Our democracy is not only reliant on the words of the Constitution. It is reliant on countless rules and norms that have persisted through generations. When people in governance decide they must win at all costs, those rules and norms become loopholes for political advantage. It does not violate the letter of the laws of democracy, but it is undemocratic.
Abusing the rules of governance is an undemocratic method to achieve political victory. It is the theft of political power from people.
When the people of a state elect a governor, they expect him or her to have the powers of the governor. In at least a couple examples, state legislatures have rushed to strip power from the office of the governor after elections because their party did not win. In Wisconsin, the leader of the legislature said this was necessary because the incoming governor “could not be trusted”, despite the obvious fact that the incoming governor had been elected by a majority of voters in the state. This is an abuse of the rules of governance. It is an undemocratic way to achieve political victory.
If a position on the Supreme Court is opened, the Senate can approve or reject a President's nomination. In very technical terms, every Senate in the history of this country could have ignored a President’s nomination. Until recently, no Senate had considered this violation of norms. It is an undemocratic method to achieve political victory.
This Supreme Court scenario played itself out hundreds of times with other judicial appointments. The US Senate refused to approve reasonable nominations simply so they could wait until their party held the Presidency. When their party held the Presidency, they remembered how to approve judges. This subverts the will of the voters relative to the intended operation of our constitutional democracy. It is an undemocratic practice.
In our system, the legislature often creates agencies where the executive branch has oversight. The executive branch has a responsibility to operate those agencies in good faith. When these agencies are mismanaged or underfunded with the implicit intent to undermine the legislation that was passed by a democratically elected legislature, it is an undemocratic practice.
Manipulative propaganda is an undemocratic method to achieve political victory. When I first read Frank Luntz’s “Words That Work”, I thought he was a clever advertiser. But language matters.
As Timothy Levine makes clear in his well-grounded book "Duped", trust is our default setting. Most people are honest with us most of the time. If you decide to be suspicious about everything that everyone says, you will quickly exhaust yourself with the constant effort.
Frank Luntz advised his clients to take advantage of this vulnerability by manipulating language.
Luntz instructed his clients to stop saying “estate tax” and start saying “death tax”. His research showed that fewer people would support the estate tax if the different name was used. It worked, but not for the right reasons. Not everyone who dies pays this tax; in fact, a tiny minority of people would be subject to estate taxes--those who are rich by any common sense standard.
A particularly petty propagandist move was to stop calling the Democratic Party “the Democratic Party”, and start calling it “the Democrat Party”. This serves to imply that the party is not based on principles or positions, but rather is just a bunch of people you don’t know. It is not the traditional reference for the Democratic Party and is not how the Democratic Party prefers to be referenced. As such, it is a slur.
It's not just about clever language manipulation like calling rich people "job creators" and calling public servants "Washington bureaucrats". It's also the constant assault on the character of people in the other party. It's the relentless use of false dichotomies like "how dare they focus on that person who was killed when they did not focus on this fallen soldier". It's the demonization of scientists as participants in a strange conspiracy.
Bending truth as a habit had consequences. The party first embraced propaganda for political advantage. First they drove the propaganda, and now the propaganda drives them. As Benkler and colleagues masterfully document in their book "Network Propaganda", disloyalty is punished in right-wing media networks, but untruth is not. Truth is no longer a viable option. The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
There is a famous exchange between the late John McCain and a woman at a town hall meeting. McCain was running for President, and the woman rose to ask a question. She said she could not trust this Obama, because she had been reading about it, and "..he is an... Arab." McCain interjects, "No." He responds that Senator Obama is a good citizen with whom he happens to disagree on the issues.
It's famous because of McCain's integrity in the moment. But it would not be famous unless it stood out in contrast to the rest of his party's leadership.
Manipulative propaganda is inherently undemocratic. It is not just spin. It is deceit.
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<Notes>
Recommended book: Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics, by Yochai Benkler, Robert Farris, and Hal Roberts
Article: Why there are so few moderate Republicans left.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-there-are-so-few-moderate-republicans-left/
The Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform (REPAIR) is a group of former senior U.S. government officials and conservatives—including from the Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Trump administrations—who are committed to advancing a more hopeful vision of America’s future.
This footnote applies to the prior article 'The parties are NOT mirror images of each other', and describes the recent 'weaponization' of gerrymandering:
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