This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
The current moment may be the biggest threat to the Georgian Dream since the initially came to power in late 2012. The demonstrations on the streets of Tbilisi and other Georgian cities have been precipitated by the foreign agent law but they reflect a much larger disgruntlement with the Georgian Dream government.
The MAGA movement is a profound threat to American democracy, but the movement gains a lot of strength from enablers who see it as an opportunity to enrich themselves and who understand that Trump’s supporters, particularly the most extreme, are easy marks. If somebody can be persuaded to follow Donald Trump, then they can be sold pretty much anything.
Despite the tough road ahead for Haley as she tries to become her party’s nominee for president in 2024, she brings a combination of youth, energy, media skills and accomplishment that are unmatched by any major Republican politician looking at the race. However, there is little reason to believe this is anything more than a better presentation of the angry, grievance based messages that have been the handmaiden of the Republican Party’s efforts to weaken American democracy since 2016.
The most important task confronting American, and Chinese, foreign policy is to avoid a war between the two countries. This is so obvious it should not even need to be said, but so few in the American media or political class are saying it
Since the midterm elections, something just short of a consensus has formed that Ron DeSantis will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. It is also assumed that along the way he will defeat Donald Trump and prevent the former president from winning a third straight Republican presidential nomination. This consensus is in part due to both smart Republican strategists, and there are still some, as well as center and center-left pundits, observers and journalists, wanting to believe it, albeit for totally different reasons.
As the 2024 election approaches, we will hear much more from Ron DeSantis. His sterling educational resume and reputation for having a sharp intellect will be part of that narrative. There is ample reason to believe that DeSantis is a smart man, but that only makes him more responsible for the terrible and deadly decisions he made in the face of a global pandemic.
The Speaker’s vote was personal, pitting one not very popular right-wing Trump apologizing congressman against a series of even less popular right-wing Trump apologizing congressman. The stakes were low enough that opponents of McCarthy could drag the process out and keep demanding more because they had so little to lose. McCarthy ultimately won and when it comes to legislation, will use his Speakership to do, well, nothing.
A substantial group within the Republican Party is obsessed with Hunter Biden and somehow thinks that if he is exposed the entire Democratic-Biden-Harris edifice will come crashing down. That is the fevered fantasy of MAGA loyalists, but it has slowly taken over the party.
Regardless of who precisely is dying of Covid, the numbers demonstrate that it is still a very big problem in the US. However, Americans across the political spectrum seem to have arrived, through some combination of their own health, Covid fatigue or perhaps Covid discourse fatigue, at the untrue conclusion that Covid is over. It is now at the point where to mention Covid or a suggest that you or somebody else take a Covid related precaution is socially awkward, like making an off-color joke at a cocktail party.
Sinema has spent the last several years in the senate trying to pass egotism off as independence and obstruction off as common sense. She has also developed a relationship with powerful and conservative donors that would be troubling for any politician, particularly a Democrat.
In other words, despite Kevin McCarthy’s record of obsequiousness to Donald Trump going back several years now, a significant chunk of the Republican Party believes McCarthy is too moderate, and insufficiently loyal to Trump, to be Speaker of the House.
In the half century since Dan White’s murderous actions, a lot has changed in San Francisco. George Moscone’s progressive vision for the city has faded as tech money has made a powerful mark there. However, the scars of that day have never fully healed and were reopened when the Pelosi’s home was attacked.
There is thus a very real possibility that contrary to all evidence, and logic, the lesson the GOP will take away from this election is that they were not sufficiently pro-Trump. That sounds absurd, but that is today’s Republican Party.
The midterm is indeed an inflection point for the American political life, but not simply because the electoral stakes are so high.
Most of us have seen the slogan “democracy is not a spectator sport” on t-shirts and more frequently bumper stickers.This is meant as a reminder that in a democracy all of us should participate, primarily by voting, and that is the way we can make a difference. There is a great deal of intuitive appeal to this slogan. It is difficult to argue with the notion that everybody should vote or that participation is an important part of democracy.
Unfortunately, in the US democracy is increasingly a spectator sport. The primary reason for this is not just that voter turnout is lower in the US than in many other democracies. Rather, the American political system turns most voters into spectators in large part due to our unusual electoral system. Many Americans live in places where elections for the House or Representatives, the Senate, statewide offices and state legislatures are not competitive.
The current electoral fight for control of congress demonstrates this dynamic. The coverage of the US senate elections this cycle has focused on the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and New Hampshire. Those are the states where elections for the senate are expected to be close, but there are 26 other state that are having elections for the senate this year. New York, California and Florida, states that together are home to almost one in four Americans are also having senate elections, but nobody is paying any attention because Senators Schumer, Padilla and Rubio are expected to be reelected easily. A similar dynamic exists in the House of Representatives where there are about 50-60 seats that are expected to be competitive, but at least 350 seats where one or the other of the two major parties will win easily.
One result of this is that while the US remains a deeply divided country, it is not, from an electoral perspective, experienced that way by most Americans. For millions of Americans, Democrat and Republican, left or right, shortly before a midterm election all we can do is vote in our own uncompetitive elections, cheer on our party from the sidelines and, if we are fortunate enough to have some extra money, contribute to our party’s candidates in other states. This feels a lot like a spectator sport. It’s like going to a baseball game. We watch, we cheer and if we have a bit of money, we can get better seats, but the Yankees aren’t calling on me to pinch hit. However, given how poorly they played in the playoffs, that might not have been such a bad idea.
Among the causes for this situation is the American people sorting themselves by party, ideology and geography, gerrymandering that limits the number of competitive districts and many American states becoming dominated by one of the other parties. However, lack of competitive elections is only one of the problems that grows out of this. A bigger problem for American democracy is that this paucity of competitive elections means that in a very meaningful way, for most people most of the time, politics are not participatory. This is extremely disempowering and ultimately leads people to seek solutions elsewhere. In the summer of 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, leading several states to almost immediately pass laws taking away the right to reproductive freedom. Several more states are likely to follow. Activists, furious about this decision, took to the streets in places like New York and San Francisco, heavily Democratic cities in states which will continue, and even strengthen, their commitment to allow women to make their own decisions about their bodies.
In the aftermath of those events, progressives were once again told how important it is to vote because of issues like abortion rights. Similarly, earnest voices are telling us that to protect American democracy and stop election deniers from gaining more power, it is imperative that we vote. However, many, perhaps most, progressives live in places where their votes don’t matter because elections are not competitive. In that context, lectures about the importance of voting sound like a weak but cruel joke.
As the crisis of democracy in the US persists, relegating most American voters to the role of spectators, cheering for their party in faraway states and occasionally sending money to candidates in places they may never have even visited, only makes things worse. There is no doubt that the coming midterms will have a major impact on country’s future, but if we want to strengthen democracy and give more voters the feeling of having a meaningful role in elections, we need to explore reforms to our democracy like multi-member seats, party list systems and the like. This would directly benefit any one party, but at crucial moment in American history it would return millions of American citizens to the role of participant rather than spectator.
The lines between domestic and international affairs have never been blurrier than they are now. Nowhere is this clearer than in the complex and increasingly hostile relations between the US, Ukraine and Russia. As the world watched the battles in Ukraine, we should not overlook the enormous impact electoral battles in American states like Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio next month and in 2024 will have on the future of Ukraine.
These two developments may seem to have little to do with each other, but taken together they present a very bleak picture of where the Republican Party, and the MAGA cult from which it is largely indistinguishable, are taking the US. If the Republicans continue to get their way, this will be a country where migrants are wantonly sent from state to state so ambitious politicians can boost their poll numbers and fundraising, but women who cross state lines will become targets of suspicion. That is a right-wing dystopic vision that would impress even the most cynical reader of Orwell or Atwood.
There is no precedent for the President of the United States giving a major speech warning of the threat of democracy being undermined by domestic forces aligned with a major political party, but that is precisely what President Joe Biden did on September 1st. The threat Biden identified is real. While there is value in alerting Americans to the danger that, to use Biden’s phrase, MAGA Republicans, pose to American democracy, Biden’s speech will do little to ameliorate that threat.
The Alaska race is particularly significant because a prominent celebrity with ties to Trump lost in a solidly Republican state. The rank choice system in Alaska provides some insight into the race. It turns that the votes for third place finisher Nicholas Begich, a Republican from a prominent Democratic family, did not go to Palin by enough of a margin to defeat Peltola. This suggests that animus towards Palin was a driving force in the election. That cannot be good news for candidates like Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania or Herschel Walker in Georgia. Both are, like Palin, c-list celebrities with strong ties to Trump and little knowledge of government. Palin’s defeat is a sign both that the Democratic Party may be in better shape that it seemed a few months ago, and that candidates matter.
The Trump fever is not going to break. The MAGA cult, which constitutes a significant minority of the American people is not going to wake-up from a now more than seven-year infatuation with Trump and return to what once passed as normal American politics. Similarly, the leadership of the GOP is not going to finally break with Trump and ask themselves why it took so long. The moment for that to happen came and went years ago.