Why Trump is good for American democracy
The need to contain the president has aroused a popular mobilisation that could outlive him
The election of Donald Trump could be one of the best things that ever happened to American democracy.
We say this even though we believe that Trump poses a genuine danger to our republican institutions and has done enormous damage to our country. He has violated political norms, weakened our standing in the world and deepened the divisions of an already sharply torn nation.
But precisely because the Trump threat is so profound, he has jolted much of the country to face problems that have been slowly eroding our democracy. And he has aroused a popular mobilisation that may far outlast him.
Many of the trends that led to Trump’s election have been with us for years; he has created a crisis by pushing them to their alarming endpoints. Political norms have been decaying for decades, but Trump has eschewed norms altogether. One reading is that there will be no going back from the diminished public life he has created.
The steady radicalisation of the conservative movement since the 1960s paved the way for Trump by undermining trust in government and promoting a sense that public officials are not interested in solving the problems of everyday Americans. This was a successful strategy for the Republican Party, but it produced the least-qualified and least-appropriate president in the nation’s history. While many Republicans remain in denial, hoping that Trump will deliver them policy victories and court seats, some of them are starting to reexamine their consciences.
The Republicans’ failure to pass any major piece of their legislative agenda, despite their control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, is a sign that tea partyism provides no plausible path to governing. A purely anti-government creed is out of touch with an American majority that may mistrust government but still expects it to provide significant services, social protections and help in time of catastrophe. We have seen this in the backlash to the efforts to repeal Obamacare. Republicans are scrambling now to pass another destructive repeal bill that would leave millions without health insurance, simply because the congressional majority is desperate for a legislative victory. But it has already lost the battle for public opinion.
The Trump era has pushed corporate leaders out of their comfort zones, too. The mass resignations of chief executives from White House business advisory groups in the wake of Trump’s shamefully equivocal remarks about the violence in Charlottesville were one sign of this.
And Trump’s victory has led to soulsearching in the media. The election was a near-perfect case study in the dangers of false equivalence, as Hillary Clinton’s significant but certainly not disqualifying problems were often portrayed as more or less comparable to Trump’s obvious inappropriateness for the presidency, his hateful rhetoric and his astonishingly long list of scandals. But many of the country’s leading news organisations have covered the Trump White House’s lying and evasions with straightforward vigour. If Trump has exacerbated the problem of media echo chambers he has also created a newly powerful constituency that cherishes a free press — witness the soaring digital circulation numbers of The Washington Post, The New York Times and many other media outlets.
The Trump jolt has done more than force the country to a necessary reckoning. It has also called forth a wave of activism, organising and a new engagement by millions of Americans in politics at all levels.
Large-scale demonstrations are part of the response, and so are grass-roots efforts to confront their legislators at town halls and any other venues where politicians can be found. They have won concrete victories against Trump’s agenda and have changed minds, most dramatically on Obamacare.
The need to contain Trump has given life to new forms of organisation. People of faith, across traditions, have stood up for the most vulnerable in confronting measures that have targeted immigrants. Lawyers have organised to combat the president’s travel bans, to protect the rights of undocumented individuals and to challenge Trump’s financial conflicts of interest. Will these initiatives lead to a sustained project? Will they build a new politics that acts as a counter to Trumpism and survive beyond his time in office? The evidence is promising.
Many of the new groups are developing models of citizen activism designed to promote lasting engagement. The largest, Indivisible, amassed several thousand local chapters across the country with astonishing speed.
Swing Left, another group formed in the aftermath of the 2016 election, is helping to connect progressives living in comfortably blue districts with opportunities to support Democratic congressional candidates in nearby swing districts. And #KnockEveryDoor is recruiting and training volunteers to canvas in their communities.
To a greater degree than before, left-of-centre issue-based advocacy groups are uniting behind a broad progressive agenda. At the women’s marches in January, the many signs calling for gender equality and reproductive justice were joined by placards opposing voter suppression. This ecumenical spirit has continued.
Perhaps the clearest sign of longterm commitment has been the surge in the recruitment of candidates for public office, especially among younger activists. A broad and powerful movement has arisen to defeat Trump and Trumpism. Its success will be a triumph worthy of celebration.
But this is not just an end in itself. It is also an essential first step toward a new politics. It will be a politics that takes seriously the need to solve the problems Trump has exposed. It will nurture our dedication to the raucous but ultimately unifying project of democratic self-government. For it is our shared commitment to republican institutions and democratic values that makes us one nation. —Washington Post Writers Group
The Trump jolt has done more than force the country to a necessary reckoning. It has also called forth a wave of activism, organising and, perhaps most important, a new engagement by millions of Americans in politics at all levels.