Republicans across Iowa are scheduled to meet on Monday to begin the process of selecting their party's presidential nominee. With the Iowa caucuses, and after seemingly endless primary skirmishes, the first act of the 2024 US elections is now officially underway.
A caucus is different from a primary, which is just a ballot. At a caucus, registered Democrats and Republicans (and in some states, independents as well) meet for a face-to-face discussion about who they should support, as a prelude to casting their ballots. In an age of mass politics, there is something strange but reassuring about the idea of citizens coming together, in the dead of winter, in classrooms and meeting rooms in towns and villages across the state – sometimes in assemblies of as few as six – to engage in such a pure exercise of democracy.
US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump.credit: AP
We can expect to hear a lot about democracy this year – after all, this is the year in which more people will vote in free elections around the world than at any time in human history. So, is it a triumphant year for democracy? Restrain yourself; There are many who want to convince you otherwise.
We will also hear a lot about the threats to democracy. Since 2016 – the year the British people chose Brexit and Americans chose Donald Trump – we have seen a torrent of books claiming that democracy is in danger – so much so that democratic pessimism has become something of a cottage industry within the publishing world. While Labor contributors included conservatives such as Jonathan Sumption, most of the cynics came from the left. Predictably, the villains are right-wing demagogues (Trump, Boris Johnson, et al), who deceptively manipulate the gullible population to win elections (Trump 2016, Johnson 2019) and achieve other outcomes, such as Brexit, which left-wing intellectuals disapprove of. . . This is said to be the evil of “populism.” As the tortured argument goes, the very practice of democracy itself constitutes a threat to democracy.
In this context, President Joe Biden launched his re-election campaign last week, with a speech that was almost entirely about Trump. “Democracy exists at the ballot boxes,” he declared. His election campaign will be about saving American democracy from the threat posed by Trump and his supporters, who are “doing everything they can.” [their] “The power to try to destroy our democracy.”
Biden is playing a high-stakes game in defining campaigning not as a choice between different policies, or different philosophies of government, but as an existential decision. “Whether democracy remains America's sacred cause is the most pressing question of our time, and that is what the 2024 election is about,” he said. The message could not be clearer: Only by voting for me can you show your faith in democracy.
A Trump supporter in Orbadale, Iowa, before the caucuses on Monday.credit: AP
Trump will almost certainly be Biden's opponent this year, whatever political and legal systems he faces. Whatever may be said about Trump's behavior after the 2000 election (and like most people, I consider his behavior absolutely disgraceful), if the American people choose to return him to the White House, that would be a terrible outcome for the United States. Often, it will also be democratic: not a denial of democracy, but a consequence of it.
One tool commonly used to deny the legitimacy of democratic outcomes is to place all the blame on populism. Which is strange, because populism certainly means that the popular will prevailed. How is that not democratic? The liberal elite has its answer ready. (I use the word “liberal” here in the corrupt modern American sense of the word.) “Aha!” This is claimed by those who cannot pronounce the word “populism” – or even “populism” – without unobtrusively curling their lips. Voters have been misled by conspiring demagogues.
