Democrats are campaigning to save democracy – but is that the way to win in 2024?
By Michael Jones
A day before the third anniversary of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, President Biden traveled to Valley Forge—the winter encampment of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War—to give a speech that marked the official kickoff of his re-election campaign.
The major address didn’t directly focus on nagging inflation, his opposition to the statewide abortion bans made possible by the conservative supermajority on the US Supreme Court, or even the historic legislative record he and congressional Democrats amassed during his first two years in office.
Instead, he spoke about the fragility of American democracy and the existential threat he believed Donald Trump posed to the United States and global freedom if the former president won back the White House in November.
“This is not rhetorical, academic or hypothetical,” Biden said. “Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time and that’s what the 2024 election is all about.”
The chattering classes immediately questioned whether democracy was too lofty an ideal to promote to a weary electorate concerned with the economic realities of high costs, student loan debt, and a crushing housing market.
But the Biden campaign believed then—and still does now—that the US’s democratic principles are the foundation for the robust policy debate on how best to protect the freedoms at risk with another four years of MAGA rule.
“Yes, we’ll be voting on many issues: On the freedom to vote and have your voice counted. On the freedom of choice, the freedom to have a fair shot, the freedom from fear. And we’ll debate and disagree,” Biden said. “The choice and contest between those competing forces—between solidarity and division—is perennial. But this time, it’s so different. You can’t have a contest if you [use] politics as an all-out war instead of a peaceful way to resolve our differences.
I was curious if congressional Democrats carried the same conviction as the leader of their party and spent the week searching for answers.
Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) admitted to me this week at the US Capitol that she was an early skeptic of democracy’s prominent theme of the campaign.
“I remember thinking, ‘I think kitchen-table issues are more important to people,’” she said.
But Escobar noticed a shift both among the constituents in her El Paso district and voters throughout the country who express fear that American democracy is slipping beyond reach.
“I’ve been talking to other communities, participating in their volunteer events [and] what I’m hearing from Latinos whose families emigrated here from Latin American countries where democracy was lost, they have been really vocal in conversations about how we could become the next country that falls to authoritarianism.”
While the so-called kitchen-table issues are still dominant in the conversation, Escobar told me Trump’s legal troubles have crystallized the stakes for many voters.
“I think as the [hush money] trial, for example, rolls out, and you see Trump basically ignoring the rules of the court and there are reminders of the fact that he is an absolute lawbreaker who has no regard for rules and norms or laws or the Constitution,” she said. “I think people are paying a lot more attention on that issue and I am seeing a lot more conversation and concern around it.”
Lucy McBath, a three-term Georgia congresswoman who represents part of the Atlanta metro area, worries that enough conversation isn’t being had about the danger extreme partisan gerrymandering poses to the future of American democracy.
Ahead of the 2022 midterms, McBath was drawn out of her old district and forced into a primary with another incumbent Democratic member. A little more than a year later, Georgia state Republicans passed a new map that demolished her current district, which comprises a majority of Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters.
“When you start having opportunities by legislators to not allow voters to pick their elected officials, then you’re reducing people’s ability to exercise what’s important to them by diminishing the right to vote and to vote,” she said. “It breaks down to basic erosion of people’s civil and human liberties. And a lot of that falls under their ability to be able to vote.”
Voter turnout in the US among 18- to 24-year-olds was the lowest of all age groups for the 2020 election, reflecting generational apathy, mistrust, and dissatisfaction with the democratic process.
But McBath told me she believes democracy is what future voters make it and that she seeks to empower young people in her community to see themselves as stakeholders in the system under which they’re governed. She hopes that if they recognize the value of their vote and the power of their voice, they’ll feel disinclined to sit the election out.
The voices of young leaders have been amplified by the newest US senator, Laphonza Butler of California, who was appointed last year to replace the late Dianne Feinstein.
Butler is among a group of Hill Democrats who believe the fewer barriers to democratic engagement, the higher the levels of participation will be.
She’s the lead Senate co-sponsor of a bill that would designate public high schools as voter registration sites, enable students to hold voter drives on campus, and reimburse schools for the cost of programs that improve youth voter turnout and registration.
The senator’s support of the legislation emerged from ongoing conversations with young people about and a mandate to ensure democracy can thrive long after her term ends next January.
“I start from a place of knowing that I don’t know everything. And for me, it ultimately comes down to not being afraid to let other people have the best idea. And so many instances, these young leaders in California and across the country have some of the best ideas,” she told me. ”It’s our job and a part of our role and responsibility to help to inform those ideas with our experience to help to facilitate the execution of those ideas with our position and platform.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
