Democratic backsliding
Freedom House’s global freedom index gives countries a score between 0 and 100 each year, with 100 being the most democratic. In 2015, the United States received a score of 90, which was roughly in line with other Western democracies. But after that, America’s score declined steadily, reaching 83 in 2021. That score was lower than every other established democracy in Western Europe and was akin to historically troubled democracies.
Naturally, 2015 is the year the Republican Party’s new political lord and savior came onto the scene. What I am about to write does not wholly fall on Trump’s shoulders; the Republican Party has been trending in an anti-freedom/anti-democracy direction for a long time, but if the Republican Party was the flame, then Trump was the accelerant. Trump is cruel and remorseless, compulsive and vindictive, and an accomplished conspiracy theorist who delights in inflaming hatred and shattering moral codes. If Trump were an island in this capacity, this would be OK, but what has changed and is so threatening to our Republic is that the entirety of the Republican Party has followed suit.
The Republican Accountability Project gave a “democracy grade” to all Republican members of Congress in 2021. More than 60% (161 of 261) of Republican members of Congress adopted undemocratic positions and received a grade of an F. Only 6% of Republicans behaved in a consistently democratic manner. Most of them had retired or lost primaries by 2022.
One of the main issues for the Republican Party is that losing is no longer an option. What logically follows from that concept has reaped a whirlwind. First, parties are most likely to accept defeat when they believe they stand a reasonable chance of winning again in the future.
A second condition that helps parties accept defeat is the belief that losing power will not bring catastrophe — that a change of government will not threaten the lives and livelihoods of the outgoing party and its constituents. If the stakes are too high and the losing parties fear they will lose everything, they will be reluctant to relinquish power. In other words, an outsized fear of losing turns parties against democracy.
The Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-dem) tracks global democracy, which measures deviations from democratic norms, such as pluralism and civil rights, tolerance of the opposition and the rejection of political violence. In 2020, V-dem concluded that the Republican Party was more similar to an autocratic ruling party than a center-right governing party. The Republicans are rarely in line with the general electorate, and their policies are unpopular. Instead of finding ways to win back the majority, they have focused on changing who can vote.
Republicans have enacted voter ID laws, restricted early voting and mail-in ballots and ensured short voting lines for their constituents and long lines for their opposition while Republican secretaries of state purge voters with reckless abandon. It’s just a variation of the poll tax and the literacy test.
American democracy can only survive with a Republican Party that is capable of winning national majorities. The Republican Party has only won the national popular vote twice in the past 36 years, and Republican Senators haven’t represented a majority of voters since 1996. Only after the Republican Party re-centers and voters oust their extremist members in droves can we expect the party to abandon violent extremism and play by Democratic rules, win or lose.
Republicans have persuaded themselves that there is no other option but to support a Trump-led Republican Party, even one that is lawless and depraved, because the Democratic Party is an unthinkable alternative. The result is that they have been sucked, cognitively and psychologically, into their own alternative reality. Many of those on the right, dependent on the web of lies and nihilism, have twisted themselves into knots in order to justify their behavior. Nihilism is a choice; it is forced on no one, and conservatives must somehow find a way to turn back toward their original ideals.