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WILL THE US MOVE TOWARD “DEMONSTRATION ELECTIONS”?  
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Van Gosse
April 3, 2024
The Nation
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_ If fascism—or even just an authoritarian regime—does happen
here in November, it may look surprisingly familiar. The current
Supreme Court is likely to go along with whatever bald-faced violation
of constitutional norms Trump orders... _

Could it happen here?: South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm
votes in Saigon, August 30, 1959. (AP photo // The Nation),

 

Forty years ago, in 1984, Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead
published _Demonstration Elections: U.S.-Staged Elections in the
Dominican Republic, Vietnam and El Salvador_. This influential book
documented how American diplomats and CIA experts organized so-called
“free elections” to legitimize Cold War counterinsurgency
projects. As the authors noted, the primary audience for these
spectacles were not the Vietnamese, Dominicans, or Salvadorans
themselves, who of course knew perfectly well what was happening their
countries, but US television audiences, journalists, and members of
Congress back home.

Some of the time it worked. Joaquín Balaguer
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victory in the Dominican Republic’s 1966 elections and stayed in
power until 1978, while his death squads roamed at will. In 1967
General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu
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from heading South Vietnam’s latest military junta to being
“President Thieu” on nightly newscasts in the United States. The
1984 election of Christian Democrat José Napoleón Duarte
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midst of El Salvador’s civil war quieted congressional dissent over
US military aid, although as president Duarte was incapable of curbing
mass murders by the US-backed Salvadoran military.

A different kind of “demonstration election” has recently come to
the fore, staged not by foreign powers but by domestic authoritarians
in India, Turkey, Russia, Hungary, and elsewhere. This may be the
future we face if Trump loses the popular vote on November 5 (as he
undoubtedly will) but pulls out slim victories in enough states to
take the Electoral College—or if the Republicans engage in outright
violence and intimidation that allows them to “carry” states they
actually lost to Biden. In many respects, the latter is already
happening.

In a demonstration election, what matters are the visibility of
certain tropes:

* They must be “multiparty,” in that opposition parties actually
appear on the ballot—the more the merrier if one seeks to foster the
illusion of genuine competition.
* They must appear to be “free,” producing many photos and
videos of people lining up to vote without visible intimidation.
* The results must be sufficiently “contested” so that the
opposition’s objections after their inevitable defeat makes them
look like sore losers rather than players on a sharply tilted
field—no Soviet-style 99 percent majorities, in other words.

This rigged, corrupted form of “democracy” is steadily expanding
around us. Although their gerrymandering was just overturned by court
order
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since 2012 the Republicans controlling Wisconsin rigged their
legislature to make it impossible for Democrats to win a majority. The
Brennan Center for Justice’s latest report, “Growing Racial
Disparities in Voter Turnout, 2008–2022
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documents the ways “voter ID” laws, restrictions on when and where
you can vote, and purges of voter rolls have significantly reduced
turnout among voters of color, presumptive Democrats. And now, Trump
has made an architect of the “fake electors” scheme in 2020,
Christina Bobb, the chief counsel of the Republican National
Committee.

If Trump wins, do not expect an old-style military coup. He will not
immediately shut down the electoral process. The above criteria will
be met (two-party competition, voting without overt violence,
less-than-absolute majorities for Republicans) for some time to come.
Democrats will continue to run, but the space in which they can win
will get tighter and tighter. Certainly, _The New York
Times_ and _The Washington Post_ will continue to publish, but
their dissents and exposés will be increasingly irrelevant—shouting
into a void. Protests will continue on the shrinking terrain of blue
America; elsewhere, they will be severely restricted, and everywhere
(including Democratic cities and states) police will “take the
gloves off” with Trump’s enthusiastic support. Even if Democrats
control Congress, a supine Supreme Court will ignore their complaints
when Trump fires, jails, deports, indicts, and intimidates, using the
panoply of federal power—the IRS, FBI, DOJ, Homeland Security, just
to start—to go after his enemies. Even if the House impeaches him
for a third time, why should he care, as a two-thirds vote of the
Senate will remain an impossibility?

The current Supreme Court is likely to go along with whatever
bald-faced violation of constitutional norms Trump orders his next
vice president to perform when electoral votes are counted in January
2029. And maintaining “demonstration elections” is merely one
component of the broader scheme for authoritarian rule.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has produced a detailed
920-page plan, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise
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to put the entire federal apparatus under direct White House control
while gutting the regulatory state established in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.

The good news is that we are not there yet. SCOTUS and Trump-appointed
federal judges still enforce the rule of law on occasion. Democrats
win or run close races in red states. But it is high time to recognize
that the United States is at a tipping point—roughly where Russia
was 20 years ago, when Trump’s idol Vladimir Putin still had to
overcome serious opposition, receiving 53 percent in his first
election to Russia’s presidency in 2000. The slow slide into a
system where one party dominates, allowing just enough dissent and (in
a federal structure like ours) state and local autonomy, is advancing
fast. In light of the obsequious toadying after Putin by the likes of
Tucker Carlson and the reverential welcome given Viktor Orbán at the
Conservative Political Action Conference (Hungary’s competitive
authoritarianism
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especially exemplary), there should be no doubt about what the MAGA
right wants. Fundamentally more concerning is that “McConnell
Republicans,” representing the corporate elite, are also quite
willing to see a future where their perks and preferences are
unassailable. In the long run of history, this power-play—to ensure
“conservative” dominance regardless of majority sentiments at the
ballot box—is likely to be seen as originating long before Donald
Trump’s obsessive pursuit of power and revenge.

The United States met only the most basic definition of an electoral
democracy (that all citizens can vote) in the presidential election of
1968, when implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act finally ended
the deliberate legal disfranchisement of Black people from Virginia to
Texas. Will it turn out that something like full democracy lasted just
a half-century before the US turned back to oligarchic rule validated
by demonstration elections? Will liberals, progressives, and leftists
wake up and see the future before them? Time will tell. But if we
don’t, history will not absolve us.

_[VAN GOSSE is a professor of History at Franklin and Marshall College
and cochair of Historians for Peace and Democracy
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_Copyright c 2024 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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_Please support progressive journalism. Get a digital subscription
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* democracy
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* elections
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* 2024 Elections
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* Donald Trump
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* Fascism
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* Authoritarianism
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* MAGA
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* GOP
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* Gerrymandering
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* Heritage Foundation
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* Project 2025
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* rule of law
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* Constitution
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