THE GUARDIAN
“With fear for our democracy, I dissent.” So wrote supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor in a minority opinion this week. She was far from alone in the view that, with Donald Trump threatening an “imperial presidency”, American democracy is at a moment of maximum peril.
Millions are pinning their hopes on the Democratic party as the last wall of defence. Surely, they believed, Democrats would field their best and brightest led by a dynamic presidential candidate and demagogue slayer. Instead the party is offering 81-year-old Joe Biden and an internal civil war.
Biden’s career worst debate performance against Trump last month has triggered acrimony, angst and panic among Democrats just four months from election day. There are growing calls for oldest president in US history to step aside in favour of Vice-President Kamala Harris or another candidate. But Biden has so far dug in and vowed to fight on.
It would be a hugely consequential decision for any party at any moment but the one thing that Democrats agree on is the stakes are uniquely high. America’s highest court has shifted right, thanks to three Trump appointees, and could indulge his authoritarian impulses should he be elected. A Trump victory would also have dramatic implications for Ukraine and other US allies.
“American democracy is facing a category 5 disaster here,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative political commentator and Trump critic. “Not just the election but the court. Unfortunately the Democratic party feels like it’s paralysed and refusing to acknowledge reality.”
Debate viewers were shocked because Democrats had created an alternate reality bubble, Sykes added. “It reminds me a little bit of what what the Republican bubble felt like a few years ago where people will say one thing in private but they won’t say it in public. In private people know that they have a real problem with Joe Biden, that it was a disaster, that it might not get better, but they’re unwilling to say that in public and right now that’s an untenable solution.”
America celebrated its 248th birthday this week with its customary barbecues, fireworks and flag-waving but its democracy has been ailing for some time. The Watergate scandal, which led to Richard Nixon’s resignation, and the Ronald Reagan era helped sow distrust in government, while the the 2008 financial crisis fuelled a sense that the system was failing to deliver.
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