The New York Times Magazine 47people that have existed in America for a very
long time. One of the things that Nathan Kalmoe
and I found in our forthcoming book is that if you
look at Democrats and Republicans who really,
really hate each other and call each other evil
and say the other party is a threat to the United
States, the best predictor of that is how they think
about the traditional social hierarchy.
White Democrats and Republicans had basi-
cally identical levels of racial resentment in
1986; today they’re 40 points apart. So one of
the most passionate divides that we’re seeing
between the parties right now, more than it
has been in decades, is, does systemic racism
exist? Does systemic sexism exist? Have we done
enough to overcome it? Have we gone too far?
When Trump made that an explicit conversa-
tion instead of a dog whistle, we actually had to
start talking about it. And now we’re having this
extremely diffi cult conversation as a country, and
it’s never going to go well. It’s just not. There’s no
possible way for us to have this conversation and
stay calm and rational and reasonable about it.
We’ve never done it before. It’s just very messy,
and it’s going to be messy, and it’s going to get
even uglier than it currently is.
Homans: With that in mind, we should talk
about the resurgence of overt political violence
that we’ve seen in this country in the last two
years. Obviously this is a country that’s had a
whole spectrum of political violence over the
course of its history, even its relatively recent
history. But the thing that really struck me in
2020 was that we saw things that really looked
like partisan violence.
Levitsky: From a comparative perspective, it
is really troubling to see mainstream parties’
reactions, or lack of reaction, to acts of political
violence. You’re right, Charles, we’ve seen peri-
ods of violence before — a lot of violence in the
late 1960s and early ’70s, for instance. But it was
not partisan violence in the same way that we’re
potentially seeing now. And one of the things
about democratic breakdowns in Europe in the
’20s and ’30s and in South America in the ’60s
and ’70s is that without exception, they were pre-
ceded by periods of paramilitary violence that
was tolerated, condoned, justifi ed, sometimes
encouraged by mainstream political parties.
When acts of violence occur, mainstream par-
ties need to close ranks in defense of democra-
cy. The left, right and center need to stand up
and, essentially in unison, publicly and forceful-
ly denounce these acts and hold perpetrators
accountable. That’s what needs to be done. And
in cases when that happens, like Spain during
its 1981 coup attempt or Argentina during its
1987 military uprising, democratic institutions
can be shored up. But when one or both main-
stream political parties is silent or winks at — or
encourages or gives a fi st pump to — acts of
political violence or declares it ‘‘legitimate polit-
ical discourse,’’ that is a really troubling sign.
Anderson: What we’re seeing, I liken it to a land,
sea and air attack. The land attack is on voting
rights. That is one of the ways that you begin to
undermine democracy. The sea attack are these
attacks against teaching critical race theory and
‘‘divisive’’ topics, so you can erase people from
American history and erase the role of various
people in American history. And the air attack
is the loosening of gun laws that we’re seeing
in Texas, Tennessee and Georgia. This is a full-
blown assault on American democracy that’s
going after voting rights, that’s going after edu-
cation and that is reinforcing political violence
as an acceptable method of bringing about your
political aims. That’s where we are, and that’s
why this moment is so dangerous.
I fi l l : I will share with you some of the most
depressing moments for me in the past two years.
One, of course, was Jan. 6 — and as you said, Sarah,
not just Jan. 6 but the subsequent lining up of
Republicans to say this was OK or to be silent.
The second one was during the massive protests
that happened following the release of the video
of the killing of George Floyd, when the adminis-
tration assembled a constabulary that stood on the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial with masks on. We
didn’t know where they were from, whether they
were National Guard. We had no idea what their
names were. Their badges weren’t visible. There
was something so antidemocratic, something so
crude about that, that truly frightened me.
And then the third one was the killing by Kyle
Rittenhouse of two people in Wisconsin, and the
reaction to that — because again, I’m presuming,
whatever you believe happened in the interac-
tion, that most of us who are parents would rath-
er our children not have killed people by the time
they’re 18 years old. That was a kind of an article
of faith among us, as parents: that he would have
been treated as a child who engaged in a trau-
matic activity, and not instead hailed as a hero.
The Republican Party had been the party that
regularly wagged its fi ngers at the Black com-
munity about our family values, and his mother
was greeted with a standing ovation at a G.O.P.
dinner. These were the three moments where I
thought, Th is is so off the rails. The places where
I would have thought, you know, some Repub-
licans might say enough is enough.
Homans: Ben, you worked for the Republican
Party for decades as an election lawyer. Did the
way in which the party metabolized Trump’s
response to the 2020 election, and the Jan. 6
attack, surprise you?
Ginsberg: The whole thing, honestly, has shocked
me. It’s not so much the elected offi cials who
were giving the fi st pumps on Jan. 6, because
they were sort of predictable in doing that. It’s
the many people within the party whom I know
and have known for years who are good, decent,principled people, who are silent. It’s the silence
of the Republican Party that is most surprising
to me and most upsetting. We’ve described the
problem in this conversation, but the much more
diffi cult part is fi guring out what to do about it. I
think that’s what Sarah and I as Republicans have
a particular obligation to do. But I don’t know
how you bring the people within the Republican
Party who should be speaking out to do exactly
what you say, Steve, which is to make clear that
this violence and election denial is not acceptable.
Homans: Steven, one clear takeaway from ‘‘How
Democracies Die’’ is that the resolution to dem-
ocratic crisis really has to come from within the
party that is incubating the anti-democratic
movement. This was what the center-right par-
ties in Germany and Italy failed to do in the
1930s, which delivered Hitler and Mussolini to
power. But other European center-right parties
in Sweden and Belgium, for instance, succeed-
ed in expelling fascist movements within their
ranks in that same period.
Levitsky: But I think the Republicans will not
reform themselves until they take a series of
electoral defeats, major electoral defeats — and
given the level of partisan identity that Lily
describes, and given an electoral system that is
biased toward the Republicans through no fault
of their own, that’s not going to happen.
Ginsberg: Well, part of that is, to me, a complete-
ly inexplicable series of strategic decisions by the
Democrats. To much of the country, the current
Democratic disarray does not present a viable
alternative. I mean, I hate to go back to the small
politics of it all, but honestly, look at what the
Democrats in Congress have done legislatively
in this session. They control all three branches
of government, but they’re constantly squabbling
among themselves and failing to pass much of
their agenda. I know these debates over the issues
they’re having among themselves are heartfelt.
But as a strategy, their infi ghting only makes sense
if they’re either trying to lower expectations for
2022 and 2024 — which they have done masterful-
ly — or if they’re trying to reward Republicans for
bad behavior, which is what the polls say they’re
about to do in the 2022 elections. The Republicans
are the bad actors right now, that’s absolutely
accurate and true, but the Democratic Party is
contributing to this by its own fecklessness and
failing to present a viable alternative.
Levitsky: Some of that is obviously true. I think
what’s needed in the short term to preserve
democracy, to get through the worst of this
storm, is a much broader coalition than we’ve
put together to date. Something on the lines of
true fusion tickets that really brings in Repub-
licans — maybe not a lot of the electorate, but
enough to assure that the Trumpist party loses.
That would mean bringing in a good chunk of
that Bush-Cheney network that’s out there — that
in private says the same things that I’ve said,
but that has thus far been (Continued on Page 49)Democracy
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