American Democracy: A Status Check

Matter of Opinion

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Ross Douthat, News, New York Times, Journalism

4.2 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Just how much trouble is American democracy in? When we look to 2024, it’s easy to focus on the doomsday scenario: an election where legitimate results get thrown out. But our democracy has been eroding for years — and we’ve never been an equal democracy for everyone in the first place. Host Jane Coaston discusses the state of the U.S. democracy and whether Jan. 6 was a turning point with Masha Gessen, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and Corey Robin, a political scientist at Brooklyn College.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's been a year since riot or storm the United States Capitol.
0:08.0	Thousands of Trump supporters gathered on January 6th, fired up by the lie that Biden
0:15.6	didn't really win the election.
0:17.6	Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy.
0:24.0	And after this, we're going to walk down and I'll be there with you.
0:27.6	We're going to walk down, we're going to walk down, anyone you want, but I think right
0:34.4	here we're going to walk down to the Capitol.
0:40.1	That's a lie that President Trump encouraged a lot.
0:43.8	And a year later, it's a lie that a majority of the Republican Party now believes.
0:48.6	Many of us were warning about the fact that the Democrats unilaterally, fundamentally altered
0:55.4	our voting system inside 90 days.
0:59.3	There's no question and it's been widely reported that there was widespread broad and irregularities
1:03.9	across this country.
1:07.3	About 60% of Republican adults believe that the 2020 election was stolen.
1:12.7	And a lot of people are worried that come 2024, nothing will change.
1:18.0	Today on the argument, what happens to your democracy when one party doesn't trust election
1:22.6	results?
1:27.2	I'm Jane Kostin.
1:28.8	And to put it bluntly, I think the concern here is that the only kind of election Republicans
1:32.9	will recognize as fair is when they win.
1:36.4	And if they don't, that's an indication that the election wasn't fair.
1:40.8	It's 2020 all over again, but this time the results get thrown out.
	...

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