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'A Crisis Coming': The Twin Threats to American Democracy

David Leonhardt

Sat, September 17, 2022 at 12:53 PM·27 min read

The United States has experienced deep political turmoil several times before over the past century. The Great Depression caused Americans to doubt the country’s economic system. World War II and the Cold War presented threats from global totalitarian movements. The 1960s and ’70s were marred by assassinations, riots, a losing war and a disgraced president.

These earlier periods were each more alarming in some ways than anything that has happened in the United States recently. Yet during each of those previous times of tumult, the basic dynamics of American democracy held firm. Candidates who won the most votes were able to take power and attempt to address the country’s problems.

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The current period is different. As a result, the United States today finds itself in a situation with little historical precedent. American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country’s governing ideals in decades.

The first threat is acute: a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — to refuse to accept defeat in an election.

The violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress, meant to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s election, was the clearest manifestation of this movement, but it has continued since then. Hundreds of elected Republican officials around the country falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged. Some of them are running for statewide offices that would oversee future elections, potentially putting them in position to overturn an election in 2024 or beyond.

“There is the possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office,” said Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies democracy.

The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.

The run of recent Supreme Court decisions — both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular — highlights this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees seems poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades. And the court is only one of the means through which policy outcomes are becoming less closely tied to the popular will.

Two of the past four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote. Senators representing a majority of Americans are often unable to pass bills, partly because of the increasing use of the filibuster. Even the House, intended as the branch of the government that most reflects the popular will, does not always do so because of the way districts are drawn.

“We are far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and a co-author of the book “How Democracies Die,” with Daniel Ziblatt.

The causes of the twin threats to democracy are complex and debated among scholars.

The chronic threats to democracy generally spring from enduring features of American government, some written into the Constitution. But they did not conflict with majority opinion to the same degree in past decades. One reason is that more populous states, whose residents receive less power because of the Senate and the Electoral College, have grown so much larger than small states.

The acute threats to democracy — and the rise of authoritarian sentiment, or at least the acceptance of it, among many voters — have different causes. They partly reflect frustration over nearly a half-century of slow-growing living standards for the American working class and middle class. They also reflect cultural fears, especially among white people, that the United States is being transformed into a new country, more racially diverse and less religious, with rapidly changing attitudes toward gender, language and more.

The economic frustrations and cultural fears have combined to create a chasm in American political life between prosperous, diverse major metropolitan areas and more traditional, religious and economically struggling smaller cities and rural areas. The first category is increasingly liberal and Democratic, the second increasingly conservative and Republican.

The political contest between the two can feel existential to people in both camps, with disagreements over nearly every prominent issue. “When we’re voting, we’re not just voting for a set of policies but for what we think makes us Americans and who we are as a people,” said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist and the author of “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.” “If our party loses the election, then all of these parts of us feel like losers.”

These sharp disagreements have led many Americans to doubt the country’s system of government. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, 69% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans said that democracy was “in danger of collapse.” Of course, the two sides have very different opinions about the nature of the threat.

Many Democrats share the concerns of historians and scholars who study democracy, pointing to the possibility of overturned election results and the deterioration of majority rule. “Equality and democracy are under assault,” Biden said in a speech this month in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.”

Many Republicans have defended their increasingly aggressive tactics by saying they are trying to protect American values. In some cases, these claims rely on falsehoods — about election fraud, Biden’s supposed “socialism,” Barack Obama’s birthplace and more.

In others, they are rooted in anxiety over real developments, including illegal immigration and “cancel culture.” Some on the left now consider widely held opinions among conservative and moderate Americans — on abortion, policing, affirmative action, COVID-19 and other subjects — to be so objectionable that they cannot be debated. In the view of many conservatives and some experts, this intolerance is stifling open debate at the heart of the American political system.

The divergent sense of crisis on left and right can itself weaken democracy, and it has been exacerbated by technology.

Conspiracy theories and outright lies have a long American history, dating to the personal attacks that were a staple of the partisan press during the 18th century. In the mid-20th century, tens of thousands of Americans joined the John Birch Society, a far-right group that claimed Dwight Eisenhower was a secret communist.

Today, however, falsehoods can spread much more easily, through social media and a fractured news environment. In the 1950s, no major television network spread the lies about Eisenhower. In recent years, the country’s most watched cable channel, Fox News, regularly promoted falsehoods about election results, Obama’s birthplace and other subjects.

These same forces — digital media, cultural change and economic stagnation in affluent countries — help explain why democracy is also struggling in other parts of the world. Only two decades ago, at the turn of the 21st century, democracy was the triumphant form of government around the world, with autocracy in retreat in the former Soviet empire, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, South Korea and elsewhere. Today, the global trend is moving in the other direction.

In the late 1990s, 72 countries were democratizing, and only three were growing more authoritarian, according to data from V-Dem, a Swedish institute that monitors democracy. Last year, only 15 countries grew more democratic, while 33 slid toward authoritarianism.

Some experts remain hopeful that the growing attention in the United States to democracy’s problems can help avert a constitutional crisis here. Already, Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election failed, partly because of the refusal of many Republican officials to participate, and both federal and state prosecutors are investigating his actions. And while the chronic decline of majority rule will not change anytime soon, it is also part of a larger historical struggle to create a more inclusive American democracy.

Still, many experts point out that it still not clear how the country will escape a larger crisis, such as an overturned election, at some point in the coming decade. “This is not politics as usual,” said Carol Anderson, a professor at Emory University and the author of the book, “One Person, No Vote,” about voter suppression. “Be afraid.”

The Will of the Majority

The founders did not design the United States to be a pure democracy.

They distrusted the classical notion of direct democracy, in which a community came together to vote on each important issue, and believed it would be impractical for a large country. They did not consider many residents of the new country to be citizens who deserved a voice in political affairs, including Natives, enslaved Africans and women. The founders also wanted to constrain the national government from being too powerful, as they believed was the case in Britain. And they had the practical problem of needing to persuade 13 states to forfeit some of their power to a new federal government.

Instead of a direct democracy, the founders created a republic, with elected representatives to make decisions, and a multilayered government in which different branches checked one another. The Constitution also created the Senate, where every state had an equal say regardless of population.

Pointing to this history, some Republican politicians and conservative activists have argued that the founders were comfortable with minority rule. “Of course we’re not a democracy,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has written.

But the historical evidence suggests that the founders believed that majority will — defined as the prevailing view of enfranchised citizens — should generally dictate national policy, as George Thomas of Claremont McKenna College and other constitutional scholars have explained.

In the Federalist Papers, James Madison equated “a coalition of a majority of the whole society” with “justice and the general good.” Alexander Hamilton made similar points, describing “representative democracy” as “happy, regular and durable.” It was a radical idea at the time.

For most of American history, the idea has prevailed. Even with the existence of the Senate, the Electoral College and the Supreme Court, political power has reflected the views of people who had the right to vote. “To say we’re a republic not a democracy ignores the past 250 years of history,” Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard University, said.

Before 2000, only three candidates won the presidency while losing the popular vote (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes and Benjamin Harrison), and each served only a single term. During the same period, parties that won repeated elections were able to govern, including the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson’s time, the New Deal Democrats and the Reagan Republicans.

The situation has changed in the 21st century. The Democratic Party is in the midst of a historic winning streak. In seven of the past eight presidential elections, stretching back to Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, the Democratic nominee has won the popular vote. Over more than two centuries of American democracy, no party has previously fared so well over such an extended period.

Yet the current period is hardly a dominant Democratic age.

What changed? One crucial factor is that, in the past, the parts of the country granted outsize power by the Constitution — less populated states, which tend to be more rural — voted in broadly similar ways as large states and urban areas.

This similarity meant that the small-state bonus in the Senate and Electoral College had only a limited effect on national results. Both Democrats and Republicans benefited and suffered from the Constitution’s undemocratic features.

Democrats sometimes won small states like Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming in the mid-20th century. And California was long a swing state: Between the Great Depression and 2000, Democratic and Republican presidential candidates won it an equal number of times. That the Constitution conferred advantages on residents of small states and disadvantages on Californians did not reliably boost either party.

In recent decades, Americans have increasingly sorted themselves along ideological lines. Liberals have flocked to large metropolitan areas, which are heavily concentrated in big states like California, while residents of smaller cities and more rural areas have become more conservative.

This combination — the Constitution’s structure and the country’s geographic sorting — has created a disconnect between public opinion and election outcomes. It has affected every branch of the federal government: the presidency, Congress and even the Supreme Court.

In the past, “the system was still anti-democratic, but it didn’t have a partisan effect,” Levitsky said. “Now it’s undemocratic and has a partisan effect. It tilts the playing field toward the Republican Party. That’s new in the 21st century.”

In presidential elections, the small-state bias is important, but it is not even the main issue. A subtler factor — the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College in most states — is. Candidates have never received extra credit for winning state-level landslides. But this feature did not used to matter very much, because landslides were rare in larger states, meaning that relatively few votes were “wasted,” as political scientists say.

Today, Democrats dominate a handful of large states, wasting many votes. In 2020, Biden won California by 29 percentage points; New York by 23 points; and Illinois by 17 points. Four years earlier, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s margins were similar.

This shift means that millions of voters in large metropolitan areas have moved away from the Republican Party without having any impact on presidential outcomes. That’s a central reason that both George W. Bush and Trump were able to win the presidency while losing the popular vote.

“We’re in a very different world today than when the system was designed,” said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California. “The dynamic of being pushed aside is more obvious and I think more frustrating.”

Republicans sometimes point out that the system prevents a few highly populated states from dominating the country’s politics, which is true. But the flip is also true: The Constitution gives special privileges to the residents of small states. In presidential elections, many voters in large states have become irrelevant in a way that has no historical antecedent.

The Curse of Geographic Sorting

The country’s changing population patterns may have had an even bigger effect on Congress — especially the Senate — and the Supreme Court than the presidency.

The sorting of liberals into large metropolitan areas and conservatives into more rural areas is only one reason. Another is that large states have grown much more quickly than small states. In 1790, the largest state (Virginia) had about 13 times as many residents as the smallest (Delaware). Today, California has 68 times as many residents as Wyoming, 53 times as many as Alaska and at least 20 times as many as another 11 states.

Together, these trends mean that the Senate has a heavily pro-Republican bias that will last for the foreseeable future.

The Senate today is split 50-50 between the two parties. But the 50 Democratic senators effectively represent 186 million Americans, while the 50 Republican senators effectively represent 145 million. To win Senate control, Democrats need to win substantially more than half of the nationwide votes in Senate elections.

This situation has led to racial inequality in political representation. The residents of small states, granted extra influence by the Constitution, are disproportionately white, while large states are home to many more Asian American, Black and Latino voters.

In addition, two parts of the country that are disproportionately Black or Latino — Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico — have no Senate representation. Washington has more residents than Vermont or Wyoming, and Puerto Rico has more residents than 20 states. As a result, the Senate gives a political voice to white Americans that is greater than their numbers.

The House of Representatives has a more equitable system for allocating political power. It divides the country into 435 districts, each with a broadly similar number of people (currently about 760,000). Still, House districts have two features that can cause the chamber’s makeup not to reflect national opinion, and both of them have become more significant in recent years.

The first is well known: gerrymandering. State legislatures often draw district boundaries and in recent years have become more aggressive about drawing them in partisan ways. In Illinois, for example, the Democrats who control the state government have packed Republican voters into a small number of House districts, allowing most other districts to lean Democratic. In Wisconsin, Republicans have done the opposite.

Because Republicans have been more forceful about gerrymandering than Democrats, the current House map slightly favors Republicans, likely by a few seats. At the state level, Republicans have been even bolder. Gerrymandering has helped them dominate the state legislatures in Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio, even though the states are closely divided.

Still, gerrymandering is not the only reason that House membership has become less reflective of national opinion in recent years. It may not even be the biggest reason, according to Jonathan A. Rodden, a political scientist at Stanford University. Geographic sorting is.

“Without a doubt, gerrymandering makes things worse for the Democrats,” Rodden has written, “but their underlying problem can be summed up with the old real estate maxim: location, location, location.” The increasing concentration of Democratic voters into large metro areas means that even a neutral system would have a hard time distributing these tightly packed Democratic voters across districts in a way that would allow the party to win more elections.

Instead, Democrats now win many House elections in urban areas by landslides, wasting many votes. In 2020, only 21 Republican House candidates won their elections by at least 50 percentage points; 47 Democrats did.

Looking at where many of these elections occurred helps make Rodden’s point. The landslide winners included Rep. Diana DeGette in Denver; Rep. Jerry Nadler in New York City; Rep. Jesús García in Chicago; Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in northern New Jersey; and Rep. Barbara Lee in Oakland, California. None of those districts are in states where Republicans have controlled the legislative boundaries, which means that they were not the result of Republican gerrymandering.

Again and again, geographic sorting has helped cause a growing disconnect between public opinion and election results, and this disconnect has shaped the Supreme Court as well. The court’s membership at any given time is dictated by the outcomes of presidential and Senate elections over the previous few decades. And if elections reflected popular opinion, Democratic appointees would dominate the court.

Every current justice has been appointed during one of the past nine presidential terms, and a Democrat has won the popular vote in seven of those nine and the presidency in five of the nine. Yet the court is now dominated by a conservative, six-member majority.

There are multiple reasons (including Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision not to retire in 2014 when a Democratic president and Senate could have replaced her). But the increasingly undemocratic nature of both the Electoral College and Senate play crucial roles.

Trump was able to appoint three justices despite losing the popular vote. (Bush is a more complex case, having made his court appointments after he won reelection and the popular vote in 2004.) Similarly, if Senate seats were based on population, none of Trump’s nominees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — would likely have been confirmed, said Michael J. Klarman, a law professor at Harvard. Senate Republicans also would not have been able to block Obama from filling a court seat during his final year in office.

Even Justice Clarence Thomas’ 1991 confirmation relied on the Senate’s structure: The 52 senators who voted to confirm him represented a minority of Americans.

The current court’s approach has magnified the disconnect between public opinion and government policy, because Republican-appointed justices have overruled Congress on some major issues. The list includes bills on voting rights and campaign finance that earlier Congresses passed along bipartisan lines. This term, the court issued rulings on abortion, climate policy and gun laws that seemed to be inconsistent with majority opinion, based on polls.

“The Republican justices wouldn’t say this and may not believe it,” Klarman said, “but everything they’ve done translates into a direct advantage for the Republican Party.”

In response to the voting rights decision, in 2013, Republican legislators in several states have passed laws making it more difficult to vote, especially in heavily Democratic areas. They have done so citing the need to protect election security, even though there has been no widespread fraud in recent years.

For now, the electoral effect of these decisions remains uncertain. Some analysts point out that the restrictions have not yet been onerous enough to hold down turnout. In the 2020 presidential election, the percentage of eligible Americans who voted reached the highest level in at least a century.

Other experts remain concerned that the new laws could ultimately swing a close election in a swing state. “When you have one side gearing up to say, ‘How do we stop the enemy from voting?’ that is dangerous to a democracy,” Anderson, the Emory professor, said.

An upcoming Supreme Court case may also allow state legislatures to impose even more voting restrictions. The court has agreed to hear a case in which Republican legislators in North Carolina argue that the Constitution gives them, and not state courts, the authority to oversee federal elections.

In recent years, state courts played an important role in constraining both Republican and Democratic legislators who tried to draw gerrymandered districts that strongly benefited one party. If the Supreme Court sides with the North Carolina legislature, gerrymandering might increase, as might laws establishing new barriers to voting.

Amplifying the Election Lies

If the only challenges to democracy involved these chronic, long-developing forces, many experts would be less concerned than they are. American democracy has always been flawed, after all.

But the slow-building ways in which majority rule is being undermined are happening at the same time that the country faces an immediate threat that has little precedent. A growing number of Republican officials are questioning a basic premise of democracy: that the losers of an election are willing to accept defeat.

The roots of the modern election-denier movement stretch back to 2008. When Obama was running for president and after he won, some of his critics falsely claimed that his victory was illegitimate because he was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii. This movement became known as birtherism, and Trump was among its proponents. By making the claims on Fox News and elsewhere, he helped transform himself from a reality television star into a political figure.

When he ran for president himself in 2016, Trump made false claims about election fraud central to his campaign. In the Republican primaries, he accused his closest competitor for the nomination, Sen. Ted Cruz, of cheating. In the general election against Hillary Clinton, Trump said he would accept the outcome only if he won. In 2020, after Biden won, the election lies became Trump’s dominant political message.

His embrace of these lies was starkly different from the approach of past leaders from both parties. In the 1960s, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater ultimately isolated the conspiracists of the John Birch Society. In 2000, Al Gore urged his supporters to accept George W. Bush’s razor-thin victory, much as Richard Nixon had encouraged his supporters to do so after he narrowly lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960. In 2008, when a Republican voter at a rally described Obama as an Arab, Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee and Obama’s opponent, corrected her.

Trump’s promotion of the falsehoods, by contrast, turned them into a central part of the Republican Party’s message. About two-thirds of Republican voters say that Biden did not win the 2020 election legitimately, according to polls. Among Republican candidates running for statewide office this year, 47% have refused to accept the 2020 result, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis.

Most Republican politicians who have confronted Trump, on the other hand, have since lost their jobs or soon will. Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, for example, eight have since decided to retire or lost Republican primaries, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

“By any indication, the Republican Party — upper-level, midlevel and grassroots — is a party that can only be described as not committed to democracy,” Levitsky said. He added that he was significantly more concerned about American democracy than when his and Ziblatt’s book, “How Democracies Die,” came out in 2018.

Juan José Linz, a political scientist who died in 2013, coined the term “semi-loyal actors” to describe political officials who typically do not initiate attacks on democratic rules or institutions but who also do not attempt to stop these attacks. Through their complicity, these semi-loyal actors can cause a party and a country to slide toward authoritarianism.

That’s what happened in Europe in the 1930s and in Latin America in the 1960s and ’70s. More recently, it has happened in Hungary. Now there are similar signs in the United States.

Often, even Republicans who cast themselves as different from Trump include winking references to his conspiracy theories in their campaigns, saying that they, too, believe “election integrity” is a major problem. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, for example, have both recently campaigned on behalf of election deniers.

In Congress, Republican leaders have largely stopped criticizing the violent attack on the Capitol. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, has gone so far as to signal his support for colleagues — like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — who have used violent imagery in public comments. Greene, before being elected to Congress, said that she supported the idea of executing prominent Democrats.

“When mainstream parties tolerate these guys, make excuses for them, protect them, that’s when democracy gets in trouble,” Levitsky said. “There have always been Marjorie Taylor Greenes. What I pay closer attention to is the behavior of the Kevin McCarthys.”

The party’s growing acceptance of election lies raises the question of what would happen if Trump or another future presidential nominee tried to replay his 2016 attempt to overturn the result.

In 11 states this year, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, a position that typically oversees election administration, qualifies as an “election denier,” according to States United Action, a research group. In 15 states, the nominee for governor is a denier, and in 10 states, the attorney general nominee is.

The growth of the election-denier movement has created a possibility that would have seemed unthinkable not so long ago. It remains unclear whether the loser of the next presidential election will concede or will instead try to overturn the outcome.

‘There Is a Crisis Coming’

There are still many scenarios in which the United States will avoid a democratic crisis.

In 2024, Biden could win reelection by a wide margin — or a Republican other than Trump could win by a wide margin. Trump might then fade from the political scene, and his successors might choose not to embrace election falsehoods. The era of Republican election denial could prove to be brief.

It is also possible that Trump or another Republican nominee will try to reverse a close defeat in 2024 but will fail, as happened in 2020. Then, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, rebuffed Trump after he directed him to “find 11,780 votes,” and the Supreme Court refused to intervene as well. More broadly, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, recently said that the United States had “very little voter fraud.”

If a Republican were again to try to overturn the election and to fail, the movement might also begin to fade. But many democracy experts worry that these scenarios may be wishful thinking.

Trump’s most likely successors as party leader also make or tolerate false claims about election fraud. The movement is bigger than one person and arguably always has been; some of the efforts to make voting more onerous, which are generally justified with false suggestions of widespread voter fraud, predated Trump’s 2016 candidacy.

To believe that Republicans will not overturn a close presidential loss in coming years seems to depend on ignoring the public positions of many Republican politicians. “The scenarios by which we don’t have a major democracy crisis by the end of the decade seem rather narrow,” Mounk of Johns Hopkins said.

And Levitsky said, “It’s not clear how the crisis is going to manifest itself, but there is a crisis coming.” He added, “We should be very worried.”

The most promising strategy for avoiding an overturned election, many scholars say, involves a broad ideological coalition that isolates election deniers. But it remains unclear how many Republican politicians would be willing to join such a coalition.

It is also unclear whether Democratic politicians and voters are interested in making the compromises that would help them attract more voters. Many Democrats have instead embraced a purer version of liberalism in recent years, especially on social issues. This shift to the left has not prevented the party from winning the popular vote in presidential elections, but it has hurt Democrats outside of major metropolitan areas and, by extension, in the Electoral College and congressional elections.

If Democrats did control both the White House and Congress — and by more than a single vote, as they now do in the Senate — they have signaled that they would attempt to pass legislation to address both the chronic and acute threats to democracy.

The House last year passed a bill to protect voting rights and restrict gerrymandering. It died in the Senate partly because it included measures that even some moderate Democrats believed went too far, such as restrictions on voter identification laws, which many other democracies around the world have.

The House also passed a bill to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., which would reduce the Senate’s current bias against metropolitan areas and Black Americans. The United States is currently in its longest stretch without having admitted a new state.

Democracy experts have also pointed to other possible solutions to the growing disconnect between public opinion and government policy. Among them is an expansion of the number of members in the House of Representatives, which the Constitution allows Congress to do — and which it regularly did until the early 20th century. A larger House would create smaller districts, which in turn could reduce the share of uncompetitive districts.

Other scholars favor proposals to limit the Supreme Court’s authority, which the Constitution also allows and which previous presidents and Congresses have done.

In the short term, these proposals would generally help the Democratic Party, because the current threats to majority rule have mostly benefited the Republican Party. In the long term, however, the partisan effects of such changes are less clear.

The history of new states makes this point: In the 1950s, Republicans initially supported making Hawaii a state because it seemed to lean Republican, while Democrats said that Alaska had to be included, too, also for partisan reasons. Today, Hawaii is a strongly Democratic state, and Alaska is a strongly Republican one. Either way, the fact that both are states has made the country more democratic.

Over the sweep of history, the American government has tended to become more democratic, through women’s suffrage, civil rights laws, the direct election of senators and more. The exceptions, like the post-Reconstruction period, when Black Southerners lost rights, have been rare. The current period is so striking partly because it is one of those exceptions.

“The point is not that American democracy is worse than it was in the past,” Mounk said. “Throughout American history, the exclusion of minority groups, and African Americans in particular, was much worse than it is now.

“But the nature of the threat is very different than in the past,” he said.

The makeup of the federal government reflects public opinion less closely than it once did. And the chance of a true constitutional crisis — in which the rightful winner of an election cannot take office — has risen substantially. That combination shows that American democracy has never faced a threat quite like the current one.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Students pour out of a Jewish school, known as a yeshiva, in Brooklyn, June 8, 2022. (Jonah Markowitz/The New York Times)

New York Lawmakers Call for More Oversight of Hasidic Schools

Eliza Shapiro, Brian M. Rosenthal and Nicholas Fandos

Tue, September 13, 2022 at 7:51 AM·5 min read

NEW YORK — Top New York officials voiced grave concerns about the quality of education in Hasidic Jewish private schools on Monday, a day after The New York Times revealed that many of the schools taught only rudimentary English and math and virtually no science or history.

Two Democratic congressmen — Jerrold Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Hakeem Jeffries, chair of the House Democratic Caucus — said they had serious concerns, with Nadler saying it was clear that some of the Hasidic schools were “utterly failing.”

“It is a paramount duty of government to make sure that all children — whether it’s those educated in parochial, private or public schools — are provided a quality education,” said Nadler, the senior Jewish member of the House, whose current district encompasses a major Hasidic neighborhood and who was himself yeshiva-educated. “It is our duty to all New York students to ensure that the law is enforced.”

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Jeffries, who represents parts of central Brooklyn, called for “a rigorous inquiry in order to make sure that the health and well-being of all children is protected.”

Daniel Goldman, who recently won a contested Democratic primary for a new congressional seat that includes Hasidic areas in Brooklyn, said he hoped the schools would work to comply with the law, adding that the Times report “paints a damning picture of an inadequate secular education that does not comply with state law.”

At the state level — where politicians routinely court the cohesive Hasidic voting bloc — the state Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, said she was concerned about the lack of secular education in the Hasidic schools.

“The allegations in the story are deeply disturbing and must be addressed,” she said.

State Sen. Julia Salazar and Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, both Democrats who represent heavily Hasidic Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said they were particularly alarmed by accounts of corporal punishment in the schools and would introduce legislation to ban such punishments going forward.

Other leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and members of a powerful state education board, showed less willingness to criticize the Hasidic schools.

Hochul, a Democrat who has sought to appeal to Jewish voters before this fall’s gubernatorial election, declined to take a position on the Hasidic schools. She is ahead in polls, but, only a year after taking office, is still forging relationships with key groups across the state.

“People understand that this is outside the purview of the governor,” Hochul said Monday at an event in Harlem.

Although the state Board of Regents, not the governor, controls the state education department, Hochul is the most powerful politician in New York and can have significant influence over education issues.

For their part, members of the Board of Regents made no mention of the Times report in discussions Monday before an expected vote on new rules that would hold private schools, including the Hasidic schools, known as yeshivas, to minimum academic standards.

An attorney who has represented many Hasidic yeshivas, Avi Schick, recently said that Hochul’s chance of being reelected this November could be threatened by the Regents vote, even though the governor has not taken a public position on the rules.

Other New York Democratic officials either did not respond to inquiries or declined to comment Monday about the Hasidic schools, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, the majority leader; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand; and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, chief of the House Democratic campaign committee.

New York Republicans, including Rep. Lee Zeldin, defended the schools and criticized the Times report. At a campaign event outside City Hall on Monday, Zeldin, who is running for governor against Hochul and is Jewish, suggested that public schools ought to be emulating “the values” of Hasidic schools, not the other way around.

Other state Republicans said they believed the government should not interfere with private religious education or parents’ ability to choose where their children are educated.

Benine Hamdan, the long-shot Republican candidate challenging Goldman in Brooklyn, said she opposed the state regulations, taking a shot at critical race theory. “While public schools are teaching CRT and sexuality, Hasidic schools should continue to have the right to teach Judaism,” she said.

“At my core, I believe all parents have the right to choose the educational setting they think is best for their children,” said Mark Martucci, a state senator who represents a district just north of New York City and added that he had toured yeshivas and had been impressed by the students.

In a state where Republicans are largely locked out of power, the party has been increasing its outreach to Hasidic voters who have consistently voted for Democrats in local elections but have begun favoring Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, in national races.

Published on Sunday, the Times investigation showed that Hasidic schools appear to be operating in violation of state law by denying thousands of students a basic education. The community operates more than 100 all-boys schools across Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley, which have received more than $1 billion in government money over the past four years alone.

The schools typically provide only 90 minutes a day of secular instruction, just four days per week, and only for boys ages 8 to 12. As a result, the students are failing to learn secular subjects at extraordinarily high rates, the Times found. More than 99% of students who took standardized tests in 2019 failed, according to state data.

At a news conference Monday, Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said he was “not concerned” about the Times’ findings but stressed that his administration was continuing a long-delayed city investigation into some Hasidic schools.

“I’m not going to look at a story. I want a thorough investigation. I want an independent review, and that’s what the city has to do. And we’re going to look at that,” Adams said. The mayor added that any instances of child abuse in the schools should be reported and investigated.

Over the past few years, Hasidic leaders have made keeping government out of schools their top political priority and have relied on officials elected from their community to help block the regulations.

One Hasidic politician, David Schwartz, a Hasidic district leader in Brooklyn, disputed reports of problems in the schools, including regular use of corporal punishment, saying, “I and my community — tens of thousands of caring parents and educators — are unfairly being paint-brushed due to the accounts of a few.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

ARTICLE

https://www.yahoo.com/news/york-lawmakers-call-more-oversight-115132238.html

MY THOUGHTS

I want to first restate the key points in the article. 

• The white jewish schools are operating with some level of illegality for an extended time
• government officials at the federal level <senator chuck schumer> new york state <governor hochul> or new york city level <mayor adams>are so frightened of the white jewish voting block aside the white jewish financial power that none have accepted the findings as true publicly while all want an extended time of deliberations which they would not give the black community or any part of the black community
• The defenders of the white jewish schools say parents have the right to place children where they want and to preserve the heritage in their community, in this case jewish. I think of the Black descended of enslaved MOVE movement in philadelphia and how a black mayor treated them for wanting to preserve their own culture.
• The white jewish schools , over one hundred all boys schools at least, received over one billion dollars in four years while providing per week only four days with ninety minute secular instruction. 
• More than ninety nine percent of students in the white jewish private schools who took standardized tests failed in 2019, this is 2022. 

Now what is my position. I don't care about: the white jewish schools whether committing illegality or not, the financial power of the white jewish community in New York City, the influence by the white jewish community on government officials<federal, state, city>, the white jewish community's heritage or culture being preserved or maintained, or the failure of white jewish students. 

What I care about is the Black community all throughout humanity and in particular, the black community in New York City.

The Black community in New York City doesn't have a large private school system internally and yet Black teachers in public schools have been removed for the crime of disagreeing with administrators, on a first time offense, not for years of neglect doing their job. 

I know the black community in NYC is fiscally poor, it started that way for enslaving black people was legal when new york was new amsterdam before the creation of the United States America. Sequentially, the Black community in NYC doesn't demand the trepidation from elected officials even though it historically votes as a block too. 

From the Black Panthers to The Nation of Islam to the Rastafarians the Black community in NYC tends to have the loudest opposition internally to heritages or cultures from within a community. I can see a Black newscaster in New york city asking, what does it mean to have a Black school. 

The black children of New York City have a financially impotent Black adult community, which includes me, who in majority, I am part of the black adult minority, continually preaches to them about merit or equality or voting while providing black children in new york city nothing. The black adult community in new york city, includes me, have failed the black children of new york city hiding behind a cheap veil of individual decency or merit when in truth we black adults are just flat broke and are too proud to admit it. Any Black adult who reads this, stop telling black children about the need to be more educated and start making money and giving it to black kids regardless of their scholastic quality. Any Black adult who reads this, stop telling black children about competitive spirit and start making sure governments give money for black kids to enjoy life more regardless of their demeanor. Any Black adult who reads this, stop telling black kids what they have to do and start telling black kids what you can't do, admit your impotency your weakness your poverty and tell the truth of you to black children.

I feel sorry for Black Children in new york city. I was once one, and while I was fortunate in the time span of  my childhood from a homelife perspective or communal perspective, I despised local media in new york city which was and is ninety nine percent white owned. White owned new york city media never stopped reminding black children how they needed to do better in my childhood days, comparing black children to various children anywhere with one thing in common. At the time of comparison they are better than black children in New York City. While the same white owned news media of New York City, couldn't find time to discover how the French don't count the schools in the Balieues as part of their main surveys to the world , the japanese don't count the children who don't come to school at higher rates, the schools in the white towns or villages in the midwest where the curriculum is lower isn't admitted in the assessment to comparing the black children in new york city. Black children in NYC have been falsely attributed as consistent failures when in truth it is a mere trick of statistics. Any thing can be proven statistically, anything, the key is in the details. Black children in education have been attacked by statistical warfare and black adults, like me,let it happen.

A Festival That Conjures the Magic of H.P. Lovecraft and Beyond
At the Rhode Island event, revelers danced to murder ballads and celebrated all things weird. They even found time to reckon with the writer’s racism.

By Elisabeth Vincentelli https://www.evincentelli.com

Matt Cosby of NY Times is the photographer

Aug. 28, 2022

There’s bacon and eggs, and then there’s bacon and eggs at the Cthulhu Prayer Breakfast. Named after the cosmically malevolent and abundantly tentacled entity dreamed up by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the event, among the most popular at NecronomiCon Providence 2022, filled a vast hotel ballroom at 8 a.m. on a recent Sunday.

To the delighted worshipers, Cody Goodfellow, here a Most Exalted Hierophant, delivered a sermon that started with growled mentions of “doom-engines, black and red,” “great hammers of the scouring” and so on.

Then the speech took a left turn.

“I must confess myself among those who always trusted that a coven of sexless black-robed liches would change the world for the better,” said Goodfellow, who had flown in from the netherworld known as San Diego, Calif. “But the malignant forces of misplaced morality have regrouped from the backlash that stopped them in the ’80s, and the re-lash is in full swing.”

And so it went, with delicious jabs at incel culture (of which, one might argue, Lovecraft was a proto-member) and plutocrats.

The conference, which took place on Aug. 18-21 in Providence, R.I., for the first time since 2019, is named after Lovecraft’s hometown and another of his literary inventions — a grimoire so dangerous that those who read it meet ghastly ends. (The biannual convention takes place around his birthday; he was born on Aug. 20, 1890.)

The problem is that Lovecraft was a deeply racist and xenophobic man. How we deal with the legacy of a decidedly unsavory person is an issue of great political and cultural relevance nowadays, and the event has tackled it not by retreating or trying to defend the indefensible but by opening up its programming and the range of people invited to participate.

Cordelia Abrams, 49, a Bostonian life coach dressed as an anglerfish at the breakfast, has been attending these events for almost a decade. “This is weird and literary and local,” she said.

Although the event was Lovecraft-centric in its 1990s iteration, it has broadened since a 2013 reboot under the aegis of the nonprofit Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council and is now subtitled “the international festival of weird fiction, art and academia.” Which, of course, poses the question: What does weird even mean when swaths of the mainstream have a slipping grip on reality? A large number of folks, after all, falsely believe that satanic pedophiles operated out of a pizzeria.

At the “Welcome to the New Weird” panel, the editor and publisher Ann VanderMeer, one of the festival’s guests of honor, posited that “the weird is a way to connect with the world around us and make sense of it.” Most people I met or heard speak over the weekend agreed there was a common element of unease and unsettlement, which explains the panels dedicated to simpatico artists like Clive Barker, David Cronenberg and J.G. Ballard.

What was striking was how many of the participants have worked through the problem of Lovecraft himself to repurpose the basic tropes in his fiction. They are appropriating its overarching themes — the powerlessness of humanity against great, unknowable forces — and turning the weird into an instrument of self-exploration, liberation and creativity.

“What really brought me here is the fact that I love horror,” said Zin E. Rocklyn, a 38-year-old queer Black writer from Florida who was on three panels. “I love the catharsis that it brings, the truth that it brings. An incredible imagination came up with some really shady” garbage, she added, using a stronger word to describe Lovecraft’s views. “It’s based in ignorance and fear, but it taps into a universal fear. Being able to examine that and talk about that and expand on that is a great example of what you can do with such an ignorant business.”

Besides academic papers, the convention offered an abundance of panels sharing a dark sensibility: “Not Just Three Acts: Narrative Structure and the Weird”; “Out of the Shadows: A History of the Queer Weird”; and “The Horizon Is Still Way Beyond You: Zora Neale Hurston’s Life and Legacy.” For the last session, the panelists somehow wrangled an interesting 75 minutes out of Hurston’s and Lovecraft’s irreconcilable differences — contrasting, for example, her searching curiosity about other people with his bigotry.

Among the most eye- and mind-opening panels was the one on body horror, which, for you literary fiction folks, included a reminder that the subgenre encompasses classics like “Frankenstein” and “The Metamorphosis.” That panel felt pointed at a time when control over one’s body is being hotly debated in issues relating to transgender lives and abortion.

Another bracing session dealt with Lovecraft and Southeast Asia, in which the Indonesian-American writer Nadia Bulkin said she loved the idea that Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones (ancient gods as powerful as they are malignant) “are the European invaders trampling on lands that aren’t theirs.” Cassandra Khaw, a Malaysian-born writer and another guest of honor, pointed out an essential distinction between Asian horror movies and their American remakes: The American versions are inferior because they add an element of salvation or moral redemption where there was none.

But many attendees preferred gaming over metaphysical discussions. Several sessions were spread over various tables, mostly on two floors, and ranged from the popular (“Call of Cthulhu,” which is widely credited to have reignited interest in Lovecraft when it came out in 1981) to the willfully obscure (“Hecatomb,” a failed collectible-card game meant to be a dark version of “Magic: The Gathering”) and the hilariously entertaining (“Pirate Borg,” complete with swashbuckling outfits and a screen showing close-ups of the dice rolls).

The volume and variety of the programming was enough to make your head spin like Regan MacNeil’s. There were also film screenings, readings, concerts, live podcasts, walking tours of Lovecraft’s Providence, an art exhibit and theatrical performances. There was even a mushroom jaunt in a nearby park, in tribute to the recurrence of things fungal in Lovecraft’s fiction.

According to Niels Hobbs, the “arch director” of the convention and a marine biologist at the University of Rhode Island (he was on the “Under the Sea: Horrors of the Deep Ocean” panel), this year’s edition drew around 200 guest panelists, artists and reading authors; over 100 volunteer staff members and “minions”; and 1,400 attendees. (Absent from the official proceedings was the pre-eminent Lovecraft expert S.T. Joshi, who later wrote in an email that he had been at NecronomiCon but “kept a low profile.”)

Some preferred focusing on the core mythos, like Brian Vann, 53, a data analyst from Costa Mesa, Calif. “His characters are so frequently warned off: ‘Don’t go there, bad things happen,’” Vann said. “But they go, with terrible results. That speaks a lot to the human condition: How do we just ignore the warnings?”

In comparison to commercial enterprises like Comic Con, Providence had no Hollywood presence and only an infinitesimal amount of cosplay. The one big event that involved dressing up, the Eldritch Ball, had a theme, “Masque of the Red Death,” that freed up the imagination rather than constricted it to trademarked characters — instead of, say, Darth Vader, there was a woman dressed as Persephone, queen of the underworld, and a tuxedoed man in what looked like a green crochet Cthulhu mask. Revelers slow‌ dancing to murder ballads was a sight to behold.

Lovecraft himself might have been surprised to see his work bringing together such an inquisitive, welcoming congregation. But to Goodfellow, 53, the conference is a good antidote to the nihilism ravaging parts of America.

“Instead of rooting for the apocalypse, we’re rooting for sustainability and for people to radically accept each other as who we are and all move forward together,” he said. “It’s a wonderfully ironic backhanded way of finding positivity in absolute negativity.”

Article link
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/28/books/necronomicon-providence-hp-lovecraft.html

My Thoughts 
I am not a fan of the squid god:) But I never knew of the festival and it seems on reading like what the comic con used to be in NYC, what jazzmobile used to be in harlem, what many festivals used to be that I liked once upon a time.
I oppose the idea that Lovecraft was unsavory. Hitler as leader in the german government did many things that hurt people, whether german or not, ala The romani. But, Hitler had friends. I have never supported Donald Trump's as a real estate man or reality television mogul or president of the united states of america. But I don't know Donald Trump. The white men of european descent who enslaved my forebears , before during or after slavery , I do not like or support or have positive thoughts to. But that doesn't mean they were unsavory. Said white men had friends and loving ones. JK rowlings isn't unsavory. She has positions or viewpoints many do not like, many oppose, many despise, but that doesn't mean she is unsavory. An artist person not fitting a heritage or cultural mold in any community isn't a problem. Their art can still be liked. The problem is communities who confuse liking an art to liking an artist. I don't like the Nazi German party as I am black and by their law I am unfit to live or be treated with positivity if they have control to determine things. But, their night marches are lovely. 
The article shows in this convention, the people who attend it were able to do what I have heard or read many artist say they can not do, to Michael JAckson or R Kelly or Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein or DW Griffith and that is separate the artists from the art. And that shows a maturity that is rarer or rarer within the consumers or creators of art. 

I admit, I don't know how she will do in government for she has no experience in government. But I wish her well as vice president of Colombia. Government is complicated and all too often nasty absent the media's view. but I am happy for Francia Márquez, but especially the larger Black community in South America. The reality is, even though Black people from the usa dominate the identity of Black Americans the truth is, from Ecuador to Bahia, is a much larger population of black people than in North America or the Caribbean. My only concern for Black people in South America is their dangerous mirroring of Black North Americans in government affairs. I realize Francia Marquez is in that line but I hope she learns the lessons of Black people in the Caribbean the center of the american continent or Black people in North America... don't be silly. Take this opportunity to lead Black people in colombia and greater south america with wisdom with focus with efficiency with community with collectivity, even while peaceful or nonviolent. Don't mirror the likes of Kamala Harris, the likes of Barrack Obama, the likes of John Lewis, the likes of maxine waters, the likes of corey booker , the likes of eric adams, the likes adrienne adams, the likes of Clarence Thomas, the likes of Colin Powell, the likes of condoleeza rice, please don't mirror the likes of all the Black charlatans in government in North America or elsewhere like Nelson Mandela in South Africa.  Think on Black people , plan for Black people, like Winnie Mandela, like Malcolm X, like Jean Jacques Dessalines, like Adam Clayton Powell jr, like Shirley Chisholm. 

Gustavo Petro is Colombia's first leftist leader
Gustavo Petro, a former rebel and a longtime legislator, won Colombia's presidential election Sunday, galvanizing voters frustrated by decades of poverty and inequality under conservative leaders
 
BY JULIE TURKEWITZ

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — For the first time, Colombia will have a leftist president. Gustavo Petro, a former rebel and a longtime legislator, won Colombia’s presidential election Sunday, galvanizing voters frustrated by decades of poverty and inequality under conservative leaders, with promises to expand social programs, tax the wealthy and move away from an economy he has called overly reliant on fossil fuels.

His victory sets the third-largest nation in Latin America on a sharply uncertain path, just as it faces rising poverty and violence that have sent record numbers of Colombians to the United States border; high levels of deforestation in the Colombian am*zon, a key buffer against climate change; and a growing distrust of key democratic institutions, which has become a trend in the region.

Petro, 62, received more than 50% of the vote, with more than 99% counted Sunday evening. His opponent, Rodolfo Hernández, a construction magnate who had energized the country with a scorched-earth anti-corruption platform, won just over 47%.

Shortly after the vote, Hernández conceded to Petro.

“Colombians, today the majority of citizens have chosen the other candidate,” Hernández said. “As I said during the campaign, I accept the results of this election.”

Petro took the stage Sunday night flanked by his vice-presidential pick, Francia Márquez, and three of Petro’s children. The packed stadium went wild, with people standing on chairs and holding phones aloft.

“This story that we are writing today is a new story for Colombia, for Latin America, for the world,” Petro said. “We are not going to betray this electorate.”

He pledged to govern with what he has called “the politics of love,” based on hope, dialogue and understanding.

Just over 58% of Colombia’s 39 million voters turned out to cast a ballot, according to official figures.

The victory means that Márquez, an environmental activist who rose from poverty to become a prominent advocate for social justice, will become the country’s first Black vice president.

Petro and Márquez’s victory reflects an anti-establishment fervor that has spread across Latin America, exacerbated by the pandemic and other long-standing issues, including a lack of opportunity.

“The entire country is begging for change,” said Fernando Posada, a Colombian political scientist, “and that is absolutely clear.”

In April, Costa Ricans elected to the presidency of Rodrigo Chaves, a former World Bank official and political outsider, who took advantage of widespread discontent with the incumbent party. Last year, Chile, Peru and Honduras voted for leftist leaders running against candidates on the right, extending a significant, multiyear shift across Latin America.

As a candidate, Petro had energized a generation that is the most educated in Colombian history, but is also dealing with 10% annual inflation, a 20% youth unemployment rate and a 40% poverty rate. His rallies were often full of young people, many of whom said they feel betrayed by decades of leaders who had made grand promises but delivered little.

“We’re not satisfied with the mediocrity of past generations,” said Larry Rico, 23, a Petro voter at a polling station in Ciudad Bolívar, a poor neighborhood in Bogotá, the capital.

Petro’s win is all the more significant because of the country’s history. For decades, the government fought a brutal leftist insurgency known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, with the stigma from the conflict making it difficult for a legitimate left to flourish.

But the FARC signed a peace deal with the government in 2016, laying down their arms and opening space for a broader political discourse.

Petro had been part of a different rebel group, called the M-19, which demobilized in 1990 and became a political party that helped rewrite the country’s constitution. Eventually, Petro became a forceful leader in the country’s opposition, known for denouncing human rights abuses and corruption.

On Sunday, in a wealthy part of Bogotá, Francisco Ortiz, 67, a television director, said he had also voted for Petro.

“It’s been a long time since we had an opportunity like this for change,” he said. “If things will get better, I don’t know. But if we stick with the same, we already know what we’re going to get.”

The win could also test the United States’ relationship with its strongest ally in Latin America. Traditionally, Colombia has formed the cornerstone of Washington’s policy in the region.

But Petro has criticized what he calls the United  States’ failed approach to the drug war, saying it has focused too much on eradication of the coca crop, the base product in cocaine, and not enough on rural development and other measures.

Petro has said that he embraces some form of drug legalization, that he will renegotiate an existing trade deal with the United States to better benefit Colombians and that he will restore relations with the authoritarian government of president Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, all of which could create conflict with the United States.

About 2 million Venezuelan migrants have fled to Colombia in recent years amid an economic, political and humanitarian crisis.

Petro believes the economic system is broken, overly reliant on oil export and a flourishing and illegal cocaine business that he said has made the rich richer and poor poorer. He is calling for a halt to all new oil exploration, and a shift to developing other industries.

He has also said he will introduce guaranteed work with a basic income, move the country to a publicly controlled health system and increase access to higher education, in part by raising taxes on the rich.

“What we have today is the result of what I call ‘the depletion of the model,’ ” Petro said in the interview this year, referring to the current economic system. “The end result is a brutal poverty.”

His ambitious economic plan has, however, raised concerns. One former finance minister called his energy plan “economic suicide.”

Petro's critics, including former allies, have accused him of arrogance that leads him to ignore advisers and struggle to build consensus. When he takes office in August, he will face a deeply polarized society where polls show growing distrust in almost all major institutions.

He has vowed to serve as the president of all Colombians, not just those who voted for him.

On Sunday, at a high school-turned-polling station in Bogotá, Ingrid Forrero, 31, said she saw a generational divide in her community, with young people supporting Petro and older generations in favor of Hernández.

Her own family calls her the “little rebel” because of her support for Petro, whom she said she favors because of his policies on education and income inequality.

“The youth is more inclined toward revolution,” she said, “toward the left, toward a change.”

©2019 New York Times News Service

https://www.forbesindia.com/article/news/gustavo-petro-is-colombias-first-leftist-leader/77421/1

IN AMENDMENT
Odd how I read this in the new york times, but the exact article is elsewhere online. why is the times online article user blocked. I guess they are making money off of subscribing and the delay from their website to the larger web
 

In this community or elsewhere online I suggested that the Black populace in the USA has financially tried everything, applied everything. But has not governmentally tried everything. 
The one absent attempt in the USA in terms of government in the USA by the Black populace in the USA is a Black PArty of Governance. 
Now, whites in NEw JErsey are starting their own third party. It isn't a federal party. It is focused on New Jersey alone. 
The question I have isn't validating the strategy of a Black party of governance. My posts below provide ample arguments. 
I am not interesting in being apart of a Black party of governance in the USA. I am not suggesting anything is easy. I never said the idea should be implemented as a straight confronter to the elephants or donkeys. < Which the whites in the article below prove >
The question is what is the source behind black rejection to this idea? 
I never said it was easy. I suggested it need to be done in small municipal levels. I am not trying to become part of said party or be an idol in it. Enough Black people are financially affluent in modern usa to support it. 
Some Black folk in this community or before elsewhere online or offline, suggested that the two parties are adequate, utilizing personal or individual instances of positive use, or stating that the black populace in majority doesn't utilize the two party system well enough.
But, my problem with all those arguments is in over one hundred and fifty years, black people have supported the POAL <party of abraham lincoln> or the POAJ <party of andrew jackson> in great or positive fashion. But it didn't yield better results. 
Don't tell me that the black populace in the USA when engaged more positively or disengaged more positively to either party , after yielding the same results, places the problem on the black populace. To restate, the Black populace has heavily supported either party full of agenda at times and at other times disengaged either party with nonchalance. But the results are the same. So how can the problem be Black people? 
If you are getting you ass kicked after training for months with experienced trainers and a complete training scenario fully finances and then you are still getting your ass kicked when you are not training at all and are not investing or have any investment to your training. then maybe you need to stop getting in that ring. 
Maybe you need to make your own ring to fight? Will your own ring be lauded as the one that is older that is more well known that is better financed? probably not. But, It is your own ring and to the community connected to it you can do far more than merely be a member of another ring. You can potentially help others. 
But, the question then is, do Blacks want to help Blacks? Are Blacks telling other Blacks to pull up bootstraps? 
Black folk in the USA or anywhere else have to try new things if they don't want to go in circles.

My Black Party of Governance posts
January 21st 2019
https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/194-richard-murray-creative-table/?do=findComment&comment=496
February 6th 2019 - video is Feb 2nd 2019
https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/194-richard-murray-creative-table/?do=findComment&comment=498
June 25th 2020
https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-good-news-blog-stories-through-a-year/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-914
April 12th 2022
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/9211-the-black-community-in-the-usa-need-an-alternative-to-black-officials-from-the-party-of-andrew-jackson-or-abraham-lincoln/
April 20th 2022
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1890&type=status
June 1st 2022
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1929&type=status

I add a Black member of the party of Andrew Jackson who proves my point
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/9449-interesting-discussion-on-the-impact-of-immigration-on-the-afroamerican-community/?do=findComment&comment=52623
MLK jr Bootstraps
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1924&type=status
 

ARTICLE
New Jersey Centrists Seek to Legalize Their Dream: The Moderate Party
by Blake Hounshell

When Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the Supreme Court docket majority in a landmark 1997 case, rejected a minor celebration’s demand that it’s allowed to appoint candidates who have been already on the Democratic ticket, he argued that states have a robust curiosity in “the political stability of the two-party system.”

Almost 25 years later, Rehnquist’s elementary premise is now broadly in query. Indicators of maximum polarization and voter unease are all over the place, from this week’s congressional hearings over one celebration’s baldfaced try and overturn a presidential election to the surging variety of Individuals who decline to register as both Democrats or Republicans.

Previous efforts to face up viable third events have foundered repeatedly in america, nonetheless — be it as a result of they hitch themselves to quixotic causes on the expense of extra mainstream appeals, or due to the obstacles the 2 main events routinely place of their path.

A brand new political celebration in New Jersey is hoping to disrupt that sample by embracing the very method that Justice Rehnquist scorned — fusion voting — with ambitions of taking the concept nationwide. And whereas the celebration’s founders acknowledge that the probabilities of success could also be low, supporters say they’ve recognized a components that provides better promise than extra sweeping however in the end unworkable concepts for overhauling America’s sclerotic political system.

The celebration, led by a core of native Republicans, Democrats and independents alarmed by the G.O.P.’s rightward drift below former President Donald J. Trump, has given itself a reputation that makes its middle-of-the-road ideological positioning crystal clear: the Reasonable Celebration.

The celebration’s purpose is to offer centrist voters extra of a voice at a time when, the group’s founders say, America’s two main events have drifted towards the political fringes. However in contrast to conventional third events, the Reasonable Celebration hopes to nudge the Democratic and Republican Events towards the middle, not exchange or compete with them.

One of many celebration’s co-founders is Richard A. Wolfe, a associate on the regulation agency Fried Frank and former small-town mayor who says he’s repulsed by the Republican Celebration’s embrace of conspiracy theories and fealty towards Mr. Trump.

“Beginning round 2020, my spouse and I began to really feel just like the Republican Celebration now not represented our views,” Mr. Wolfe stated in an interview. “We began to get very uncomfortable with the extremism.”

However he couldn’t convey himself to assist the Democratic Celebration, which he views as too beholden to left-wing financial concepts and cultural causes. Feeling politically “homeless,” Mr. Wolfe started having quiet conversations with like-minded people about beginning a brand new political celebration and stumbled throughout the idea of fusion voting, he stated.

Beneath fusion voting, a number of events can nominate the identical candidate, who then seems greater than as soon as on the poll. Proponents say it permits voters who don’t really feel comfy with both main celebration to specific their preferences with out “losing” votes on candidates with no hope of successful.

The apply is frequent in New York, which has two distinguished fusion events: the Working Households Celebration, which backs progressive candidates however normally aligns with Democrats; and the Conservative Celebration, which helps candidates on the center-right however normally aligns with Republicans. Within the Connecticut governor’s race in 2010, 26,000 votes solid on the Working Households Celebration poll line for Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, made the distinction between victory and defeat.

Forty-three states, together with New Jersey, prohibit fusion voting, nonetheless. The Reasonable Celebration hopes to alter that by difficult these bans in state courtroom.

The primary check case is Consultant Tom Malinowski, who’s favored to win the Democratic main to proceed to symbolize New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District. An upscale suburban space that features Mr. Trump’s Bedminster golf membership, the district turned considerably extra Republican-leaning after a bipartisan redistricting fee redrew the state’s maps final yr.

Mr. Malinowski’s seemingly Republican opponent, Tom Kean Jr., is the scion of a robust political dynasty in New Jersey. His father, Tom Kean Sr., is a reasonable former governor of the state who gained nationwide recognition as a co-chairman of the Sept. 11 fee. Mr. Malinowski narrowly defeated the youthful Mr. Kean in 2020, successful by simply 5,329 votes.

New Jersey political analysts anticipate an much more troublesome race this yr for Mr. Malinowski, who fastidiously weighed his possibilities earlier than deciding to hunt a 3rd time period.

In an interview, Mr. Malinowski stated that he welcomed the Reasonable Celebration’s assist.

“I feel that is a solution to a query that lots of Individuals have been asking,” Mr. Malinowski stated. “Folks in the midst of the political spectrum really feel disenfranchised by events that play to their base, notably on the Republican facet.”

Though it has been dominated by the Democratic Celebration lately, New Jersey has a historical past of rewarding centrist politicians. Of the state’s practically 6.5 million registered voters, barely over 4 million are registered as Democrats or Republicans, leaving 2.5 million unaffiliated with both main celebration.

A ballot of New Jersey voters performed in April by the Monmouth College Polling Institute discovered that 52 % of adults within the state both want or lean towards retaining Democrats accountable for Congress, whereas 41 % favor placing Republicans in energy.

Fusion voting was as soon as widespread throughout america. However most state legislatures outlawed the apply after it turned a well-liked software of minor events and actions through the Progressive Period, threatening the 2 main events’ unique maintain on voters.

Beneath Gov. Woodrow Wilson, New Jersey handed a regulation in 1911 expressly permitting fusion tickets. Wilson hailed the measure as placing “each technique of alternative within the palms of the folks,” based on a recent New York Occasions account. However a decade later, New Jersey state lawmakers, alarmed by the expansion of minor events, barred candidates from showing greater than as soon as on the identical poll.

On Tuesday, the Reasonable Celebration submitted nominating petitions on Mr. Malinowski’s behalf to the New Jersey secretary of state, Tahesha Approach, together with a memorandum and varied different materials laying out the case for why fusion voting must be authorized. The secretary of state’s workplace declined a request for remark.

If, as anticipated, Ms. Approach declines to permit Mr. Malinowski to run on the Reasonable Celebration ticket, the celebration and a few of its supporters plan to problem her determination in state appeals courtroom.

Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer at Shield Democracy, a nonprofit group that’s representing a voter who intends to problem Ms. Approach’s seemingly ruling, stated that New Jersey had robust protections for voting rights and freedom of speech, meeting and affiliation that should invalidate the century-old ban on fusion tickets.

Shield Democracy turned concerned, Mr. Tremitiere stated, as a result of the group believes that fusion voting “may help present a significant off-ramp to escalating extremism and polarization.”

The state-centric technique might permit the celebration to bypass the Supreme Court docket, whose 1997 ruling that states have the authority to outlaw fusion tickets is taken into account unassailable below the federal Structure, notably given the courtroom’s present conservative majority.

However the Reasonable Celebration’s authorized staff plans to argue that not solely has political polarization reached unsustainable ranges for the reason that Nineties, fusion voting has contributed to the steadiness of states like New York and Connecticut.

“It’s an uphill battle, definitely,” stated Jeffrey Mongiello, a lawyer in New Jersey who has written critically in regards to the state’s ban on fusion voting. Mr. Mongiello famous that the burden can be on the plaintiffs to show that the ban on fusion voting is unconstitutional below New Jersey regulation, however the Supreme Court docket’s ruling.

Mr. Malinowski, a former State Division official and longtime analyst for Human Rights Watch, has been an influential voice on overseas coverage throughout his time within the Home. He was an outspoken supporter of arming Ukraine to defend itself in opposition to Russia’s invasion and sponsored a invoice to grab the belongings of Russian oligarchs and reallocate them to the Ukrainian authorities.

For now, the Reasonable Celebration is targeted on altering the regulation in New Jersey, with the courts being essentially the most promising avenue. However the celebration’s allies, which have the backing of well-heeled nationwide donors, have recognized eight to 10 different states which have the same mixture of a good structure and a probably sympathetic Supreme Court docket.

The Working Households Celebration tried a comparable gambit in Pennsylvania in 2019, leading to a 4-to-3 State Supreme Court docket determination in favor of the state’s argument that fusion voting would unleash “electoral chaos.”

Supporters of fusion voting see a mannequin that can be utilized to bolster centrist voices throughout the nation and break what they are saying is the “doom loop of zero-sum partisan warfare” that’s endangering American democracy.

“There’s a gut-wrenching aversion amongst many Republicans that claims, ‘I might by no means vote for a Democrat,’” stated Lee Drutman, an analyst on the New America Basis who wrote an skilled transient in favor of the Reasonable Celebration’s petitions. “Fusion voting permits folks to specific their true preferences in a manner the two-party system doesn’t.”