But while I support the democracy-vs.-autocracy framing Joe Biden and the Democrats are using, stating the concept as abstract framing is not nearly enough. The pro-democracy side has to give voters concrete examples of what those concepts mean in people’s lives. (This still applies even after the news that Biden has dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris as the nominee.)
Because the Trumpistas can counter this abstract framing the way Trump does it here. Trump is an awful person and should never again be let close the Oval Office. But he’s a talented demagogue. And that is one of his key talents that put him in the political leadership position he has achieved.
Trump … again disavowed Project 2025, a shadow manifesto characterized by opponents as an authoritarian, right-wing wish list.That last line is part of his martyr posture. Since we know very little about the motive of the shooter, it’s not at all clear why he was targeted. But this lets the guy who called US soldiers killed in war “suckers” and “losers” portray himself as a warrior-hero. It will only fool people who want to be fooled. But a lot of the Trump cult do want to the fooled.
“The other side is going around trying to make me sound extreme ... I’m not an extremist at all,” he complained.
The sweeping blueprint from the hardline Heritage Foundation to remake the federal government in Trump’s image was created by “the radical right... they’re seriously extreme,” he said, insisting “I don’t know what the hell it is.”
The official Republican platform ratified at the Milwaukee convention is less conservative than Project 2025 in several areas, including abortion and entitlements.
But many of the more extreme proposals in the Heritage Foundation handbook are indistinguishable from Trump’s remarks at his rallies and his own video statements, while Democrats say members of his inner circle have been linked to it.
Still Trump insisted the idea that he is a “threat to democracy” is “misinformation”.
“Last week, I took a bullet for democracy,” he said. [my emphasis] (1)
And this is part of why the press should be demanding to see actual medical reports of what caused Trump’s injury. Trump’s team released a letter by quoting Republican Congressman Ronny Jackson and former White House physician as having examined him and stating it was clearly a bullet wound as opposed to glass splinters. How reliable that information is not entirely clear:
Jackson served as the White House physician for former President Barack Obama and the first half of the Trump administration.I’m not interested in going all grassy-knoll about the shooting. But we should really get good reports that don’t come from a strong Trump partisan – and hopeless with information confirmed by physicians with valid doctor’s licenses – especially since Trump is posturing this way. “I got a cut on my ear from a glass splinter” doesn’t have quite the same ring.
The Dallas Morning News reported in 2023 that Jackson does not have a Texas medical license, and his Virginia license expired several years ago. The report also said that Jackson's Florida license hasn't been valid since he retired from the Navy in 2019.
A spokesperson for Jackson did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the congressman's medical license history. (2)
More important: the “I support democracy too” claim
There’s nothing wrong with calling an autocrat an autocrat or a fascist a fascist.
But Trump is a rightwing populist. Not all populists are rightwing or undemocratic. Populism – in the definition I favor – is a style of politics that constructs a narrative of The Elite against The People. And the populists claim to stand on the side of The People.
That gives that posture a superficial democratic halo: democracy is rule by The People and our side represents The People. Rightwing populists like Trump himself or Bolsonaro in ‘Brazil, Javier Milei in Argentina, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and Narendra Modi in India all use this posture to rally public support for their goal of drastically limiting democracy or ending it altogether.
Even Hitler held plebiscites on various issues, though they could be called free elections in any meaningful sense of the word. But even authoritarians like to demonstrate an image of popular consent. France’s Louis Bonaparte (1808-1873) is credited with pioneering this particular method of using a democratic election 1848 to come to power and within a few years to consolidate his personal power as Emperor Napoleon III:
On October 31 [1851], he succeeded for the first time in appointing a Cabinet consisting of men depending more on him than on the National Assembly. By travelling through the country he gained wide popularity. Moreover, he used the disfranchisement of 3,000,000 electors of the poorer classes by the National Assembly in 1850 and an economic recession in 1851 as a pretext for agitating against the parties and for advertising himself as the “strong man” against the danger of a nonexistent revolution.Coming to power by constitutional means and then using weaknesses in the system to establish an authoritarian form of rule that preserves the trappings of democratic rights while nullifying them in practice is not something first invented in the 20th century. As David Jayne Hill described Louis Napoleon’s successful effort:
The constitution forbade the reelection of the president after expiration of his four-year term, and when Louis-Napoléon realized that he could not obtain the three-fourths majority necessary for a revision of the constitution he carried out a coup d’état on December 2. Only the Republicans dared to resist him. On December 4 they were defeated in street fighting in Paris, just as they were in other towns and in some regions. Arrests and deportations numbered in the thousands. Louis-Napoléon dissolved the Legislative Assembly and decreed a new constitution, which among other provisions restored universal suffrage. A plebiscite approved the new constitution. Encouraged by his success, he held another plebiscite in November 1852 and was confirmed as emperor after the resolution of the Senate concerning the restitution of the empire. [my emphasis] (3)
Personality had completely triumphed over principles, and the work of the [democratic] revolution was thus undone by the establishment of the Second Empire, with Napoleon III in the place of Napoleon I.Trump in the comment quoted above repudiates Project 2025 by saying it’s from “’the radical right... they’re seriously extreme,’” he said, insisting ‘I don’t know what the hell it is’.” To give him credit, I’m sure he’s not one of the very few people who plowed through hundreds of pages of dreary rightwing text to read the actual Project 2025 report. But he obviously knows what it is and realizes there is some toxic and unpopular proposals in it, enough that he distances himself from it rhetorically and tries to look like he thinks the “radical right” behind it is not something he supports.
Under cover of an appeal to the "will of the people" an irresponsible power was evoked, stimulated by private interests, and guided by personal control. [my emphasis] (4)
I suppose it would be churlish to asks how he knows it’s “extreme” stuff from the “radical right” if he doesn’t “know what the hell it is.”
But Trump knows that actual rightwing radical programs like in Project 2025 and that the radical right’s hatred for democracy is not popular, even among many of the people who are inclined to vote for him. Regular voters usually don’t spend long hours every year reading up on classical liberal theories of democracy and representative government. But they do know that “democracy” means that all citizens have rights and that they get to have a say at the ballot box in who runs their governments and how they are run.
Trump shows few signs of having any set of concepts that most of us would recognize as a political outlook. His approach is very transactional, as in “how can I make money on this”?
But his main pursuit is for dictatorial power. He knows the difference between political left and right, of course. And he knows that he’s very much on the right, but also understands the public impression of issues in a way that people wandering the gloomy precincts where one encounters people like “West Coast Straussians” do not. (5) He won’t be making any arguments based on some tortured reading of the Federalist Papers.
Translating the framing into concepts that give voters a more specific idea of the threat
Abortion rights and reproductive rights more generally are a real weakness for the Republicans in the 2024 election. The drastic reduction of not only access to abortion in basically all cases, and even the prohibition of contraceptives (6) are not things voters have to consult John Locke’s works to understand. The instances of states with draconian abortion bans refusing to check in women coming to hospital emergency rooms because they are afraid of being charged with murder for contributing to an abortion is something even enthusiastic Trump cultists can understand.
Voting rights is another such issue which voters can understand. Since the rightwing Supreme Court knocked down key, long-standing federal protections for voting rights, Republicans all across the country have been rushing to implement the kind of voter-suppression methods used in the Jim Crow South to deny the vote to Black citizens but with present-day technology applied to the suppression process. Having militia goons show up with weapons outside the homes of state secretaries of state or making threats of violence against local election officials are things that ordinary voters can understand.
But to make the democracy vs. autocracy theme more than a vague, abstract slogan, the Democrats need to present those vivid threats to what most voters understand to be democracy in a way that alerts the voters to what is at stake in concrete terms, not only in the abstract.
Notes:
(1) ‘I took a bullet for democracy,’ Trump says in first rally since assassination attempt. France 24 07/21/2024. <https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20240721-trump-urges-supporters-to-fight-fight-fight-in-first-rally-since-assassination-attempt> (Accessed : 2024-21-07).
(2) Lee, Lloyd (2024): Trump's former White House doctor says a bullet came 'less than a quarter of an inch' from entering Trump's head. Business Insider 07/20/2024. <https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-assassination-attempt-bullet-quarter-of-an-inch-ronny-jackson-2024-7> (Accessed : 2024-21-07).
(3) Euler, Heinrich Gustav.(2024): Napoleon III. Encyclopedia Britannica 05/31/2024. <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Napoleon-III-emperor-of-France> (Accessed : 2024-21-07).
(4) Hill, David Jayne (1920): Autocracy by Plebiscite. North American Review 211:773 (Apr. 1920), 457-471. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/25120486>
(5) MacDougald, Park (2020): The New American Millennial Right. Tablet Magazine 02/05/2020. <https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-new-millennial-american-right> (Accessed : 2024-21-07).
(6) Foran, Clare & Rimmer, Morgan & Barrett, Ted (2024): Senate GOP blocks bill to guarantee access to contraception. CNN 06/05/2024. <https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/05/politics/senate-vote-contraception-access/index.html> (Accessed : 2024-21-07).
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