Democracy on Shaky Ground

While this is all certainly a worst-case scenario, it would be wrong to dismiss the possibility out of hand. Not only does reporting indicate Trump and his advisors are much more prepared than when they entered the White House, but the ex-president is also more aggrieved against his ever-growing list of enemies. There is no reason to think that victory would lead to restraint.

And as reactions to the recent Israeli attack on Gaza has shown, the Western establishment’s dedication to pillars of liberal society like racial and religious tolerance, freedom of assembly and association, and political dissent are on shaky ground. In the United States, pro-Palestinian groups are being banned from universities, their peaceful demonstrations heavily policed even as they are largely ignored by the media — except to the extent they can be demonized as supposed Nazi sympathizers.

American Muslims and Palestinian Americans have been hit by cars and stabbed to death in apparent hate crimes since the conflict began. Arabs and Muslims who have taken no public stand on the conflict have been publicly smeared as antisemites in an organized, well-funded campaign. The establishment’s response? Hundreds of millions of dollars in political and propaganda spending, a presidential declaration that Palestinians are lying about how many civilians have been killed, more weapons for the Israeli military, and an obstinate refusal to name any humanitarian “red lines” that might cause Israel to lose US support.

The situation is hardly better anywhere else. It is arguably worse in Germany, for instance, which many middle- and upper-class Democrats held up as the example par excellence of sober, sensible liberalism during the Trump administration. Though Germany’s government is officially more liberal now than it was during the Trump years, it has fully banned as “antisemitic” many demonstrations calling for an Israeli cease-fire — including those organized by Jews.

Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic chancellor of Germany, has himself called for increasing the number and speed of deportations from Germany, partly in response to the perception that immigrants are driving the demonstrations. But Germany and the United States aren’t outliers. Nowhere in the West are the political winds blowing against the kind of policies Trump imagines.

There’s just one remaining bulwark against Trumpism on steroids: Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. The president’s generally soporific demeanor is certainly a strong contrast to Trump’s, and his “let the grown-ups get things back to normal” campaign message defeated him once.

Will being someone other than Trump be enough to win now that Biden’s had the chance to push his own agenda? Polls continue to show Trump running neck and neck with Biden or with a slight lead, even as Trump’s legal troubles and his extremist rhetoric both reach new heights.

Young voters seem particularly disenchanted. Already dealing with an economy in which wages have failed to keep up with skyrocketing costs of housing, education, and health care, many are now once again saddled by unsustainable student debt because of Biden’s decision to start collecting loans again. It is especially bitter for them to watch Biden time and again say his hands are tied when it comes to helping them (or even when it comes to simply not harming them), but when it comes to giving a nuclear power billions of dollars in weapons for its campaign to carpet-bomb one of the most densely populated places on Earth, Biden can’t get the job done fast enough. If Biden were intentionally trying to demoralize the base of voters he needs to win, it’s unclear what he would do differently.

Millions of voters are hurting and pissed off. Many of them aren’t paying close attention to politics at all beyond the headlines. They don’t know what Trump has planned, or they know it only in the vaguest terms. So far, simply lecturing such voters that Trump is worse than the unlikable Democratic alternative has a 50 percent success rate. I don’t like those odds of seeing a wave of mass arrests and deportations in eighteen months.