“We won with Abigail Spanberger, we won with Zahran Mamdani. They’re part of a vision for the future,” celebrated former President Barack Obama on Pod Save America, shortly after the 4/11 election.
With Abigail’s victory, Virginia’s government will pass into the hands of an ultra-moderate former congresswoman, who was a CIA agent and advocates a tough-on-crime stance. Indeed, a majority of New Yorkers openly supported a young Muslim immigrant who was a socialist. He engaged in opposition to Trumpism, and the only black person to occupy the White House gave another one of his speeches, in which reason was a partner in empathy.
He said that despite their differences, the Democrats share pluralism that, in their view, represents the best of America.
In addition to pluralistic convictions, what makes Spanberger and Mamdani coexist in the same party is the majority electoral system that imposes bipartisanship. If that were not the case, each of them would likely be in the group that best represents their policy preferences. The task of bringing together the forces opposing Donald Trump will be much more difficult.
No one in their right mind can predict how the terrible experiment of the presidency in the hands of an avowedly ambitious dictator will end. There are those who believe that the United States is already in transition toward an election-based authoritarian system, for which political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt of Harvard University reserve the concept of competitive authoritarianism. There are still those who believe it is too early to declare the end of democracy in America: the ultimate test will be Trump’s reaction to a possible defeat at the ballot box.
In any case, politicians like Obama realize that, in order to overcome Trumpism in the vote, the Democratic Party will not need to choose moderation or shift to the left, in order to be the place where Spanberger followers and Mamdanites coexist. In other words, it is possible to bring together different voters with candidates from different political backgrounds.
The same thesis is defended by figures close to Democrats, such as journalist Ezra Klein, who runs an influential podcast at the New York Times. The idea seems far from clear when one is accustomed to thinking of party life as a constant struggle between factions for control of resources and control of their political views.
Obama and Klain know that Trump’s radical supporters, followers of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, are only a small part of the majority that has been harboring the far-right leader in the White House. They also know that the dispute is over the votes of those who chose Trump, but they did not give him a mandate to dismantle democracy.
Under a radically different institutional framework, of heightened partisanship, the challenge proposed by Obama and Klein to the Democrats is reminiscent of the challenge faced by the Brazilian Democrats in the 2022 elections. To defeat Bolsonaro, it was necessary to collect votes far exceeding those available among voters loyal to the Workers’ Party and the left.
The same will be important to permanently defeat candidates who flirt with the coup leader’s legacy.
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