Fergus Finlay: Democracy is dying in the US and the Democrats are allowing it to happen
Kamala Harris made one speech a couple of days after the vote and then, to all appearances, walked off the pitch. Picture: AP/John Locher
I always thought I understood how a functioning democracy should run. In fact, I probably regard myself as a bit of an expert in political practice generally. But it had never occurred to me you could have a country, calling itself a democracy, where you could be elected to power and office, trusted to run the country, but also be expected to disappear without trace if you lost the next election. Or that you could have a democratic country with a government and no opposition.
That’s the United States. Weird place. Fifty seven days ago, Joe Biden was the properly elected president of that country. Kamala Harris was his vice-president. In the election that took place last November — that’s about 125 days ago, give or take — Kamala Harris got 75 million votes. Not enough to win, but no disgrace.
But we’ve never seen her again. She made one speech a couple of days after the vote and then, to all appearances, walked off the pitch. There is speculation she is considering a run for the governorship of California. That will presumably involve emerging from the obscurity where she has consigned herself. There have been no interviews, no public appearances, no discussion. Unless it happened in secret in the dead of night, she has not sat down with her own party to give any accounting of what happened. And she certainly has not passed the torch of leadership to anyone else.
That’s the way they do things, it seems. You’re chosen as the standard bearer, you win, and then everyone bows down before you for four years. You’re chosen as the standard bearer, you lose, and you’re gone. Even if you win twice, and therefore can’t run again, you disappear.
I read on the BBC website, of all things, that Joe Biden had signed up with a talent agency after leaving the White House. If that’s for real, they’re going to earn their fees. Apart from that strange bit of news, there hasn’t been sight nor light of the man who has been president of the free world since the day of the inauguration, 50 odd (very odd) days ago.
In most democracies that we know, the leader of the government often serves his or her time as leader of the opposition, and frequently goes backwards and forwards between one and the other. I’ve lost count of the number of times our present Taoiseach has been in office and out of office. And he’s the better for it in terms of growth and experience.
There is of course one exception to this rule: Donald Trump. When he lost the 2020 election, not only did he refuse to admit defeat, as the entire world knows, but unlike every one of his predecessors he refused to give up his ownership of the Republican Party. There is ample evidence that others in the leadership wanted to see the back of him, and equal evidence that none of them had the spine to bring it about.
The result is clear for all to see. There’s no need for Trump to develop a true autocracy because it has happened by default. There is now government without opposition. And what a government. The American media I read and watch and listen to is all reporting that Trump and JD Vance and Elon Musk are engaging in daily war on what they all call “the federal government”, with government departments and agencies being dismantled and thousands of federal civil servants being fired.
It’s an outrage, the anti-Trump media is saying. (Although to be honest, they are struggling to raise the voice of the media enough to be heard.) And actually they’re missing the point.
Trump and his allies aren’t just reducing the size of the federal government. They’re waging an all-out war on compassion, on equality, on decency. They’re trying to shut down foreign aid entirely; to get rid of dozens of essential services that veterans depend on; to eliminate basic standards in education; to ensure that rules outlawing discrimination are all eliminated. And a lot more beside.
Weirdly, although they’re doing it in the plain light of day, it seems to be happening by stealth. I can’t even figure out what the ideology behind it all is. That may sound stupid, but there genuinely is no coherent reason why America should be so hell-bent on destroying most of the best of itself.
Foreign aid and development saves lives and stops disease throughout the world. But it also underpins and strengthens American trade. It costs an infinitesimal fraction of the budget of the richest country in the world, with an enormous payback.
Whatever the reason, they are being enabled by the most supine opposition in the history of democracy. A few days ago, the leader of the Democrats collapsed in the face of pressure over a spending bill — a move seen by many in his own party as gross betrayal. And at the weekend an opinion poll published by CNN showed the Democrats are at least as unpopular as the Republicans — and that’s primarily because of disaffection in their own ranks.
So America is marching headfirst into an autocracy, a government that is determined to trash the best of the country’s history and ideals. They will destroy education and healthcare, appease their enemies and betray their friends, and leave a legacy of destruction and ultimately oppression. And the best the Democratic opposition can do is wear pink.
Unless they want to see their country damaged beyond repair, the Democrats must do one of two things now. They must hold a democratic convention and elect a leader right now — one leader, one strategy, one focus.
That leader must become the leader of a determined and focused opposition, ready and willing to take Trump on at every turn, up to and including the next general election. They could — and should — announce now that they are starting a primary process in the run-up to that convention to enable candidates to put themselves forward now.
Or if they can’t do that, they must unite behind one of the great figures of their recent past — and the obvious choice is Barack Obama. He can never be president again, but for sure he can be leader of the opposition, right through the mid-term elections.
When you are allowed to govern without opposition, democracy is dead. Democracy is dying in the United States right now, and the consequences for the entire world will be terrible. And wouldn’t it be one of the final ironies of history if the party that allowed that to happen is the party whose name is Democrat?
