One of the worst things about democracy is the way we talk about it.
For example, politicians love to talk about unity, but our constitutional system had to be designed to keep unity at bay, favoring a more adversarial approach, pitting factions against factions. Checks and balances, the separation of powers, and divided authorities between the federal and state governments are based on the idea that unity will be rare and temporary. The Constitution places our most cherished freedoms on a high shelf, difficult to reach during moments of unifying populist passion.
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The rhetorical mismatch applies not only to the mechanisms of democracy, but also to the culture of democracy. Democratic manners require that politicians never say the voters are wrong. But competitive elections – essential to any workable definition of democracy – require some voters to be “wrong.” I don’t necessarily mean their policy preferences (although that is often the case), I just mean that elections create winners and losers. And yet winning politicians, with barely half the electorate on their side, routinely declare after each victory that “the American people have spoken.”
In fact, voters are often simply wrong about the basic facts leading up to the election. The Biden campaign is, for example struggle with an electorate that believes the economy is much worse than it is. To be clear, I didn’t say the economy is good, but it is argument could be made. No, President Biden is struggling to convince the electorate that the economy is not the worst it has ever been.
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A recent YouGov questionnaire asked voters which decade, starting in the 1930s, had the worst economy. A third (32%) said the 2020s, our current decade, are the worst, even worse than the 1930s or 1970s. Only 23% named the 1930s and only 5% named the 1970s as the worst. This is, objectively speaking, wrong, spectacularly wrong.
There is a lot of partisan bias at work here. Only 19% of Democrats said ours is the worst decade and 24% said the 1930s were too, but 45% of Republicans believe the 2020s are the worst. But with nearly one in five Democrats wrongly believing the situation is worse than the Great Depression, Democrats have a problem.
This is just one facet of Bidens’moodproblem. Large numbers of Americans (42%) think the 1920s were the worst decade for crime is just now wrong. Twenty-eight percent think the 1940s – World War II, duh – had the “most war.” Only 4% mentioned the 1970s and 6% mentioned the 2000s – when America fought the Vietnam War and invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. But 19% said the current decade has seen the “most war” – and we are not at war, although events in Ukraine and Gaza make times seem warlike. From scientific breakthroughs to unhappy families to racial inequality, many Americans think things have never been worse.
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Now, subjectively speaking, there are perfectly valid arguments that things are not going well or that they could or should go better. But we’re talking about objective judgments here, and objectively, large numbers of Americans are objectively wrong. And honestly, I suspect many people don’t think they’re making objective judgments. When people say, “I’m having the worst day (or decade) ever!” they are not necessarily literal. They make a vibes statement.
This is clearly a huge problem for Joe Biden. Partly thanks to the ravages of inflation and high interest rates, and partly due to his own shortcomings, he cannot change his mind about the economy. But the causality works both ways. Economic reality contributes to negative attitudes And Negative attitudes determine how the economy is perceived. And on many fronts, especially on race, Biden is fueling these negative attitudes (see his speech at Morehouse College).
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But that explanation is insufficient. Democracy depends on the promise of incremental, cumulative progress. James Madison did not want polls to measure the mood of voters, but elections. That’s why we have them all the time, at every level of government. Democracy, for Madison, is not about unity or agreement, but about strife and disagreement, and constant self-correction.
Thanks to that vision, we have made enormous progress. But now both parties are wallowing in catastrophism and presentism. Donald Trump – who has the historical memory of a goldfish – is wrongly shouting that things have never been worse. But no matter how caricatured his rhetoric is, he is making a right-wing version of a common left-wing argument. Every four years, partisans insist that this is the “most important election ever” and that catastrophe or salvation is on the cards. The merciless howling wolf has fueled the mess we are in, and perhaps the mess yet to come.
If you constantly tell people that we are in an existential crisis, the vibrations can create reality whether the facts warrant it or not.
@jonahdispatch
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
