America, Actually: Why Democrats can’t sell America on “democracy”

The Democrats’ call for Americans to “protect democracy” from candidate Donald Trump fell flat in the 2024 presidential election. Over and over, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris said that Trump and other Republicans represented an existential threat to the political system, calling out things like Project 2025 and the extreme anti-immigration aims of aides like Stephen Miller, and predicting a more authoritarian second term if Trump were to be reelected.

More than a year into Trump’s second term, we should acknowledge that they were right.

Trump has drastically expanded his executive authority, targeted his enemies using the traditionally apolitical Justice Department, marginalized Congress in the build up to another war in the Middle East, and engaged in a midcycle redistricting effort meant to win the midterm elections before they begin.

In short, Trump is behaving less like a democratically elected leader — and more like an authoritarian — than ever. At the same time, the Democrats’ “save democracy” message seems to have hit a brick wall, and issues like tackling affordability and the cost of living are rising on the priority list. I don’t think that’s because Americans don’t care about democracy. I think it’s because they want to see the system improved, not just protected.

More than 60 percent of Americans are unsatisfied with democracy as-is, per Gallup polling. And all across the country, I hear the desire for more creativity from both parties in proposing solutions to the major issues driving our politics, as well as a call to improve democracy by making it more responsive to everyday people. So much of the current malaise is driven by an electorate that feels without agency, written out of the process in selecting the president (the Electoral College), in Congress (gerrymandering), or in the Supreme Court (lifelong terms).

So this week on the America, Actually podcast, I talked with Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, about the state of Trump’s redistricting efforts and ways we can “improve” democracy, not just protect it.

Here’s three things she pointed out:

1) The primary process has been corrupted

Walter argues that the primary system — created over a century ago to wrest nominations away from party bosses in smoke-filled rooms — has a new kind of dysfunction. “The primary process has become as corrupted as it was back then,” she told, pointing to a flood of outside money “attached either to an issue or a corporate interest,” and a primary electorate that skews “very far left or right.”

Her proposed fix: a single national primary day — rather than months of state-by-state primaries — with an open ballot, where “every voter is allowed to vote. … You don’t have to be a Democrat or a Republican.” It won’t solve everything, she concedes, “but it at least addresses one of the major problems.”

2) Gerrymandering could erase majority-minority districts

The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has, by Walter’s count, handed Republicans something like a four-to-six-seat advantage in the redistricting wars. In the short term, maps in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama “basically took three Black-majority districts, two of which were represented by Black members of Congress, and made them safely Republican.” (Though Alabama’s new map is still being litigated.)

But the longer-term threat is bipartisan: She warns the same logic could push Democrats to break up their own majority-Black and majority-Hispanic seats in order to spread those voters into more winnable districts.

“How far will Democrats be willing to go to expand their advantage in states where they have majority Black or majority Hispanic seats?” she asked — a “real messy” conundrum where both parties may decide minority representation isn’t the priority.

Reforms alone don’t cure the malaise, Walter cautioned, pointing to California as the cautionary tale. The state has a wish list of electoral reforms — open top-two primaries, easy registration, mail-in voting, ballot initiatives — but as Walters says, “It doesn’t mean that the state is governed better.”

The incentive structure itself is broken, she says: A member of Congress who “keeps your head down and gets stuff done” gets nothing; instead, it “benefits those who make the most noise, do the most damage, refuse to do any sort of compromising.” Until that changes, she told me, “you can create all the reforms you want, but if people feel like the system is broken, they’re not going to participate.”

As always, there’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.