Believe in Democracy

Building a Better Political Future

By Tom McMahan

I. Believe in Democracy | II Defend Objective Truth | III Reform Public Education | IV Defend the Environment |
V Rebuild Communities | VI Practice Inclusivity | VII Uphold the Rule of Law | VIII Strengthen Institutions |
IX Respect Ethics | X Promote Positive Freedom

I hope you’ll indulge me over the next several weeks while I try to craft a vision of a better society. Since this is a political Substack, one tied directly to part of the Democratic Party, it will also have elements of how our party can help build that better society.

I will approach this project in layers. I am inspired by the works of Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny and On Freedom), as well as JM Purvis’s Democrats 101, because I hope to wed the ideas of democracy from Snyder, and before him Hannah Arendt, with some of the ideas for the Democratic Party that Purvis has in his book.

Our present-day understanding of the fine line between democracy and totalitarianism or other authoritarian governments begins with the works of mid-20th-century historian Hannah Arendt (shown above)

My first layer may seem like the most obvious one, but it’s something we all need to stop and think about…Believe in Democracy.

A commonly used description of the people who make up today’s Democratic Party is progressives. This connects us to the Progressive Era of late 19th and early 20th-century America. There are similarities in demographics…mostly urban-based, with a large professional presence. There are also some differences; the earlier progressives were not concentrated in one party, but that was during a time before the present-day “Left/Right” split had fully taken hold of our politics and our two major parties.

The three Progressive Presidents…Republicans Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Ironically, none of the three cared for the other two at all, even though we tend to lump them together today.

I bring the progressives of old up because we “progressives” (or “liberals” or insert-your-own-favorite-adjective-here), surprisingly, and disturbingly, confront many of the same realities our forebearers of over a century ago faced.

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Ill-effects of the concentration of wealth? √ Corrupt “boss” politicians? √ Government institutions and processes in need of being updated to fit the times? √

A very high voter turnout rate? √

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Let me explain, especially that last.

Most everyone, short of Donald Trump and his cronies, would agree that the concentration of wealth and corruption among political bosses and politicians are problems in need of long-term correction. Trump openly wallows in corruption and thinks the “Gilded Age” was the pinnacle of American civilization. It’s as if Plunkitt of Tammany Hall has been resurrected and put in the White House, minus the folksy humor.

The level of idiocy in this statement is exceptional. Spoiler: It was to keep people like Trump and Elon Musk from controlling everything. and using the money to provide more government services. And, of course, tariffs don’t work that way, its consumers who ultimately pay the money back to the importers who directly pay the tariff.

Progressives strengthened democracy by developing new political institutions and cleaning up many others. But in so doing, they also helped decrease voter participation. And herein lies our cautionary tale.

Progressives were ok with having fewer people vote because, having fought the likes of Tammany Hall, the decline in voting eroded the power of the corrupt political machines and led to their eventual defeat.

Voter participation levels in the age of Trump have once again elevated to near Gilded Age levels, but as in the Gilded Age, it can hardly be said our democracy is healthier as a result. Corruption once again runs rampant, and is openly voted for by tens of millions.

As we move forward with what I hope will be a long, ongoing reform effort to reinvigorate our democracy, let’s be very careful not to allow ourselves to equate less political participation with “better government.” American government paradoxically built stronger democratic institutions over the 20th Century as voter participation, usually one of the indicators of the health of a democracy, was slowly declining.

That’s a discouraging historical fact, but I don’t want our party, having been disappointed by the results of 2024, to lose faith in elections or electoral processes, as I indirectly referred to last week.

All democracies will always have plenty of foolish people and inept politicians. America has developed into the world’s most powerful nation with plenty of both throughout our history. Arendt pointed out decades ago that democracies will always go through cycles of growth, decline, and, quite possibly, collapse into tyranny.

There are no absolutes. The dangers will always be with us. There is no arc of history, good, bad, or indifferent. There’s just us, with all of our strengths and weaknesses.

All of our ways of seeking the truth, including civilizations themselves, have underlying assumptions that simply have to be taken as an assertion of faith. They can’t be “proven,” they just exist, a priori, a necessary precursor for the desired outcome.

Believe in democracy. Let that be our underlying assumption for our political search for truth and a better society.

Next week, we start building more concrete solutions on top of that assumption.