Minority rule is the point
Republican contempt for democracy is consistent with our constitution
Many, including at times myself, have been shocked by the decorum of Trump and the Republican party of the last four years. How could they behave like this? Have the Republicans always been this outwardly hateful? Why are they twirling their mustaches like cartoon villains? Writing for The Atlantic In 2018, Adam Serwer offered a succinct explanation: for Trump and his disciples “the cruelty is the point.” (Incidentally, others have observed that while cruelty may be the point for Republicans, for Democrats cruelty is simply “an unfortunate side-effect.” Choose your fighter, folks.)
Enter the 2020 election and now the same shock at decorum is replaced by shock at Trump’s election antics, specifically the threat to democracy of his attempt to overturn a fair and free election. Trump currently trails Biden by 7 million in the popular vote and 306–232 in the electoral college; the latest failed election lawsuit attempted to erase the votes of 20 million Americans in key swing states and was endorsed by 126 elected House Republicans. Many Americans are again wondering: How can Republicans openly flout democracy? Don’t they believe in the constitution?
To this I say: minority rule is the point. Democracy is decidedly not the point, and the US constitution is a fundamentally anti-democratic contract. Republicans consistently lose the popular vote, control a Senate that disproportionately favors rural states over more populous coastal states, and have installed a majority of Supreme Court Justices over the last 30 years despite losing the popular vote in 7 out of the last 8 presidential elections. All of this is allowed, even emboldened, by our constitution.
Yet liberals continue to point to all this and cry wolf about democracy, as if that’s not written into the rulebook. Liberals say because Republicans represent a minority of voters that their disproportionate control over the levers of government is profoundly anti-democratic, and that we live under a tyrannical minoritarian rule. Yes, that’s all true, but it’s also the point.
The Republican worldview, as well as that of our constitution, is inherently anti-democracy. It’s literally in the name: the Republic of the United States of America! So when liberals argue that Republicans threaten democracy…of course they do. They don’t take democracy as a first principle. They don’t think the majority of people should have a say in how the country (which is actually 50 tiny countries) as a whole lives.
Republicans like to put it this way: they don’t believe New York should dictate how Tennessee lives. It’s a pithy version of the state’s rights argument. But the fundamental tension is that they believe it’s good that Wyoming, with a population of 580K, has the same number of senators as California. That’s the point, they say. So I find the argument from liberals that Republicans are anti-democracy a nonstarter. It’s not a “gotcha!” to point out to Republicans the anti-democratic tenets of their politics.
Now if you point out to Republicans that, in fact, as it currently stands Tennessee is dictating how NY lives, this can be a more productive argument. Unfortunately, because the default in this country is, as I have written before, a deeply reactionary conservatism, Republican voters don’t view the current set up as Tennessee dictating the lives of New Yorkers but as Tennessee defending it’s way of life from attacks by godless coastal elite states. The $7.25 minimum wage is not a threat, but legalizing cannabis is.
At any rate, if anti-democracy is the point for a minoritarian group of Republicans in power, anti-democracy will be an unfortunate side-effect when majoritarian Democrats in power refuse the will of the people on overwhelmingly popular programs like Medicare For All, minimum wage raises, etc.
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