If you had to describe the state of American democracy today in three words, you could do a lot worse than: “Not great, Bob!”
Because whether we’re looking at voting rates, campaign donations, congressional approval, legislative initiative, or something as simple as paving roads and fixing bridges, American democracy’s health — and its ability to maintain its own legitimacy in the eyes of Americans — is, well, not great.
Treating all of these issues one-by-one, however, can make the problem seem both worse and better than it is. Worse, because so many disparate sources of failure suggest that no fixes are possible, and make sentiments like “this is just the way the world is” — or other such fatalist pablum — increasingly hard to resist. Better, because it undersells how expansive, well-funded and coordinated is the attempt to place American plutocracy on an unshakable foundation.
And this is where “Democracy at a Crossroads: How the One Percent Is Silencing Our Voices,” the new report from the Democracy Initiative, a populist coalition of mostly left-leaning reform groups as well as organized labor, comes in. By taking a holistic, comprehensive look at where American democracy is most under threat, the report attempts to clarify the picture, underline the seriousness of the present moment, and offer a framework for an equally concerted defense of representative government.