Is Our Democracy Safe?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This year’s midterm elections were widely seen as a victory for democracy in the United States. Election deniers were defeated in many closely watched races and voting proceeded smoothly, even in areas where the Big Lie has taken a firm hold. But the threat of authoritarianism remains strong. David Remnick talks with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of the best-seller “How Democracies Die” about recent political trends. “You can’t really live in a functioning democracy if you feel like each election is a national emergency,” Ziblatt says. “Because what it means is that we’re not confronting the major problems confronting our society.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We're going to continue from our last episode
0:14.9	looking at the state of our democracy, and specifically whether democracy is really any safer
0:20.3	today than it was a month ago before the
0:22.7	midterm elections. A few years back, I and a lot of other people read a book called How Democracies
0:28.7	Die, a bestseller in 2018. It was written by two professors of government at Harvard University,
0:35.1	Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Zibbla. They spend decades researching the
0:40.0	breakdown of democracy in a variety of countries. Now, gentlemen, your book was published in the
0:45.5	middle of the Trump administration, the darkest days of it. Now Trump seems to be, let's not
0:51.4	count him until he's out, but Trump seems to be on the fade. And election deniers
0:55.8	like Doug Mastriano and Carrie Lake, they all lost. And Brazil, Bolsonaro was voted out of power.
1:03.4	So what? Mission accomplished? Democracy is healthy. You're feeling great? Let's start with you,
1:09.0	Steve. No, not at all. The underlying fundamentals that lead us to be concerned about American democracy have not changed. Levels of polarization have not changed. Not only does Trump continue to be a major figure in the Republican Party, but the Republican Party continues to be a very radicalized extremist force from the bottom up.
1:32.1	And we've yet to see evidence that that has changed dramatically.
1:36.0	So the political party as a whole, that party has not reconsidered its ties to violent
1:42.6	extremist groups.
1:43.4	That party has not reconsidered its ties to violent extremist groups. That party has not reconsidered its acceptance
1:47.7	of all sorts of violent rhetoric and discourse prior to during and after the January 6th insurrection.
1:54.7	So as far as I'm concerned, we have not seen enough to conclude that American democracy is safe.
2:02.3	Right now we're seeing the standing of Donald Trump in the Republican Party, and I want to put a pin in this and say six months from now, a year from now we could see him still very much on the scene, if not even winning the nomination.
2:14.7	But right now, you are seeing at least part of the establishment
2:18.5	right-wing media distance itself from Donald Trump. We keep losing and losing and losing.
	...

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