George W. Bush may well win a tax program that most voters rejectedin the 2000 election. His $1.6 trillion in cuts would favor the richest1 percent. Public opinion polls confirm that most Americans would rathersee the money go for social investments.
Our system is ignoring what most Americans want, because of multiplepolitical failures. The most immediate one is the Democrats' failure tofunction as a cohesive opposition party. A united Democratic caucusmight effectively oppose the Bush program by offering a smaller tax cuttargeted to working families. Better yet, it might contrast the Bushtax cuts with popular public outlays. Most Democrats support elements ofboth approaches--but display just enough disunity to give Bush somethingclose to his original plan, with only modest concessions.
The more serious systemic failure, of course, is that Bush is in theWhite House at all. As news organizations complete their Floridarecounts, we may well find out that Al Gore in fact won Florida handily--and, with it, the presidency.
What then? If this were a vibrant democracy, there would berelentless protests against the premise that Bush has a mandate to doanything more than be a caretaker. Democrats would confirm onlycentrists. Presidential budgets would be dead on arrival, just as BillClinton's were in the Gingrich days. There would be no polite courtesymeetings and no feeble bipartisanship based on what the peoplesupposedly expect. In truth, half the people didn't even vote. And themajority who did vote, for Gore or Nader, are far angrier than mostDemocratic politicians are.
Bush's seizure of the presidency reflects a huge mechanical failure.At the most visible level, our election machinery fails to record votesaccurately. In at least 20 states, the margin of error in ballotcounting was greater than the winning candidate's margin of victory.
But mechanical glitches are just the beginning. There is grievousdiscrimination of race and class in the way our system encourages ordeters voting, and an even more basic problem with how we allow votersto register preferences. Together with the dominance of money, theseflaws add up to a grave indictment of America as a functioningdemocracy.
This special double issue of The American Prospect, made possible by the generosity of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, considers the condition of democracy in America. Burt Neuborne's overview addresses cures for the multiple defects in our democratic process. Lani Guinier, Miles Rapoport, and John Judis examine the challenge of building a pro-democracy movement, with special emphasis on the role of minorities and coalition politics. And Adam Shatz, in a profile of Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, shows how the right has frustrated efforts to expand the franchise, often in the name of equality.
At numerous moments in the history of democracy, the people haveliterally poured into the streets to prevent elites from reversing thepopular will. This occurred most recently in Belgrade, when loyaliststo Vojislav Kostunica mobilized to keep Slobodan Milosevic fromstealing the Serbian election. In Florida a lot of angry voters werepoised to demonstrate, but Gore's campaign headquarters told them toturn it off. So the only notable demonstrators were Republicans thereto harass vote counters--and they were congressional aides flown in byMajority Whip Tom DeLay.
In November a bitter joke had it that Yugoslavia was offering to sendelection monitors to Florida. More aptly, the Serbs could teach ussomething about pro-democracy demonstrations. The partisan opposition inCongress will begin to rally, I suspect, only when popular opiniondemands it.
