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American democracy dodged a bullet in 2022
Were fears about US democracy in peril being overblown?
No, and in fact we're underestimating the danger, says Tom Nichols, a staff-writer at The Atlantic and author of the book "Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within On Modern Democracy."
"Election deniers and various other cooks and weirdos almost took over state offices," he tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, "and they're all coming back for another bite of the apple in 2024.”
For Anne-Marie Slaughter, former US State Department official and now CEO of New America, the main takeaway from the US midterms was Gov. Ron DeSantis's huge margin of victory in Florida and the many Trump-backed candidates who lost big. Both outcomes have massive implications for 2024.
Will the former POTUS beat DeSantis to win the GOP presidential nomination? Nichols, who used to be a Republican, puts Trump's odds at 60-70% and says he's amazed that some people question President Biden running again. It wouldn't be a debate for most other presidents.
Watch the GZERO World episode: On Russia’s reckoning, China’s vulnerability & US democracy’s Dunkirk
On Russia’s reckoning, China’s vulnerability & US democracy’s Dunkirk
2022 started and ended very differently for Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky.
Putin has gone from all-powerful to global pariah. Zelensky from untrustworthy former comedian to TIME magazine's Person of the Year.
It's one of the oldest lessons in the history books: political power can be fleeting.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer looks back at 2022 and forward to 2023 with two frequent guests of the show: former US State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter and The Atlantic contributor Tom Nichols.
Lots to talk about: Ukraine, the state of American democracy, and Xi Jinping's rocky year.
Does Russia still have game after its disaster of a war in Ukraine? Did US democracy dodge a bullet with the unexpected result of the midterms? And has walking back zero-COVID humbled Xi on the year of his CCP coronation?
Podcast: Not infallible: Russia, China, and US democracy with Tom Nichols & Anne-Marie Slaughter
Listen: From the largest European land invasion since World War II in Ukraine to the essential “coronation” of the world’s most powerful person in Beijing, to one of the biggest political comebacks for Democrats in Washington, 2022 has been quite the year. Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America, and Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic, join Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast to look back at the remarkable power shifts of 2022 and what it might mean for the year ahead.
Were fears about US democracy in peril overblown or justified? Did China's Xi Jinping gain more power, or was his regime "cut down to size" when the zero-COVID policy finally caused massive protests? Russia's invasion of Ukraine upended the geopolitical balance around the world, but where will the war lead - especially if Putin really has no endgame?
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.- Podcast: Can the US get its act together? Susan Glasser & Peter Baker on "the world’s greatest geopolitical crisis" ›
- Podcast: What US midterms tell us about the state of US democracy ›
- Podcast: Examining Putin: his logic, mistakes, and hope for Ukraine ›
- Podcast: Tom Nichols on Biden’s “boring” presidency and a narcissistic nation ›
- Disinformation the “biggest threat” from Russia – Anne-Marie Slaughter ›
- Podcast: Russia's view of the Ukraine war: a Kremlin ally's perspective - GZERO Media ›
Democracy is resilient - but so is authoritarianism around the world
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a happy Monday to you. Time for a Quick Take to kick off your week. I thought I would talk about the state of democracy.
Of course, over the course of the last 10 years, there's been so much discussion of the world becoming more illiberal, lower case that more people in the world are living under authoritarian regimes or mixed governments, hybrid governments than living under pure democracy. In part because authoritarian states are growing more powerful, in part because some democracies, including the United States, are watching their systems, their institutions erode and watching their political leaders become de-legitimized.
Is that now changing? Over the last few weeks, we've seen a United States midterm election that certainly did not appear to be a win for election deniers, and Donald Trump is doing worse than he has. But you also see demonstrations, major demonstrations, a lot of people that are angry on the streets in some of the most powerful authoritarian regimes around the world, Russia, Iran, and even China. I will say that all of those developments are welcome, but the importance that they have in terms of the political systems themselves are widely varied, and I wouldn't overstate them.
So starting with the authoritarian regimes, I think Russia is in very serious trouble, but I don't see a lot of instability internally at all. The trouble that Russia's in is that their military is being soundly defeated by a much smaller country with a lot of support from NATO and a lot of their people are going to be suffering economically very heavily, not just this year, but for the foreseeable future. The demonstrations in Russia have been very small, they've been sporadic, and they've largely been stopped. First round of demonstrations at the beginning when the war was announced, a couple thousand people arrested, most of them let go. Then a few hundred thousand people were called up on mobilization a few months ago. And you saw more demonstrations, another few thousand arrested, and all of them almost let go.
The interesting thing is that there were almost a million Russians that got out of the country when they announced that mobilization and the Russians kept the borders open. Why would they do that? Well, in part because a lot of those people are not so happy about the Russian regime, and I assume the Russian government was just as happy to see them out of the country, but there's really not a lot of instability politically inside Russia.
So Russia as a country's losing power, they're becoming much less influential on the global stage. Putin is getting humiliated and angry, but there's no proximate threat to the authoritarian regime. And Putin were removed, it's not like Russia's going to become a democracy. It would be run by another kleptocracy of military and national security elites that also hate the West. This is not Khodorkovsky suddenly coming back from his exile or Nemtsov coming back from the dead.
In the case of Iran, that's the one place that I would say has the greatest possibility of regime change. Though the most likely kind of regime change if it occurred would be for the theocrats to be forced out by the Revolutionary Guard Corp, the IGRC. And if that were to happen, there would be some liberalization of religious and social norms, absolutely. But it would still very much be an authoritarian state, kind of between Pakistan and North Korea, as opposed to an open democracy. Now, I mean, there's a tail possibility that the people are effective in rising up and they're able to overthrow the entire regime. That would be an enormously bloody thing, but it would ultimately be fantastic for the Iranian people. I wouldn't be betting on that outcome right now, even though I think we'd all like to see it.
And then there's China, and in the case of China, there's really no political instability. The demonstrations that were talked about widely in the West were very small in China, and there's been zero repeat of them despite the fact that there's still quite a bit of lockdown and quarantine going on across China, and that's because the ability of the Chinese government to assert control to fully surveil their population and to threaten and arrest anyone that is seen to fall afoul of that is incredibly high.
And the general support level for Xi Jinping in the Communist Party, given the economic capabilities they've displayed over the past years is also relatively high. You put those things together, and surely there are a lot of Chinese, especially in places like Shanghai, that are educated, wealthier, that would love to see more liberties for Chinese citizens. But the idea that the Chinese government is not long for this system, I think, is a canard. That's not going to happen.
So I'm very cautious about overstating the fact that there are people that are courageous, that are willing to express their anger at very deeply repressive and not always particularly well run regimes. But that doesn't mean that democracy suddenly is on the agenda for any of them, frankly.
I'm more optimistic about the United States, but in part that's because I've been more optimistic about the United States. Back in 2020, even in the heat of January 6th, my view was that the likelihood of a successful coup was zero. And the reason for that is because no one from the military would support it. No one from the judiciary would support it. And even when Trump called his own party supporters in charge of elections in states like Georgia and Arizona said, find me some votes, they didn't. And the reason they didn't is because it was against the law, and they weren't prepared to do that.
Now, of course, that's also why you got a majority of Republican legislators in the House on the evening of January 6th voting against certification of the election because they recognized there was no chance of a coup, so they didn't feel like they had a big enough problem they needed to deal with. Even after the events that day, they were focusing more on their jobs. Now, if the midterm elections in the US had returned a large number or even a small number of election deniers that could directly oversee key elections in states, in swing states, as governors and secretary of state, then I couldn't have said that 2024 would have no chance of a coup. Democracy would have been, even if it's only a low risk, in a more existential danger. That's no longer true. They all lost. Trump's also much weaker than he has been historically. I don't have confidence that Trump can't get a second nomination, but certainly it's looking more challenging.
A lot of people are going to be running against him. Even someone like Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who pledged that she would not run if Trump was running. Trump's now running. She's now thinking about it. Why? Because Trump looks vulnerable. And so as a consequence, everyone's stepping up to take a shot. It's true. A lot of people aren't willing to name his name when they're criticizing him. It's more oblique. But after January 6th, Kevin McCarthy was heading right down to Mar-a-Lago to stand with him and show his loyalty. He's not doing that this time around.
So for all of those reasons, I think that democracy is not particularly threatened existentially. It's not as weak as a lot of people have been presuming for very different reasons on the left and on the right. But nonetheless, I think ultimately the resilience American system remains very high. Unfortunately, the entrenchedness of authoritarian systems around the world that have been gaining over the past years also remains very high.
That's it for now. Talk to you all real soon.
- The two biggest threats for democracy in the 21st century ›
- US votes as democracy is under attack ›
- Is the war in Ukraine a fight for democracy itself? ›
- Authoritarians gone wild ›
- The politics of resentment & how authoritarian strongmen gain power ›
- Authoritarianism’s enduring appeal: Anne Applebaum discusses ›
Top US national security threat: the myth of the stolen election
David Sanger knows a thing or two about national security. After all, it's his beat at the New York Times.
So what does he think is the biggest threat to America's national security right now?
An "insider threat" to the stability of the election system coming not from Russia, not from China, and not from North Korea. The biggest menace is Americans willing to engage in political violence, Sanger tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Watch the GZERO World episode: US threat levels from foreign and domestic enemies
- US political violence increases; Democrats seek Jan 6 ... ›
- Democrats hope to use Jan 6 Trump focus to gain edge in midterms ... ›
- The Graphic Truth: Dem/GOP voters' very different views of Jan 6 ... ›
- US threat levels from foreign and domestic enemies - GZERO Media ›
- US national security depends on domestic progress - GZERO Media ›
Overturning a US election ain't that easy
With Midterm Matters, we are counting down to the US midterm elections on Nov. 8 by separating the signal from the noise on election-related news.
A leading concern for many American voters on the left is that many candidates on next Tuesday’s ballots say the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. That’s not just because they find that opinion indefensible and willfully dumb; it’s because some of these candidates are running for offices that give them access to the processes by which future elections will be held and votes counted.
Noise: The stats are out there. A study by FiveThirtyEight found nearly 200 office seekers “fully deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election.” More than 60 others have publicly raised questions about it, and many more refuse to say what they believe.
These aren’t fringe candidates. FiveThirtyEight’s 2022 midterm election forecast says “116 election deniers and eight election doubters have at least a 95% chance of winning” seats in the US House of Representatives.
At the state level, where presidential elections are conducted, seven election deniers are running for attorney general and seven more for secretary of state. These are the officials who oversee election administration in most states. A secretary of state can refuse to certify an election. A governor can try to submit electoral votes that favor his party’s candidate, and senators and representatives of that party could then vote to count those fake electoral votes.
Signal: These are serious concerns, and the candidacies of election deniers bear close watch. But we shouldn’t oversimplify the processes by which elections are conducted and votes are counted and reported.
There are many people involved in oversight of each state’s elections, and disputed results can be resolved in court — as all of former President Donald Trump’s charges of fraud in the last election were resolved. We should also not assume that every candidate who cries fraud to win votes today will actively seek to overturn elections tomorrow.
The upshot: The election of candidates who cried fraud at the last election is a serious issue we’ll be tracking for the foreseeable future. But no one should pretend it will be easy for anyone to overturn the result of an American election.
DC journalists Susan Glasser & Peter Baker join Ian Bremmer on GZERO World
With just a few weeks remaining before the deeply consequential 2022 midterm elections in the United States, Ian Bremmer speaks to two of Washington’s top reporters in front of a live audience in New York City. This special episode from the fifth season of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer features DC power couple and co-authors Susan Glasser, Washington columnist for The New Yorker, and Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. They discuss their bestselling new book, "The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021," the upcoming US midterm elections, and the state of American democracy in 2022.
Follow @gzeromedia and watch the interview on US public television starting Friday, October 21 (check local listings), or on gzeromedia.com.
Opinion: January 6 failed but the threat to U.S. democracy is far from over
Opinion: January 6 failed but the threat to U.S. democracy is far from over
The select congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol kicked off a series of public hearings last Thursday to make the case to the American people that former President Donald Trump was directly involved in a violent and coordinated attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Already the initial proceedings have made two things clear, a stark reminder of just how divided and dysfunctional our political system is.
The first conclusion is that Donald Trump enthusiastically pushed the “big lie”—the debunked conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from him—even when he should have known it was false, that he was at the center of a systematic effort to unlawfully stop the transfer of power and overturn the election, that he deliberately encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol, and that he did little to stop the violence that predictably ensued, even going as far as expressing approval for chants to “hang Mike Pence.”
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In short, the former president was indeed responsible for the events of Jan. 6, in my view constituting the gravest violation of the oath of office by any president in the history of the nation.
Fortunately for us, Trump’s moral turpitude was hamstrung by his incompetence. The main reason January 6th failed to overturn the election and subvert the democratic order is not that the former president lacked the will or the power to do it—it’s that he was bad at it.
But while Jan. 6 failed, it still caused lasting damage. The event shattered democratic norms, fueled tribalism, deepened our crisis of truth, normalized political violence, delegitimized our system of governance, and pushed us closer to democratic failure than we’ve been since the failed election and constitutional crisis of 1876. Recent polls show that majorities of Democrats and Republicans doubt the other party will accept negative election results in states they control in the future, and 64% of Americans now believe US democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.”
The second conclusion is that the political impact of the January 6 committee will be next to zero, convincing few who hadn’t made up their minds in advance and having little effect on the electorate other than deepening their pre-existing feelings about Trump. Much like the two impeachment proceedings of the former president, this process is also broken and hyperpolarized—not along ideological partisan lines but along the Trump sympathy-antipathy axis.
The committee is actually bipartisan in the traditional sense of the word: it includes both Democrats and Republicans and is vice-chaired by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), a bona fide conservative who has voted with former president Trump and with the Republican Party more than 90% of the time.
But polarization in the United States today is driven by feelings toward Trump more than it is by party affiliation. And although the correlation between the two is high, it is far from perfect. My own antipathy toward Trump, for instance, has nothing to do with him identifying as a Republican and everything to do with him being unfit for political office. My views of Trump as a human being were equally negative when he was a Democrat!
This disconnect will render the committee moot. It doesn’t matter how conclusively it is able to prove that the former president tried to subvert American democracy; if half of the country doesn’t buy into the legitimacy of the committee in the first place, nothing at all will change.
That’s dangerous.
January 6 was the result of decades of growing anti-establishment sentiment boiling over, a product of declining equality of opportunity, of a weak safety net that lets so many of our fellow citizens fall through the cracks, of political institutions that are widely seen as rigged, and of the wholesale loss of faith in the system’s ability to self-correct. Trump or no Trump, those conditions are still present and growing.
That’s why there’s every reason to think something resembling Jan. 6 can and will happen again in the future. Two-thirds of Americans see the events of that day as a harbinger of increasing political violence rather than an isolated incident. More young Americans than ever now say they would support a political revolution even if its ends were violent in nature, and most people expect the upcoming presidential elections to involve violence regardless of who wins.The same can be said for the two Republican members of the committee, Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who often agree with Trump on policy issues but are nevertheless transparently and deeply anti-Trump. That’s why you’re not hearing any dissenting opinions in the hearings or seeing any efforts to defend the former president’s actions. Not even Fox News—the only network not to carry the June 9 prime-time hearings live—is trying very hard to defend him, instead choosing to not focus on the issue at all.
That’s obviously not the case for the rest of the country, which remains massively divided over the issue. Far from repudiating the events of Jan. 6 and Donald Trump for his role in them, polls show that the Republican base has embraced Trump, excused the insurrection, and doubled down on the myth of the stolen election, with three-fourths of Republicans refusing to hold Trump accountable, 58% believing Biden is an illegitimate president, and 40% saying violence against the government can sometimes be justifiable.
If we don’t get serious about fixing our social contract and our politics, the next time someone tries to overturn an election—and there will be a next time—they may actually succeed.
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