Member Newsletter
Frequently I will hear from TPM Readers who tell me that they fear and believe authoritarianism is on the rise both in the United States and abroad and, critically, that it is on the cusp of winning. This is an understandable fear and belief, and it may be right. But I do not think it is the most accurate assessment of the information before us. Rather than Team Democracy battling back against and defeating Team Authoritarianism, or vice versa, in a final confrontation or series of final confrontations, we’re seeing something different. We have a new model in which we no longer have parties of government of right and left but rather a civic democratic party and an authoritarian populist party. There’s a good chance they’ll be contesting elections for a while, even as the authoritarian populist party is trying in various ways to end them or radically change how free they are.
This can seem like just rebranding parties of the left and right, and to a degree it is. Today the Democratic Party is the center-left party and the Republicans are the right or right-wing party. We can see the pre- and post-Trump continuities on taxes and fiscal policies, gender, sexuality and reproductive health care policies, and much else. But the role of civic democracy and the rule of law versus authoritarianism have become more pronounced and defining. We see some of this in the shift of more educated voters — who were often center-right voters — to the Democrats, first slowly and then very rapidly under Trump. That’s largely because of the GOP’s shift in a more authoritarian populist direction. It’s required those voters to make a home in a party with a generally center-left policy agenda. What is notable about that process is that, as often happens, this has proven not only to be a compromise these voters are willing to make. It has reshaped their core political beliefs.
None of us are terribly good at cognitive dissonance, either individually or as social groups. We tend to decide what our most important commitment is and bring the rest into line with it. We see this in the emerging Democratic coalition as well as the Republican one.
The important part of this is that this isn’t just a way of rebranding the two parties. We often think about authoritarianism being defeated or democracy ending with the election of a Trump or one of his various imitators or progenitors abroad. But it may not necessarily work that way. The Polish Law and Justice party took power in 2015 and set about reshaping the Polish state into a post-democratic authoritarian and anti-liberal democratic state. This year they were defeated by a coalition of liberal democratic parties after eight years. Top Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro was defeated by incumbent President Lula da Silva. There are various other examples.
I don’t mean to be over pollyannaish. It is precisely the nature of authoritarians to degrade elections into sham processes or simply ignore the results of elections they lose. Donald Trump tried to do this in 2021 and failed and Bolsonaro’s supporters did so as well after his defeat. But this doesn’t change the fact that we now appear to be living in what will likely be an extended period in which national elections pit a civic democratic party against a right-wing populist authoritarian one.
This is, needless to say, a far from ideal situation. It is in the nature of authoritarian parties and leaders that they are rule breakers rather than rule followers. And in a contest between rule breakers and rule followers the former have an inherent and sometimes insuperable advantage. Relatedly, authoritarian populists only electoral interest is winning elections. They don’t care about those elections being fair or whether there’s another election after the one they win. All of this is to state what we intuitively know which is that a populist authoritarian party like the current Republican party isn’t like a normal party in democratic politics in which the losing party can accept defeat in the confident knowledge that another free and fair election will occur on a fixed schedule and provide a new opportunity to sample the popular will. But it is also the case that if the authoritarians aren’t going anywhere it is unrealistic to think they will never win another national election. Indeed, not only are they not going anywhere but the post-2021 period suggests Republicans are becoming increasingly identified with their authoritarian commitments in a way that will likely outlast Trump himself.
This isn’t necessarily good news. But it’s helpful to understand the situation in its totality. We have a temptation to hope for final victories and fear final defeats. But both may be unrealistic. It may be more of a long haul with an uncertain outcome.
Addendum: Reading this after publishing it, I’m sure a number of you will say, have you seen what Trump has been promising? Wake up! My answer is, yes, I definitely have. Indeed, I’ve probably seen a lot more of it than most of you have since it’s my job to read every last statement. I don’t discount the danger of the moment at all. But I do think this model is the more accurate one. We’re not likely to see a one-and-done victory or defeat in this contest. Among other things, it focuses important attention on the work to be done, that will remain to be done, if — God forbid — Trump wins the presidency next year.