How Democratic Is American Democracy?

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By 2040, 70% of Americans could be represented by just 30 Senators. And twice in the last two decades, a Republican president has lost the popular vote but won the White House. America's government was built to protect the rights of political minorities, but some critics say the system has become too unfair. What does this mean for the future of U.S. politics?

This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, it's YenPir politics podcast. I must my collar that cover the White House.
0:08.0	I'm Mara Liason, National Political Correspondent, and I'm Ron Elving, Editor-in-Correspondent.
0:14.1	And we are taping this podcast ahead of the Fourth of July, when many of our listeners
0:18.4	will be celebrating America's birthday and American democracy. But just how democratic,
0:24.3	little D, is the United States. Mara, you have been doing a lot of reporting on whether
0:29.2	the country is trending toward a system of minority rule, which I should say on its face.
0:34.8	Just that phrase, minority rule does not sound particularly democratic.
0:38.7	No, but our government was built in a way that would protect the rights of minority parties.
0:46.6	The founders feared a tyranny of the majority, where a majority of voters or representatives
0:52.0	could just overrun the wants and needs of the minority. But democracy in America is something
0:57.7	that has been constantly renewed and in reformed. And there are a lot of people, mostly Democrats,
1:05.1	who believe that now that the country has grown to about 300 million people.
1:09.6	There are such big population disparities between states that the two-party system has developed
1:16.7	a lot of minoritarian features that the founding fathers didn't foresee. So the US is in a situation
1:23.8	where a minority of voters and their representatives can pretty much block anything the majority wants.
1:30.8	That's right. And this would be one thing if minority rule popped up occasionally here and there,
1:38.5	across a sweep of historical time. But what's happening is that minority rule is solidifying itself.
1:45.4	Because it has the power to do so. And as it fuels that it is increasingly under threat from
1:51.0	population changes, that minority group, and we're talking here about the Republican Party and its
1:56.3	core voters, that group is doing everything that it can to perpetuate the situation, both in terms
2:03.2	of the voting in Congress and in terms of the courts and certainly in the state legislatures.
2:08.4	I mean, you mentioned courts, Congress. Let's say, I mean, what are some ways specifically that
	...

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