens before the law and as participants in the political process – not just on paper, but in practice. 12/

Because if you don’t, what you are getting from the political process is *not* popular sovereignty, but the sovereignty of just a specific group of people. It’s true that no democracy has ever lived up to this ideal – but falling short of an ideal isn’t the same as abandoning it altogether. 13/

The difference matters greatly. In practice, all democracies have been restricted, privileging some groups over others; in the “West,” this has always meant privileging white Christian men, leaving traditional hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth largely intact until quite recently. 14/

If that is just what democracy has always been, why is abandoning an ideal that has never been realized a problem? Because defining democracy down to “just procedures, not substantive commitments” would significantly hamper the critique of un-/non-democratic deficits. 15/

The difference is “Democracy has always been, in practice, a system in which traditional hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth were left intact, and that’s a problem we should strive to rectify” vs “…and that’s just fine, stop criticizing.” 16/

In the U.S. case, if we take seriously the substantive core idea of democracy, then it is absolutely a cause for concern that one party does not want to play by majoritarian rules, wants to make it harder for certain groups to vote, wants to subvert the system to entrench minoritarian rule. 17/

This is also why Biden was right to tie the Republican anti-democratic radicalization to the broader assault on the post-1960s civil rights regime in both his democracy speeches in the fall – because the attempt to strip certain groups of fundamental rights is inevitably a democracy issue. 18/

Both the attempts to subvert the political system and the ones to impose conservative social and cultural ideals on the entire country are indeed part of a broader reactionary counter-mobilization against egalitarian, multiracial, pluralistic democracy. 19/

The reactionary vision for America is one of maintaining traditional hierarchies, of 1950s-style white Christian patriarchal dominance in all spheres of American life: the political institutions, the public square, the workplace, the family. 20/

And conservatives understand they are pursuing a minoritarian project. They refuse to moderate, accept compromise, accommodate the will of the majority. They are favoring authoritarian minority rule over the acceptance of democratic defeat instead. 21/

That’s the whole reason why they are radicalizing against democracy: They have a vision which the majority of the country rejects – they refuse to accept that. If you don’t make that connection between the substance of the vision and the system of government, you understand nothing. 22/

I wish people on the reactionary center / center-right who are propagating versions of Hamid’s “minimalism” would just stop pretending they are suggesting anything innovative. We all know what that “minimalism” looks like in practice – that was the norm for most of U.S. history. 23/

Hamid, however, doesn’t know and doesn’t care – his understanding of the past and present is shaped by simplistic myths of American exceptionalism, which is why he’s still confidently talking about this “old, consolidated democracy” being somehow immune to authoritarianism. 24/

But the political system that was stable and consolidated for most of U.S. history was a white man’s democracy, or racial caste democracy – a restricted form of democracy that deliberately left a specific political, social, and economic order largely intact and untouched. 25/

There is nothing old, stable, or consolidated about multiracial, pluralistic democracy in America. It only started less than 60 years ago, and the conflict over whether or not it should be allowed to endure and prosper has dominated politics ever since. 26/

Ultimately, all this reactionary centrist talk about separating democracy from the “woke” agenda only serves to undermine the resolve to defend democracy by obscuring the threat from the Right and ridiculing all warnings as leftwing “alarmism.” 27/

@tzimmer_history

In my 2020 predictions for this decade, I noted that #whataboutism and #bothsidesism were the nuclear weapons of online disinfo. And we've only seen their use increase.

I've also referred to these tactics as the "douchebag's razor." Which is the recasting of any progressive policies, or protection for marginalized groups, (wokeism) as an attack on conservatives.

It's a shrewd move on their part, because giving these policies a broad umbrella name, it helps to consolidate their opposition to them. Instead of having to defend their own douchebaggery, they're on the offensive against progressives.

So far, I haven't seen progressives mount much of an effective defense to these rhetorical tactics.

@kthornton @sean @tzimmer_history

I love the idea that changing things for the better is how you win, but, I think these past two years should put that idea to bed. If most people don't know that you passed bills to make things better it shows that you must *not only* do those things, but effectively "advertise" it by getting out and mounting a defense of those positions as well.