Yes, we should celebrate Democrats’ historic wins and Donald Trump’s big losses in the midterms. But we also must face the sobering fact that there are still big threats to democracy looming.
On Saturday, Ali Velshi spoke with two historians about what to expect next. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on authoritarianism and a professor at NYU, said we should honor and celebrate the good news: “One of the big takeaways is that we can have confidence in our election system and confidence in our own ability to organize and to affect change, and to be resilient and to have these wins even under very difficult circumstances,” she said.
But she also predicted that the big MAGA wins in Texas and Florida will prompt them to “double down their efforts and become even more laboratories of autocracy to scale up.”
Joanne Freeman, a Yale professor of American history and American studies, agreed. She called the midterm election results “a relief” because they could have been much worse and because they were “a victory in some ways for the democratic process.” But she also saw the close results as a warning sign about what those who expected and felt entitled to win might do next.
The MAGA losers “already are prone to not necessarily being cozy with the democratic system,” Freeman said. “What that suggests to me, among other things, is this is not a moment to let down our guard."
“There’s nothing more dangerous than vindictive authoritarians,” Ben-Ghiat added. “And we saw that with Trump, who couldn't stand to lose and so organized a violent coup attempt.”
And then there are the emboldened winners. Ben-Ghiat called “the anointment of Ron DeSantis” “very worrying” because he’s “just a smoother and more disciplined extremist.”
We can never forget that no matter who Fox News, the Murdochs and the GOP elites get behind, that the goal is more authoritarianism, Ben-Ghiat continued. “The goal is to make it easier to have an autocratic system prevail and to convince Americans that we did have a lot of election deniers who won, that elections are too compromised and too corrupt to be a valid way of choosing leaders. And that opens the door to coup attempts and other kinds of authoritarian machinations.”
The good news is that we have just proven we can make a difference. In her excellent post about next steps the left needs to take, C&L’s own Susie Madrak wrote that one of the best things we can do is contact our representatives and urge them to pass laws protecting democracy, such as passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act or abolishing the filibuster. And do let them know when you see them doing something right or wrong.
There are also community and political groups to get involved with. My local Swing Left group is having at least one get-together to write Vote Forward letters on behalf of Sen. Raphael Warnock in the Georgia runoff. It’s a good way to socialize, have fun and make a difference.
As Susie also said, “Be like the Ukrainians. Celebrate every victory, and then back to the war.”
