Democracy Archives - Page 24 of 97

North America

Things Fall Apart?

Perhaps, but in the shadow of Trump this is not a good thing

February 10, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Bruenig is one of many young writers on the left to take heart from the mainstream Democratic panic over Sanders’s ascendancy. On Facebook, Alex Gourevitch, a fine political scientist and frequent contributor to Jacobin, was even more emphatic. “The jury is out on what Bernie’s ultimate effect will be,” wrote Gourevitch, adding that ...

Politics

How The New York Times Turned Me into a Bernie Supporter

When the liberal media cries wolf, it energizes the grassroots

February 7, 2020 • by Hannah Leffingwell

Among my reasons for resisting his renewed candidacy: the bad taste left in my mouth from the Bernie Bros phenomenon, his age, and honestly? His gender. As the 2020 democratic field came into focus, my choice to support Elizabeth Warren felt easy. Warren boasted an impressive record, but one that wouldn’t allow ...

How The New York Times Turned Me into a Bernie Supporter

Politics

Bernie Sanders is the Logical Successor to the Trump Presidency

February 4, 2020 • by Julia Azari

This requires us to confront the presidency as it is, in the wake of Trump and all of the developments leading up to that. This isn’t some bipartisan whiskey fantasy bullshit, or an Aaron Sorkin vision of patriotic speechifying. The question of what kind of president Sanders would be goes ...

Bernie Sanders is the Logical Successor to the Trump Presidency

North America

Impeachment Has Always Been More Than Impeachment. And It Still Is

Trump must be defeated politically

February 3, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

My very first column on impeachment was published over a year ago: January 7, 2019. Written long before the release of the Mueller Report, “On Calls to Impeach the Motherfucker” made clear that impeachment was a serious option only when viewed as part of a broader strategy of resisting and ...

Impeachment Has Always Been More Than Impeachment. And It Still Is

North America

Impeachment as National Renewal

Can non-democratic institutions be repurposed for democracy?

January 28, 2020 • by Ian Zuckerman and Daniel Kato

All of these authors recognize that these comparisons have limitations. The 1868 impeachment of Johnson failed to remove him from office -- just as, in all likelihood, Trump will remain president after his impeachment. But the deeper problem is that these celebrations of the political potential of impeachment elide its ...

North America

It Matters That Warren is a Woman

But It’s Not All That Matters

January 17, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Here is Cooper’s takeaway: "Wanting a woman to rise to the top of an almost all-male pack is not a position that needs defending. What should be defended is the uncritical desire to elect yet another man to a position that 45 men and zero women have held." I agree that ...

North America

Impeachment and Rousseau’s General Will

Insight from the Past on the Politics of the Present

January 15, 2020 • by David Lay Williams

The article encapsulates many of the debates leading up to the president’s impeachment -- that it is grossly inappropriate for presidents (but presumably any government officials) to prioritize their own personal or private interests above the national interest. In impeaching Trump on this count the House emphasizes that while a ...

North America

The Lincoln Project Should Be Cautiously Welcomed

Republican anti-Trumpists are allies in the defense of democracy, but they have an agenda of their own

January 14, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Indeed, a number of initiatives have been undertaken by Republicans -- some Never-Trumpers since 2016, some more recent converts -- to challenge Trumpist authoritarianism. Another is Bill Kristol’s "Defending Democracy Together.” Here is the organization’s mission statement: today, the Republican Party finds itself entertaining some of the same unsettling nativist and ...

The Lincoln Project Should Be Cautiously Welcomed

Democracy

Is Democracy in Italy Secure?

Fascism’s appeal to Italian youth is a worrisome trend

January 13, 2020 • by Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi

Beginning in the early 1990s, however, a normalizing trend has overturned these institutional guarantees, undermining the legacy of all those who struggled to reestablish democracy. Coinciding with the ascent to the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, naive, if not altogether nostalgic, recollections of Mussolini and his regime have become ...

Democracy

Coup or Counter-Revolution in Bolivia?

Taking a broader historical view

January 8, 2020 • by Nicolás Lynch

The events in Bolivia continue to arouse sharp controversy over the ways political power can change (Arato, Peruzzotti and Avritzer). The so-called “transitional government” of Jeanine Añez claims legitimacy for having deposed a dictator, while the ousted government of President Evo Morales says it has been victim of a coup d’etat. First and foremost, ...

Democracy

Iran, Impeachment, and Implosion

Trump keeps getting worse — and the crises are interconnected

January 8, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

On December 18 of last year, the House of Representatives voted to impeach in the face of very public Republican obstructionism. Within hours of the vote, Nancy Pelosi announced that she had yet to decide how to move forward with delivering the impeachment articles to the Republican-controlled Senate, and was ...