If you aren’t afraid of midterm elections, you haven’t paid attention.
We can talk about what is conventionally at stake in these elections:
its implications for Political Economicsmajor social programs, environmental policy, civil liberties and reproductive rights.
And it’s not bad to have these discussions:
life will go on no matter what happens on the political stage and government policies will continue to have a huge impact on people’s lives.
But at least I always feel a little guilty when I write about it inflation or the fate of Medicare.
Yes, these are my specialties.
Focusing on them, however, feels a bit like denial, or at least evasion, when the fundamental stake at the moment is so existential.
Ten or 20 years ago, those of us who noticed that the Republican Party was getting bigger and bigger more extremist and undemocratic we have often been branded as alarmists.
But the alarmists have been avenged at every step, from selling the Iraq war under false pretenses to the January 6 uprising.
In fact, it is almost commonplace these days that the Republican Party, if it can, will turn America into something like the Hungary of Victor Orban:
a democracy on paper but in practice an ethnonationalist and authoritarian one-party state.
After all, American conservatives have made no secret of seeing Hungary as a model; they celebrated Orban and presented him at their conferences.
At this point, however, I think this conventional wisdom is also wrong.
If the United States comes down to one-party government, it will be much worse, much uglier than what we see in Hungary today.
Before we get there, a word on the role of conventional political issues in these elections.
If the Democrats lose one or both Houses of Congress, there will be a loud chorus of recriminations, many of which say they should have focused on cooking problems and not talk about threats to democracy at all.
I am not claiming any experience here, but I would like to point out that the party of an incumbent president almost always loses places in the mid-term elections.
The one exception to that rule this century was in 2002, when George W. Bush was able to divert attention from a jobless recovery by posing as America’s defender against eterrorism.
That record suggests, if anything, that Democrats should have talked even more about issues beyond economics.
I would also argue that pretending this was a normal election season, in which only economic policy was at stake, would have basically been dishonest.
Finally, even voters who are more concerned about wages and the cost of living than for democracy should be very concerned about the rejection of democratic norms by the Republican Party.
On the one hand, the Republicans were open about their plan to use the threat economic chaos to obtain concessions that they could not have obtained with the normal legislative process.
Also, while I understand voters’ instinct to choose a different driver if they don’t like how the economy is doing, they need to understand that voting Republican this time around isn’t just about giving someone else a chance behind the wheel;
it can be a big step to deliver the permanent control to the GOP, with no chance for voters to review that decision if they don’t like the results.
Which brings me to the question of what an America is single game.
As I said, it is almost conventional opinion now that the Republicans are trying to turn us into Hungary.
Indeed, Hungary provides a case study of how democracies can do this To die in the 21st century.
But what strikes me as I read about the Orban government is that while its regime is deeply repressive, the repression is relatively subtle.
It is, as one insightful article says, “soft fascism”, Rendering dissidents powerless through their control of the economy and the media without beating or imprisoning them.
Do you think a MAGA regime, with or without Donald Trump, would be just as subtle?
Hear speeches at any Trump rally.
are full of vendettaof promises to imprison and punish anyone, including technocrats like Antonio Fauci, who does not like movement.
And much of the American right is sympathetic to, or at least unwilling to condemn, violence against its opponents.
The Republican reaction to the attack Paolo Pelosi by an intruder shouting MAGA he was revealing:
many in the party did not even pretend to be horrified.
Instead, they peddled bad conspiracy theories.
And the rest of the group did not exclude or punish suppliers of vile falsehoods.
In short, yes MAGA wins, we probably would like your government to be tolerant, relatively benign and relatively non-violent like that of Orban.
Now, this catastrophe doesn’t have to happen. Even if the Republicans win big in mid-term, it will not be the end of democracy, even if it will be a blow.
And nothing in politics, not even a complete descent into authoritarianism,
On the other hand, even if we get pardon this week, the fact remains that democracy is in grave danger from the authoritarian right.
America as we know it is not yet lost, but it is limit.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Source: Clarin
