JOEL KOTKIN: Disillusioned with democracy
Left-leaning authors often maintain that conservatives hate democracy, and, historically, this is somewhat true. The political Right, maintains the progressive economist and columnist Paul Krugman, has always been uncomfortable with democracy.
But today its progressives themselves who, increasingly, are losing faith in democracy. Indeed, as the Obama era rushes to a less-than-glorious end, important left-of-center voices, like Matt Yglesias, now suggest that democracy is doomed.
Yglesias correctly blames the breakdown of American constitutional democracy on both Republicans and Democrats; George W. Bush expanded federal power in the field of national defense while Barack Obama has done it mostly on domestic issues. Other prominent progressives such as American Prospects Robert Kuttner have made similar points, even quoting Italian wartime fascist leader Benito Mussolini about the inadequacy of democracy.
Like some progressives, Kuttner sees the more authoritarian model of China as ascendant; in comparison, the U.S. and European models the latter clearly not conservative seem decadent and unworkable. Other progressives, such as Salons Andrew OHehir, argue that big money has already drained the life out of American democracy. Like Yglesias, he, too, favors looking at other political systems.
This disillusionment reflects growing concern about the durability of the Obama coalition. In 2002, liberal journalist John Judis co-authored the prescient The Coming Democratic Majority, which suggested that emerging demographic forces millennials, minorities and well-educated professionals, particularly women would assure a long-term ascendency of the Left. This view certainly fit in with the rise of Barack Obama, who galvanized this coalition.
Judis now, however, suggests that this majority coalition, if not dissolving, is certainly cracking. In his well-balanced article, The Emerging Republican Advantage, he notes that, even as the white working class shifts ever further to the right, so, too, have a growing number of college-educated (but not graduate level) professionals. In 2014, millennials voted Democratic, but that edge over Republicans was 10 points less than in 2012. White millennials went decisively Republican. The Latino margin favoring Democrats dropped, while Asians, who strongly favored Obama in his runs, seem to have divided their votes close to evenly.
Alternatives to democracy
Ideologues like elections, when the results go their way, but not so much when they lose. This was true for some right-of-center intellectuals who recoiled against the Clinton presidency and among GOP House members who impeached him for his sordid, but basically irrelevant, personal affairs. Even today, some conservatives believe we may be entering Republican end times but even then, few would suggest scrapping the Constitution itself.
The meltdown of the Obama legislative agenda has fostered, instead, a Caesarism of the Left. This is evidenced, in part, by broad backing for the White Houses ruling through executive decrees. Some progressives even suggest the president, to preserve Obamacare, should even ignore the Supreme Court, if it rules the wrong way in June.
Progressive authoritarianism has a long history, co-existing uncomfortably with traditional liberal values about free speech, due process and political pluralism. At the turn of the 20th century, the novelist H.G. Wells envisioned the New Republic, in which the most talented and enlightened citizens would work to shape a better society. They would function, he suggested, as a kind of secret society, reforming the key institutions of society from both within and without.
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JOEL KOTKIN: Disillusioned with democracy