It's time to look in the mirror, America: We chose catastrophe -- there's no one else to blame

[marmar]

We need a new theory of democracy — because this version has failed
It's time to look in the mirror, America: We chose catastrophe — there's no one else to blame

By Mike Lofgren
Contributing Writer
Published August 24, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) According to polling data, 62 percent of Americans favor the government being responsible for the health coverage of all people in the country. Sixty-five percent of Americans polled favored the infrastructure bill passed during Joe Biden’s presidency. In a poll taken just last year, 63 percent of Americans wanted to increase trade with other countries, and 75 percent worried that tariffs would raise consumer prices. Another poll found 83 percent of likely voters, including 80 percent of Republicans, supported providing federal housing assistance after a natural disaster.

Yet in 2024, a near-majority of voters chose a president who would not only not improve medical access, but would adopt a policy to drop coverage for at least 10 million Americans who are currently insured. His other policies include neglecting infrastructure (with the exception of ICE detention facilities), and rescinding unspent funds from the Biden infrastructure bill. FEMA has been cut, and the president has imposed the highest tariffs since the Smoot-Hawley Act almost a century ago.

....(snip)....

Ignorance theory

One correspondent of mine writes that “most Americans did not know who and what they were voting for,” adding that few people would have looked at the 982-page Project 2025, a “daunting document.” I must admit that I, too, was not masochistic enough to read it.

But accurate news summaries of that plan, the “Mein Kampf” of the current Republican Party, were ubiquitous in the months before the election. And Donald Trump was hands-down the most publicized candidate in history, whose every utterance was almost universally reported, including his intention to decree tariffs. He had 100 percent name ID and had already been president for four years, when his atrocious handling of matters like the COVID pandemic should have given anyone not living in a Trappist monastery, shut off from all communications, ample warning about his likely policies.

....(snip)....

To the extent that calculated mendacity delivered through the media can swing elections, the implications are grave for democratic theory. If there is no “marketplace of ideas” where one can objectively shop in the manner of comparing prices at Home Depot versus Lowe’s and, instead, insidious manipulation determines outcomes, then human beings are no more capable of exercising free will than so many laboratory rats. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/08/24/we-need-a-new-theory-of-democracy-because-this-version-has-failed/

[gab13by13]

1. How about the "Rigged Election Theory?"

[RandomNumbers]

3. Meh. That one obscures the actual problem.

Besides being insufficient to explain the 2024 results ... not to mention the plethora of Trump signs in mixed-politics neighborhoods like mine.

[Mysterian]

2. You can't fix stupid. From the article:

By contrast with today, consider Owsley County, Kentucky, one of the poorest counties in the U.S., whose residents’ life expectancy is almost 10 years shorter than the nation’s average. Two-thirds of its residents are enrolled in Medicaid, as one might expect from the poverty. Yet the county’s voters went 88 percent for Trump in 2024, which was no fluke. In the 2016 governor’s race, 70 percent of the county voted for Republican Matt Bevin, whose signature campaign theme was cutting Kentucky’s Medicaid program.

[chowder66]

8. Maybe we should start a campaign with mailers and ads saying...

If you voted for Trump, who stated he would slash Medicaid and [fill in blank] and you have changed your mind here is what we have done and propose to do when elected.

Simple bullet point list.

Acknowledge their mistake politely, nudge them about changing their mind and simply list some things that "should" appeal to them.

[RandomNumbers]

4. Time to look at the issues with our UN-democratic "democracy" design

Yes, misinformation and misunderstanding was a problem. But would misinformation have won the day, if we actually had a more democratic system in the first place?

To wit:

* Electoral college

* Plurality winner system (vs. a run-off system where the winner would have majority preference, which now could be done by RCV or similar)

* gerrymandering, which is getting much worse with the death of the Voting Rights Act. This enables the Republican-majority states to overweight their U.S. congressional delegations.

* U.S. Senate allocation equal to all states regardless of size. Meaning small states get an outsize advantage in crucial government decisions.

* Voter suppression tactics tilting the demographics of who votes, and whose vote is actually counted.

* Who counts the votes, and when. (see the Great Mail-In Voting Debate: forcing states to start counting mail in ballots late, creates a false perception of unfairness in the minds of voters, when beginning the count earlier would remove the late "shift" affect).

[Ping Tung]

5. "It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority." Lord Acton

[Solly Mack]

6. ...

[Mysterian]

7. The electoral college and apportionment of senators favors the rural states

Giving an inordinate amount of power to rural states. These are the greatest fundamental flaws in our system of government. Two senators for 40 million people in California. Two senators for 591,000 people in Wyoming. Nobody can call this fair.

So, the fascist propaganda targets the rural voters. It worked.