Prospects
The Confrontations Are Coming BY PAUL STARR
T
his spring has brought relief and hope—relief from the nightmare of the past four years and hope for the pandemic’s end and genuine progress in meeting the challenges of economic insecurity, climate change, and racism. Still, I can’t shake the sense that this is just a temporary respite from the country’s recurring crises of political gridlock and rightwing reaction. Donald Trump may be stewing in Mar-a-Lago, but Trumpism remains an undiminished force in a Republican Party that dominates key states and may soon be back in control of at least one house of Congress. With a 6-3 majority, the Supreme Court’s right wing is in a stronger position than at any time since the mid-1930s to overturn progressive policies. In Arizona, Republicans are conducting a partisan recount of 2020 ballots that looks like a rehearsal for stealing future elections. The confrontations are coming with the red states, congressional Republicans, the high court, and Trumpism itself, and the question will be how, if at all, Democrats can overcome them. In his first hundred days, Joe Biden has given his party a fighting chance to do that. He’s responded to the country’s immediate crisis with two skilled rollouts—the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations and the rollout of his domestic
4 PROSPECT.ORG MAY/JUN 2021
agenda, starting with the passage of the American Rescue Plan’s stimulus package and continuing with his ambitious proposals for investment in infrastructure and families. By front-loading big, popular ideas and framing them as a means of proving democracy works and competing with China, Biden has simultaneously moved left and co-opted appeals of the right. As Harold Meyerson writes in this issue, “Wrapped in the armor of both egalitarian nationalism and liberal democracy, Bidenism bids fair to have wider appeal than any defining Democratic ideology since, perhaps, the New Deal.” Biden’s armor is partly his persona as an older, white, Catholic man who projects moderation even as he calls for liberal priorities. But he has also shown a keener strategic sense than most people previously gave him credit for. Republicans responding to his policies have seemed flat-footed, stuck in culture-war poses that don’t work as a way of taking him down. He has also kept Democrats largely united behind him; in the early going, he has combined his dual roles as the leader of the nation and his party more successfully than any recent Democratic president. But despite his promising start, Biden faces severe limits from the fragile Democratic majorities in Congress and a Trumpified Republican Party that is in a panic about a
changing electorate and determined to use such power as it has to block Democrats from material accomplishments. Conservative parties that see danger on the horizon typically resort to two formally legal strategies to entrench themselves. One is to change electoral rules; the other is to use counter-majoritarian institutions, principally the courts, to limit what elected opponents can do. Republicans currently have two bastions of power in state governments and the Supreme Court, and they are leveraging those control points in a two-pronged entrenchment strategy—passage of restrictive electoral rules in the states and reliance on the Court to box in and roll back Democratic policies. (There’s also a third, more radical prong: the Trumpian claim of a stolen election and denial of Biden’s legitimacy, the predicate for rigging elections outright.) The push by Republicans on the first prong has already begun in Georgia, Arizona, Florida, Texas, and other states where they are enacting measures to suppress voting by Democratic constituencies and to seize control of the counting of ballots. Republicans hold the advantage at the state level. They control both legislative houses and the governorship in 23 states, while Democrats have trifectas in only 15. The redstate trifectas also give Republicans an edge in gerrymandering
electoral districts in the wake of the 2020 census. If Democrats had done better in Senate elections in 2020 instead of just squeaking by with 50 seats, they might now be sure of passing the federal voting rights and electoralreform bills H.R. 1 and H.R. 4, which would override the state voter suppression measures and require the establishment of independent redistricting commissions. But unless Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema change their minds, the filibuster stands in the way. Perhaps some voter suppression measures can be defeated in court, but if the outcome depends on the Supreme Court, most will probably survive. That’s not to say Democrats are doomed. Some of the Republican efforts could backfire; they could also fail if they serve as a wake-up call to progressives about the urgency of local organizing. But the organizing will succeed only if people believe that voting Democratic makes a real difference, which is why Biden’s early success on policies this year and next is so important. The obstacles to Democrats’ retaining control of Congress in 2022 can appear overwhelming. Not only does the president’s party nearly always lose House seats in midterm elections; midterm turnout tends to be disproportionately low for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and younger
