Autocracy Was On the Ballot
The 2020 presidential contest didn’t only elect a presumptive new president. It blocked, for the moment, a critical stage of emergent autocracy.
Our democracy is in trouble, straining under serious anti-democratic forces.
One of the two major political parties that governs it is increasingly intolerant of liberal-democratic rights, especially for ethnic or religious minorities. On voting records and policy positions, it’s in the ballpark of some openly white nationalist conservative parties in Europe.
The tens of millions of votes for the current presidential administration confirm a recurrent pattern in U.S. history: a sizable statistical minority of the electorate holds, as in eras past, essentially pro-authoritarian sentiments. Those sentiments have far too many sponsors in some of the most powerful political offices in the nation.
And the nation is currently buckled under multiple national emergencies. One of them — the COVID-19 pandemic — has been massively exacerbated by conscious policy choices.
Yet . . .
The U.S. presidency favors incumbency. Limiting a U.S. president to one term is a very difficult political feat.
Limiting a U.S. president to one term amid widespread voter suppression is a profoundly more difficult political feat.
Limiting a U.S. president to one term amid widespread voter suppression and national health and economic emergencies is an even more profoundly difficult political feat.
On top of all this, ousting an autocrat — whether would-be or actual — through a peaceful national election is both unlikely and arduous. This is particularly true if one considers that the electoral college system isn’t a natural tool at all for doing so. It’s meant to prevent dramatic political change.
But that’s what happened — improbably — during the 2020 presidential election. Masha Gessen borrows from Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar to describe common stages of emerging autocracies: from “autocratic attempt” (when autocracy is attempted, but still reversible) to “automatic breakthrough” (when the movement toward autocracy is no longer reversible), and, finally, “autocratic consolidation” (when legal and political institutions are thoroughly corrupted to support a fully autocratic regime). The 2020 election — the will of the majority — blocked an autocratic attempt on its way to an autocratic breakthrough.
It’s important to note that BIPOC activists and organizers made all the difference, as they have in past eras when the nation came closer to something like a true modern democracy (understanding we still have so far to go in that direction). Those communities — particularly Black women voters and organizers — proved, once again, to be some of the most effective anti-authoritarian actors in U.S. political history.
None of that translates into the reassuring cliché that “our institutions held.” We were threatened with an autocracy, to a significant degree, because of those institutions. And that threat might intensify sooner or later.
For the moment, though, the significance of a peaceful and decisive electoral opposition to an aspiring autocrat shouldn’t be underestimated — even while reserving ample space to acknowledge that so many U.S. communities continue to suffer from myriad systemic injustices and inequities.
Vast portions of the U.S. electorate — particularly privileged white communities — are probably not used to thinking of themselves as anti-authoritarian actors. Perhaps this period can be one of widespread training to that end, of longstanding energy and organization toward a true multicultural democracy — toward an even more effective set of free electoral and legal barriers to autocratic emergence.
