Why Are Democrats So Complacent If Democracy Is Dying?

Since the 2020 election, Republicans have been trying to ensure that they can rig the next one if need be. They are actively limiting forms of voting they believe are not beneficial to their chances. They have even removed power from secretaries of state to certify elections. Meanwhile, the Democrats have done a good job of calling out the Republican efforts to usher in a neo-Jim Crow. However, the Democrats' actions have been less than enthusiastic. In fact, their actions seem to imply they're not worried at all and don't believe the Republican efforts are a significant threat to their chances of winning elections in the future. So where is the disconnect? This interview previously aired on Peacock on June 14, 2021. Sam Seder discusses the complacency of Democrats with Luke Savage.

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Sam Seder: Let's walk through this. You know democrats have certainly said prior to the election, prior to the so-called insurrection, that democracy is under serious attack by the republican party. By Donald Trump, I don't really perceive that much of a difference between those two. Give me your assessment of their analysis.

Luke Savage: Sure. One can always leave some room for some kind of hyperbole here, and I'm a critic of a lot of the Democratic politicians that I cite in the piece. But I think that a lot of what they're saying is not exactly wrong in this case. At least if we're talking about the very concerted effort in voter suppression that's going on right now and that has really spiked post-election and has really spiked this year. I'm not sure what the current figures are but the Brennan Center for Justice has been tracking and keeping track of these bills that are being tabled at the state level. Some of which have passed and some of which haven't. You know which have these restrictive characteristics people will be very familiar with: Expanded ID requirements, bans on same-day voting registration, limiting the use of mail-in ballots. Things like that. Things that have historically been done under the auspices of ensuring fairness. Ensuring the sanctity of ballots and things like that. But everybody knows are really efforts to suppress the vote. This really spiked. There was a 43 percent increase between I think the sort of the third week of February and I think and March the 24th. A 43 increase in these kinds of bills. So you have the suppression bills but then furthermore you have other bills which really try to enshrine in law the ability of state-level parties, in this case, Republican parties, to overturn the results of elections they don't like. So it hasn't passed, but there's a bill in Arizona on the books right now which would make it possible for the legislature to essentially overturn the secretary of state certification of electoral votes by a simple majority. So no 60 thresholds, nothing like that, by a simple 50 plus one majority. And so in the piece I was interested in exploring the, I think, pretty profound disjuncture between the kinds of things that liberal politicians, even quite centrist ones, have been saying about this stuff, which I think is largely accurate. They've talked about it being an existential threat to Democracy. The parallels have been drawn to Jim Crow which I don't think is unfair. Of course, there's a deep history of these kinds of efforts targeting black Americans in the south and trying to limit the franchise and limit the expansion of multi-racial democracy. But while Democratic politicians are saying that kind of stuff, I don't think they're acting in a way that is even remotely proportionate to what that kind of rhetoric demands. And so that's really the contradiction I was trying to explore in the piece. The crisis is real but it seems to me Democrats are not acting as if they actually believe it's real.