Day: February 25, 2021
No tightrope between reality and conspiracy, only a chasm
NPR this morning described Republicans as walking a tightrope between the reality of Trump’s election loss and dangerous conspiracy theories about a stolen election. This weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is anchored on the conspiracy side. A relatively few national Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell and Meghan McCain have tried to anchor themselves in the hard reality of an election loss. They won’t be at CPAC.
There is not “tightrope” between these two perspectives, only a yawning chasm. The Republican Party is split between them. Most of its committed supporters, the “base,” are on the conspiracy theory side. No more than 30% or so of regular Republican voters think the election wasn’t stolen and that Donald Trump incited the riot at The Capitol January 6.
This is good. If it persists, it will ensure the nomination of nut-jobs like Marjorie Taylor-Green, the Georgia QAnon star, in 2022, for both the House and Senate. Senators like Cruz and Hawley are not much better. Their votes against accepting the Electoral College votes from key states, despite the many court decisions upholding the election results, will haunt them as verdicts are delivered against the rioters over the next two years.
An incumbent president normally suffers a setback in the midterms, but if Biden gets his $1.9 trillion Covid relief package the odds are good for a decent economic recovery by November 2022. The risk will be on the inflation side, which the Federal Reserve knows how to counter. Trump never really took full credit for the vaccines. Even he found it difficult to do so while claiming the pandemic was a hoax. As it happens, they are arriving for most Americans on Biden’s watch, so he will garner the political benefits.
Trump will try to make a come back with his speech Sunday at CPAC. His audience will cheer and he will try to “primary” any Republican candidates who don’t toe his line about the election “steal.” But the country has moved on. Biden has come in for precious little criticism and projects an image of solid thoughtfulness. Even the non-Trumpian Republicans are not signing up to the Covid relief bill, but it is what most of the country wants, including the gradual increase of the minimum wage to $15/hour.
What Trump still has going for him is what he always represented: the anxiety of white people, especially less educated males, about America’s demographic and social changes. People who still believe the election was stolen blame it exclusively on cities with large Black and LatinX populations. Trump and his followers find it hard to accept that those votes count as much as their own. The only solution for them is to block Blacks and LatinX from voting, which is precisely what they are trying to do in many states with legislation aimed to suppress voting.
That is a looming battle for Biden. The Administration and Democrats in Congress need to ensure that the ways in which voting was eased in 2020 because of the epidemic are preserved for 2022. A new voting rights act should include statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Once it is clear to Republicans that they can’t regain power without appealing across racial and ethnic lines, those who stand on the wrong side of the chasm will fade and those Republicans who believe in democracy, no matter the race or national origins of those voting, will prevail. That would be a happy day.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Colleagues from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and I collaborated two years ago in considering as an ethical question how many refugees the US should accept for resettlement. President Obama had bumped the number up. President Trump slashed it. President Biden is going to move it up this year and aim to top Obama’s number next fiscal year. Such drastic changes belie what we found among most experts on the right and left: a consensus on the moral imperative and the need to maintain consistency even as they differed on the risks and benefits. We’ll discuss the findings and implications 12-1 pm March 5 on Zoom, so join us and register here.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Want to get a master’s degree while working?
Try this a Master of Arts in Global Policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies:
More here.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Beyond success and failure lies attractive possibility
Michael Picard, a first-year Conflict Management student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, writes:
The Wilson Center February 24 hosted a panel discussion on “Revisiting the Arab Uprisings at 10: Beyond Success and Failure.” that weighed the societal impacts of the Arab uprisings 10 years after they broke out. The term “Arab Spring” is a misnomer as the revolts did not result in democratic reform – the term Arab uprisings was used instead.
The key question was whether the Arab uprisings werea failure that is now over or are they the beginning of a longer process of societal transformation?
Panelists
Liz Sly (moderator): Beirut Bureau Chief, Washington Post
Amy Austin Holmes: International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Marina Ottaway: Middle East Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Asher Orkaby: Fellow, Transregional Institute, Princeton University
Anas El Gomati: Founder and Director, Sadeq Institute
Focusing specifically on the experiences of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, the panelists presented and weighed the legacy of each country’s uprising 10 years on. Despite initial popular hope, there was never a serious expectation among observers that these states would transition to democracy overnight. What we have witnessed so far is the beginning of a long-term transformation of the MENA region. The memories of pre-uprising realities are still pertinent, and the youthful composition of Arab societies highlights the need for political and economic reforms.
Several panelists noted the US must examine how its policies and signals have impeded demoratic transitions. Regarding the 2013 coup that deposed Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, the African Union immediately expelled Egypt in response to this setback. The US did not react until the Rabaa massacre, which killed hundreds of pro-Morsi demonstrators. This reflects a broader theme: that the US must consider its democracy promotion goals and what its precise role ought to be in realizing these goals.
The panel also discussed the role of the Gulf monarchies in the Arab uprisings, noting that they saw such movements – both those originating domestically and in nearby states – as existential threats. Ottaway offered an anecdote about a Saudi official who anticipated expatriate students would demand greater civil liberties. This compelled the Gulf states to act – near unanimously – to crush domestic uprisings and take an active international role in promoting counterrevolutions. This has caused immense destruction throughout the region, derailing local conflict management efforts and restraining Gulf proxies from negotiating settlements.
Ottaway observed that perhaps the most pessimistic lesson of the Arab uprisings was that removal of large, unitary, Arab regimes that dominated political life has revealed that the building blocks of democracy were absent, with the narrow exception of Tunisia. Tunisia was able to avoid fates similar to Libya and Yemen because it is a) socially homogenous with relatively few ethnic and sectarian minorities, and b) politically pluralistic. Historically salient political organizations already existed and held society together, albeit in uneasy, unstable balances.
The panelists spoke to new dynamics and outcomes that continue to emerge. Several elaborated on “second generation” protest movements in Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and Sudan. In these contexts, protestors demonstrated greater understanding of how their movements could be more inclusive, better organized, and better at extracting meaningful government concessions. This has helped them avoid the high-stakes losses of the “first generation” protest movements.
The panelists noted unanimously that the Arab uprisings have had positive implications for women and some minorities. In several countries, women initiated the initial protest movements, focused on detention of their kin. In war-torn states, women have taken on a more active role in daily economic and social life. The panelists hope that these gains will be locked in with female participation quotas in emergent governance institutions. In Egypt, the Nubian minority gained recognition in the constitution and procured the right to return to ancestral lands from which they were forcibly displaced.
Conclusion
The panel agreed that the Arab uprisings were not failures that are now over but the beginning of a longer transitional process and state-building experiment. Orkaby noted these uprisings sparked the creation of local civil society organizations or strengthened existing ones. El Gomati noted the renewal of social protests in Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and Sudan, indicating civilians are still willing to take to the streets. Austin Holmes emphasized that much will depend on how the Biden administration postures itself toward the region, especially with regard to countries that have retained despotic features.
RSS - Posts
