Part 2 of a 5 part series–you can read Part 1 here…

Our first Creative Politics essay, in October, 2018, was titled “Valley Forge 2004, 2018.” Its premise was this: “In the wake of the 2016 election, we can learn a lot from our forefathers and a small European country with no more experience with democracy than we had in 1776…”  If you’ve read Part I, you know the “small European country” was Ukraine.  We believed then that we could learn a thing or two from the Ukrainians about defending our democracy, and we continue to believe this today, only more so.

For starters, if you’ve read anything we’ve written before, you know we aren’t big fans supporters of the infiltration of sports adages into politics, much as we love sports ourselves, and there’s one, in particular, the Ukrainians have been proving dead-wrong for at least the last fifteen years, if not decades or centuries before, one our political parties have been proving is complete BT themselves for at least forty, namely “the best offense is a good defense.”  No, no, no:

More than two years after one of the top two military powers in the world invaded their country, an invasion that every pundit and expert predicted (but we didn’t) would end in days, weeks at the most, with Russia victoriously occupying Kyiv, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky dead or in exile, Vladimir Putin’s forces control less than a fifth of the country and have lost more than half of the territory they initially took.  Is this just the expected result of having the right friends in the right places supplying equipment and know-how?  Hardly. Ukraine had minimal material support from the US and our allies in the critical early months of the war when the current state of affairs was largely determined, we’ve never given them the armaments remotely necessary to fight the Russians on a materially level playing field, and we’ve been learning at least as much from them about the cutting edge of modern warfare as they’ve learned from us.

Moreover, when the history of this conflict is written, the six months during which a proven American traitor and Russo-Chinese asset, Donald Trump, and his Republican Party did everything they could to sabotage the democracy in this fight, and the Ukrainians found themselves without air defense, rationing ammunition, and getting outgunned by as much as 10 to 1 by a nation with more than three times its population,¹ yet gave up only 25 square miles of territory  (0.01% of the country as a whole), may well be remembered as the most impressive feat of all, referenced in the same breath as The 300, which ended well for Greece, if not for those Spartans themselves–the first of many battles between democracy and dictatorship where we, the people ultimately prevailed.

Ukraine is in the extraordinary position it continues to be in because from Day 1–the day after their stolen 2004 election–they’ve always taken the fight to the Russians, every single day, even when they’re on the defensive.  Likewise, everyone knows the Republicans are a minority party–including the GOP, based on its behavior on January 6th (in contrast to the Ukrainians’ in 2004),² in what’s supposed to be–their words–a “Constitutional republic” (fyi, the synonym in founderspeak for such an entity  is “democracy” according to, among many others, those radical leftists at the Encyclopedia Britannica), with all this implies. 

But you wouldn’t know it from how well the ersatz pachyderms have performed in national elections, where they’ve clearly punched above the weight of their ideas, if not their mascot:

At the state level, in the face of increasingly unfavorable demographics,³ Republican overperformance has been even more impressive. The maps below show changes in control of governorships and state legislatures between 1992 and 2022.

And to be clear, just as ALEC, the driving force behind these developments, actually started in 1973 (not 2009, when Turd Blossom unexpectedly found himself at loose ends), the realignment displayed above wasn’t just the consequence of a nationwide perfect storm during the political nor’easter of 2010. No, three decades of incompetence-infused Democratic timidity and arrogance were required, with the GOP worm commencing its slash and turn as early as 1996.

Democrats will point to a variety of questionable means Republicans have employed to achieve these results–voter suppression in all its malodorous forms, brutal and misleading advertising, dirty tricks, and more.  Some still piously intone “when they go low, we go high,” as if they were sacrificing themselves to save the republic.  To which I reply, with (God help me) Sarah Palin: “How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?” As politicos and pundits who intone that “politics is a contact sport” all know (if they’ve ever actually played), going high when others go low is a recipe for season-ending injuries–and knockouts.

Democrats will splutter in rage at what Republicans “get away with,” versus the high standard to which they are held, apparently unaware, as liberals tend not to be, that several millennia of legislation haven’t moved us as far out of the cave as they think.  Republicans are perceived as strong.  Democrats are perceived as weak.  Even when our most brilliant and savvy Democratic leaders do something that could be viewed as tough, like tearing up Trump’s State of the Union speech, they don’t look like they have the heart or skills obtained to do it right or convincingly.⁴

When you’re perceived as strong, you “get away” with things because no matter how transgressive the act, it’s still “just the strong being strong” to many, partly as a matter of fact, partly as a rationalization of fear. When you’re perceived as weak, you have to be perfect just to have the right to exist. Or as the residents of the motherland of democracy put it: “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” Of course this is a “law of the jungle” oversimplification, yet relative to other domains, politics often is oversimplified, crude, and lowest common denominator, something else Democrats apparently have a hard time understanding.⁵

But the biggest difference between Republicans and Democrats explaining these asymmetric outcomes is that Republicans, like Ukrainians, are always, always on the offense, always on the attack, while Democrats are too often in a defensive crouch, back on their heels, off-balance, looking awkward, like they’re hiding something, lacking in conviction, and/or worst of all, incompetent.  And when voters are consistently given a choice between autocracy and incompetence, more often than not, they will choose the former.

Why are Republicans so good at playing offense?  Because they are fundamentalists, who believe in certain absolutes,⁶ whereas Democrats pride themselves on their ability to see nuance, complexity, shades of grey, all sides, and shudder at the idea of fundamentalism and absolutes of any kind. While Democrats continue to fecklessly put forward policy after policy (the latest climate bill notwithstanding ⁷) they can never pass under current structural conditions, the GOP, with no plan to fight inflation, no health care plan, no plan to deal with climate change, a dismal recent economic and foreign policy track record, isn’t held accountable any for it because their eschatological message is that until they’re given absolute power in every branch of government at every level, there are too many Democrats preventing them from implementing the inchoate heaven on earth their followers envision.

Ukrainians are fundamentalists, too, and the religion they’re willing to stake their lives on is the one fundamentalism Democrats should have no problem supporting with passion and without reservations, a fundamentalism Republicans have increasingly shown they don’t share, even though it’s fundamental to the country they say they believe in.

Ukrainians are democracy fundamentalists.

In 2004, they insisted on–and got–a free and fair election.  In 2014, they insisted that their top elected official keep the key promise that won their votes, and when he wouldn’t, they drove him out the country. Today they insist that as a democracy, they are entitled to choose who they associate with, not to mention the integrity of their borders, especially by those who guaranteed those borders. And, as in the first two conflicts, they’ve shown they’re more than willing to lay their lives down for this cause.

The first two times they were violently tested, they didn’t return fire, successfully relying on moral force and cohesion alone; this time they have, because they’ve had to. A model for us all, even Republicans, who, not so long ago, in the late Cold War and early post-Cold War years, were inspired by the passion of countries like Ukraine–and the menace of autocracies like Russia, China, Iran, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda–to be democracy’s fiercest and most ardent advocates.

In many ways, in fact, as we opined in that 2018 essay, in recent years, Ukrainian democracy has proven more vigorous than our own, beginning with the 2004 Orange Revolution, which took place even as we first ignored, then sought to paper over and cover up, exactly the kinds of evidence of contemporaneous anti-democratic malfeasance that led to that first Maidan uprising, malfeasance which, in combination with Florida 2000 and its aftermath, has led to the slew of anti-democratic activity, much of it officially sanctioned, that’s flowed up from our ideological sewers since.

By contrast, in 2012 the second Ukrainian revolution, aka Euromaidan, was launched via a Facebook post by an Afghan refugee who now serves in the Verkhovna Rada, the country’s sole legislative body, alongside Ukraine’s first black Olympic gold medalist, who was elected before he was selected to represent the country in Tokyo.  Volodymyr Zelensky, as everyone outside Russia knows, is Jewish (in a country where Jews represent about 1/8 the proportion of the population they represent in the US), and won election by defeating 39 other candidates, ultimately winning 73% of the vote (in a nation where, like every other that calls itself a democracy or a republic–and is so considered–the candidate with the most votes wins).

Three years later, Ukrainians were prepared to vote him out and fully expected to do so, because unlike 40% of Americans, Ukrainians believe in peaceful transfers of power–in fact, in the same election that brought Zelensky into office, far-right parties received only 2.15% of the vote, less than in any Western European democracy, and far less than, for example, France, where Marine Le Pen got 41% of the vote in their most recent presidential contest, let alone our country, where the would-be dictator got even more.  All of which gives the lie to Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the rest of Putin’s fifth column here who parrot Russian propaganda accusing the Ukrainians of being a “dictatorship” of “fascist thugs.”

Fundamentalism requires fundamental belief, and at the foundational level of belief Ukrainian faith in government by the people is especially striking. At no point in their struggles over the years have they said, with the fatalism Eastern Europeans are (in)famous for: “it is what it is; what can we do?” In fact, as this conflict has brought ordinary Ukrainians more in touch with the hoi polloi in other European nations, they’ve been shocked at the level of cynicism they’re seeing, hearing, and experiencing, bewildered by what others feel must be put up with from the powers-that-be, not just in the East, but the UK, France, and Germany as well.

In all these ways, it’s clearly not just a fundamentalism of culture or tribe they’re fighting for; when you believe, really believe in democracy, it’s something you demand and insist on, fatalism be damned–and not surprisingly they fight like democrats, not autocrats, too, with a decentralized command structure that provides plenty of room for local individual and/or group initiative.  Time and again, they’ve used this to annihilate their foes while unfortunate Russians were waiting for further instructions or answers to their questions from on high.  It should be familiar to us; it’s the way we fight, and the way our forefathers fought when they were up against the most powerful military in the world.

More broadly, democracy, involving, as it does, faith, not in a leader who will tell you what to do, but in your fellow citizens, is fundamentally optimistic; optimism and democracy feed on each other in a virtuous cycle to produce vidvaga.  It’s a fundamentalism of new beginnings, not end-times; of “ask what you can do for your country,” not “American carnage.” The Ukrainians are making as compelling a case for democracy fundamentalism as can ever be made, both spiritually and practically, but they likely can’t ultimately succeed unless we become democracy fundamentalists, too.

And time is running out for that.

On March 29th, just over a month into Putin’s “special military action,” POLITICO freelancer and author William Doyle, who lives part-time in Finland, ventured forth to meet up with the last train from Saint Petersburg to Helsinki, the last train out of Russia by way of his semi-adopted homeland. Trains along this route had been packed for weeks with Russian liberals fleeing what was fast becoming, in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, a Dear Leader country before their eyes.  He wanted to get their perspective on the invasion and what was going on their country in general.  What he heard will likely sound eerily familiar to anyone with traumatic memories of November 9th, 2016:

“None of my friends, none of the people I know support it.”

“I don’t think anybody supports the Ukraine invasion. It is a regime that nobody supports”

“Everyone was shocked when this happened.”

“No one believed something like this could have happened anymore.”

“No one asked us our opinion of doing this. If they had, no one would have agreed to it.”

Authoritarianism is like that other great existential challenge before us, climate change. As with climate, many deny (and deny) it’s happening, and call those who see it happening–who see it because they’ve spent their lives studying it, for example (or, in some cases, living under/with it)–“hysterics” or “special interests.” Like climate, once autocracy breaches certain critical barriers, those protections/guardrails are difficult, if not impossible, to repair, and old equilibriums are equally difficult to restore. Call it fascism, call it communism, call it whatever you like, it acquires a runaway irresistible momentum, hurtling forward on positive feedback loops into the abyss. 

Those who think they can just flee despotism if we’re invaded–from without or within–are as foolish as those who think they can escape the effects of warming, unless they’re part of the oligarchy that enables and precipitates them both, and even then, there’s a good chance they’ll end up in a cold dark cell, or on an even colder, darker Mars.  Liberal Russians can flee Russia because, as Putin whines, there are democracies free of his powers right on his doorstep. And those democracies have been able to remain so because they’ve been protected by the world’s greatest military force–ours. 

That’s why we’re the “one indispensable nation,” and why liberal Americans who blurt, in moments of high dudgeon, that their contribution to the fight for democracy will be taking their talents to Toronto if Trump is “elected” again, are naive and delusional.  In that event, what’s to stop Trump or someone else of his ilk, in an administration we can be sure will be entirely loyal to him, from doing exactly what Putin is doing now, only a lot more effectively, thanks to the arsenal democracy has built over the last 230+ years? Invading Canada for its oil and other resources, for example, while justifying it (if they even deign to do so) on the grounds there are so many “English speakers” (not to mention aging draft-dodging hippies) who surely want to be reunited with “the motherland.”

In a time when dictators already regularly and brazenly reach across their borders to take vengeance on dissidents with impunity–even hold international conferences to share strategies and tactics–who is going to stop Russia, China, and what would be the former United States from divvying up the world and crushing all dissent?  For a preview of coming attractions in a world in which our country is no longer a beacon of democracy against authoritarianism, check out the Norwegian series Occupied or the Australian series Secret City on Netflix.

After the first few weeks of watching, in inspired amazement–stirred, not shaken–as Ukraine’s macgyvering citizen army first halted, then pushed back Russian’s marauding hordes, it was inevitable that some respectable pollster would ask the obvious question: what would we Americans do if someone invaded our country, and to its credit, one of the most respected, Quinnipiac, did just that.  The overall results were disappointing, the cross-tabs downright alarming:

To be fair, some of this is baked in demographically. The Democratic Party is more female than male, and old roles die hard (70% of men would stay and fight vs. 40% of women, many of whom would presumably take children out of the country). But other demographically-driven components of these results are more alarming for the future of America as we know it:

• Only 38% of Black Americans, a heavily Democratic constituency, would take up arms against the invaders; 59% would leave.  While this is more than understandable, based on 400+ years of historical experience, Black Americans have long been the conscience of the country, the most persistent in driving us to live up to our ideals and values, and the most willing to sacrifice and die in their name.
• Only 45% of another core Democratic group, young Americans (ages 18-34), would be willing to stand up and save the country. This, too, is understandable, given the mess we’ve left them to clean up, but whether in war or war by other means, we depend on the young for their energy, their spirit, their new ideas & generative creativity.  They are the future of any nation.

The overall proportion of Americans who say they would stand tall for the US, 55%, would rank 35th out of 60 nations surveyed in a similar poll by Gallup in 2015, tied with Sweden and Bosnia, just behind Mexico and the Palestinian Territories, and just ahead of Ecuador and Greece.  In 17 countries of that study’s sample size of 60, 70% or more said they’d be willing to put their lives on the line. To be fair, an actual invasion might well concentrate a few more minds–only 63% of Ukrainians in the Gallup survey said they’d fight, which was clearly an underestimate; by contrast, 75% of Georgians, who had already experienced Russia’s sting and felt it fester, said they were ready to rumble.  On the other hand, only 44% of Americans in the 2015 survey said they’d do so, which either means love of country has actually increased significantly (have you noticed?) or the Gallup survey actually low-balled a number of these countries, in which case our 55%, like our 66.6% turnout in the last election, is even worse than it looks.

We’re not in danger of being invaded any time soon, of course–at least not by foreign forces; per Lincoln, “as a nation of freemen, we must live for all time, or die of suicide.” The danger in our times, when democracy must win every election to ensure its survival, is that the gap between those who would fight to protect our country against authoritarianism and those who wouldn’t may well be mirrored by a similar gap in willingness to do more than vote in elections, do more to overcome obstacles to voting, and/or do more to make sure their votes are counted.

That these extrapolations have a solid basis in reality is strongly suggested by another poll conducted by an even more respected pollster, Selzer & Company, in 10/21, in which Americans were asked the degree to which democracy is under threat in our country. And again, the devil is in the cross-tabs. 71% of Republicans considered democracy to be under “major threat.”  The least concerned? Young and non-white voters.  Which isn’t surprising, given that while 85% of all Americans (in the same poll) consider democracy “very important” to maintain, one in four of our young and non-white fellow citizens don’t agree.

Of course, what Republicans really mean when they say “democracy is under threat” is that the peculiarly anti-majoritarian, anti-democratic “democracy” they’ve enjoyed for decades is at risk, or at least that’s what they fear. Meanwhile, anti-majoritarian erosion and corruption of democracy is precisely the reason young, Black, brown, and poor voters, who have been the most negatively impacted by these developments, don’t feel as passionate about it.  To the young and citizens of color, if what we’re living under now is what’s called “democracy,” a state of affairs in which a vicious downward spiral of denial and despair is the prevailing electoral dynamic, so what if it goes away? As Annie Lowrey of The Atlantic has pointed out,  Gen Z, in particular, has never witnessed America or American politics actually working the way it should.

Which is why, if we want to save democracy, and the Democratic Party wants to save itself, nothing less than democracy fundamentalism, democracy “extremism”⁸ is required.  Because only democracy fundamentalism/extremism allows democracy to fulfill its promise: government of, by, and for the people, not just the 1 percent.  If we want the young, the Black, and brown to be willing to fight for this country, literally and/or metaphorically–and we do, because we’re existentially lost otherwise–we need to give them something worth fighting for, something that can credibly make a difference.

And we have to start playing the long game the GOP has been playing for decades. Yes, it’s true; since we originally wrote this piece, President Biden, against the advice of virtually every top Democratic consultant and pundit this side of Simon Rosenberg, has done his best Paul Revere, and by all accounts, Democrats of all stripes are now as worried about our democracy as anyone else.  This, in turn, has translated into victory after victory for Democratic candidates–who knew?

Meanwhile, the punditocracy and consultant keiretsu continue, like foreign policy “realists” re: Ukraine, to double down on their insistence that democracy is a losing issue, pointing to softening Democratic support among Gen Z and non-white voters.  What they seemingly (we hope) fail to understand is that:

• Few voters can afford to see democracy as a good in its own right–only the wealthy,  ironically,  have that luxury; for the rest of us, it has to be a means to an end
• Young, Black, brown, and poor voters have become disaffected because they haven’t seen the changes in their lives or futures they expected when they turned out in droves for Democrats in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
• The reason Biden and the Democrats haven’t been able to deliver more to their coalition is that they don’t have the working majority in the Senate necessary to take the critical first step that unlocks the rest–eliminating the filibuster–and thanks to this, they don’t have a majority in the House at all.
• Without a working majority in both houses, there is no way for Democrats to pass the voting rights and other pro-democracy legislation (including Supreme Court reform) required to break minority rule and create the possibility for the long-term majority that will be required to enact the major structural changes necessary in almost every area of American life (which for a number of reasons, should be tackled iteratively) that will not only lock in the loyalty of stakeholders who seem to be slipping away, but likely could win back significant swaths of the white working class.

Anyone claiming to be an expert in politics who seeks to scare Biden et al into abandoning a focus on democracy in favor  of spouting “it’s the economy, stupid” at every opportunity is either disingenuous (if they ignore the spray painting on the wall we’ve just described) or incompetent (if they can’t read it).⁹

But those giddy over the potency of democracy as a turnout motivator may not be any better (and possibly worse) if they’re seeing and treating it only as a means to re-election rather than the door to substantive change that it is.  At a minimum, they’re prancing about nonchalantly like an antelope on Planet Earth–or more accurately, given the dynamics of the slide into authoritarianism–ants scuttling around the edges of an antlion pit, which is what the loss of support among their core constituencies, the trickle that can so quickly and easily turn into an avalanche (especially in the case of the quicksilver young) should really be telling them.

Trump is such an awful candidate they can be forgiven for wondering whether he’s a Manchurian candidate for the Russians or for the Democratic Party, or for thinking they can continue just using the d-word, the idea of democracy alone to overcome the leak in their support and still win the day without really changing a thing.

What they will not be forgiven is a failure to see that the trickle of erosion in their base is a now or never “go sign” where substantive democratic reform is concerned, nor how easily, by merely jumping gracefully over it to the other side rather than building a strong foundation and bulwark, they could find themselves stranded on the wrong side of a raging river with no hope of return.

To put it even more bluntly, if they really care about something more than their political careers (and then, only as far down the road as the next election), Democrats should be putting forward a democracy-focused hybrid between John McCain’s Straight Talk Express and Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.

Instead of perpetually making promises they can’t keep in the current environment,¹⁰ they should straight up tell their constituencies:

• That they can’t deliver any more than they are delivering without working control of both houses of Congress and the presidency
• That in order for this to happen, voting is not enough. They are going to have to organize, canvass, join phone banks, talk to everyone they know–and strangers they overhear, convince as many as possible to vote blue, post signs and stickers, go to events, work polling places, run for office, and more.
• That this is the ‘ask not’ ask of the 21st century, and if they’re not willing to answer its call, they shouldn’t expect real change nor complain when it doesn’t happen.
• That if, on the other hand, they do do what it takes to deliver the majorities needed, here are the 10 substantial democratic reforms the party will make their top priority–and why
  • I.e., everything else they’ll be able to do as a result (rather than trying to hide this and minimize its impact, which will only backfire and blunt the impact of the reforms themselves on the electorate)
• That if they deliver and we don’t deliver in return, they should vote against us in the next election with a vengeance 

Young voters value authenticity above all, and after 400+ years of being lied to, don’t you think people of color would appreciate being told the truth for once?  Young voters have the energy to do what needs to be done, Black and brown voters proved long ago they have the stamina to do the same.  Instead of condescending to and patronizing them, treat them like the adults they are–equipped with fully developed BS meters and a lot tougher than you think–by showing and telling them what fighting really means. What George W Bush, of all people, called “the soft bigotry of low expectations” must come to an end.

By far the biggest change in the electorate between 2020 and 2024 is the 16+ million Gen Z Americans eligible to vote who couldn’t in 2020, half of them Americans of color.  We suspect Vivek Ramaswamy spoke for many Republicans when he promised to raise the voting age to 25 if he were elected. To put this in terms even the Democrats’ technocracy ought to be able to understand, here’s what happens if the 18-24 year olds vote at the same rate as other generations–holding each generation’s partisan preferences the same as they were in 2020–vs. what happens if they don’t vote at all:

Technically our analysis still shows the Dems winning even if GenZ literally boycotts, but everyone knows that a win by 1.4-1.6 points is close enough to steal.  In fact, if you include voter suppression as an act of theft, a crime–and if you’re a democracy fundamentalist, you do–consider it stolen, with prejudice; modern voter suppression can and will wipe away a 1.4-1.6 point advantage in less than a hyena’s heartbeat. Besides, what are the odds that older generations continue to turn out for Biden at the same rate as they did in 2020? Only the Gen Zs (and to a lesser extent the Millennials) have been that rock-solid in their beliefs. (ed. note: since we published this piece, Gen Z played a decisive role in dozens of races in the 2022 midterms,¹¹ motivated by abortion, climate change, and democracy, providing Democrats with all the more reason to support a vigorous democracy fundamentalist agenda going forward so as to keep them engaged–especially given that they turned out at a rate of ‘only’ 31% [in key races], near record levels for the generation, but still well below the overall average of 47%, which means much of their game-changing potential remains untapped.  On a personal note, we’re proud of the role our Gen Z co-founder, Baker, and his friends played in those doings.  Whether they’ll be the cavalry again this November may well depend on how serious Democrats are about democratic reform, including openness about what else it will allow them to do)

For those of you who are less partisan, there’s an even more fundamental (“pun” intended) reason to become a democracy fundamentalist.  It’s the only form of immoderation that can seize the spoils of absolutism without its toxic side effects (instrumental dishonesty, hypocrisy, myopia et al)–because while, like other fundamentalisms, it’s ultimately about power, it’s about how to exercise it, not what to do with it.  It’s the only foundational base with the potential–in a time of existential division and polarization that serves only our enemies (our real enemies, not our fellow Americans)–to actually unite supermajorities of we, the people, by making possible the adoption of dozens of policies that large proportions of us, on both the right and left, agree on (with major new points of agreement continuing to emerge) but which have never become law because a tyranny of the minority opposes them. 

What, specifically do–or should–democracy fundamentalists believe?  It would be unusually and perversely hypocritical for us to make such a declaration–by definition, this must be determined democratically, by the movement itself (and in that spirit, we’re hoping you’ll add principles and ideas in comment section below–we’ve severely limited our own to make clear we really want and hope to motivate you to do so)–but fwiw, we believe its basic tenets (in drafty, non-pithy form) should include the following:

• All forms of voter suppression and election subversion, broadly defined, very broadly, must be outlawed and made felonious (with mandatory minimums in [at least] medium security facilities)
  • Including all forms of misinformation and disinformation (as discussed in Part 1 of this series, we cannot continue to hold our politicians to lower standards of honesty than the pharmaceutical industry when they’ve shown themselves capable of much greater damage than any FDA-approved medication ever will).¹²

• Polls of all voters, not just the “likely”, or even merely those registered, must become the metric official results are measured against to determine whether delegitimizing suppression has occurred.

• All Americans, including children¹³ (as soon as they can read a ballot, if not sooner), people in every square mile of territory claimed and controlled by our country, and yes–like many countries and two US states—even those in prison must be given the right to participate fully in our democracy.
  • All US citizens, whether native-born or not, should be able to run for president, and all age requirements to run for any federal office should be eliminated

• As the beacon of democracy we’ve claimed to be since our founding, it must be easier to vote in our country than any other nation, not harder than any other, as it is today.
  • Total transparency throughout the electoral process must also be required (e.g. forensic audits of every piece of machinery and software involved, paper trails for all ballots, full and proactive disclosures re: handling of all provisional ballots, should they continue to be necessary, etc.)

• The Supreme Court and all other federal courts must be politically neutralized–it’s unacceptable in a representative democracy for unelected bureaucrats with partisan agendas and lifetime appointments to have ultimate authority over any elected authority at any level except on a bipartisan, representative basis.
  • There’s a surprisingly simple originalist way to do this that can only be regarded as partisan by particularly foolish and short-sighted partisans–more on this in Part IV of the series.
  • The Court must be absolutely prohibited–on the basis of the crystal clear imperatives of the 14th amendment, which they must no longer be allowed to interpret as if it were written in a foreign language–from overturning any federal, state, or local law, ordinance, regulation, or practice that makes it easier to vote or expands access to the franchise in any other way.

• The Electoral College must be abolished or at least neutralized; there must never again be a presidential election that the “popular” vote winner doesn’t win–in no other country in the world that claims to be a democracy or a republic in more than name only does this ever occur (it should have ended in our country with the passage of the 13th-15th amendments), and it’s regularly deployed in authoritarian propaganda to discredit us.  Moreover–and speaking of authoritarians–our decentralized election system can only protect us against the cyberwarfare that will likely become the dominant election subversion tactic deployed by our authoritarian enemies if the popular vote decides elections.¹⁴

• One person, one vote must be as sacrosanct as possible while still respecting the original intent of the Founders.
  • • • All gerrymandering at all levels must be abolished, and the Senate must be rebalanced & reformed to better reflect that original intent (beginning with the elimination of the filibuster–which should be our litmus test–and shifting more power to [or sharing more power with] the House)
      • All barriers to full third party participation and success must be eliminated, with proportional representation (vs “winner take all”) instituted, if necessary, to achieve this. ¹⁵  For this reason and more, all primaries must be open (not limited to registered Democrats and Republicans)

• The primacy of people over property as the voting population must be restored.  Sometime during the Robber Baron phase of the Industrial Revolution, people began to be replaced by money as the mechanism through which election votes are secured.  The net result is that some individuals’ votes count for more than entire states or even the entire nation–one man, 330 million votes–and no piece of legislation opposed by the wealthy has passed Congress in decades.  This must change for the good of the wealthy themselves, unless they’re planning to jet off into outer space when things get rough, because a nation without true shared sacrifice is no longer a nation; it’s doomed.
  • Related to this, net neutrality must become the inviolable law of the land. ¹⁶ And given that the wealthy are just as good and tenacious at holding onto power as they are at avoiding paying taxes, we must be prepared to try some radical approaches, including one that has the virtue of being what the Ancient Greeks actually meant by democracy–randomly selecting teams of citizens to serve terms in office (even way back then, they recognized the distorting power of wealth, and considered elections to be oligarchic, not democratic–those Greeks, they weren’t born yesterday)

• Government must become more local.  Other things being equal, local government is inherently more democratic because local governments map more closely to the population (the most variegated population in the world) than state, national, or international governments do.  The more power concentrated in local governance, the more the will of the people anywhere and everywhere, rather than that of people elsewhere, will be reflected in decisions made.
  • Wherever possible, systems, including (but not limited to) politics, should become hyperlocal down to the neighborhood, block, and individual levels.  We should, for example, in the name of democracy and more,¹⁷ be taking advantage of the opportunity for radical change imposed by the climate crisis to fully decentralize the power grid.
  • All prior promises of self-government (e.g. to Native Americans) that have been violated must be honored in the breach

• Government must become more direct.  Representative democracy is inherently limited–by candidates, parties, personalities, ideologies, and more–in its ability to reflect the will of the people.  At the most fundamental level, no candidate’s opinions or political party’s platform is going to map precisely onto the policy desires of their/its constituents across all issues.  While a pure direct democracy is still not (yet) practical, technology has greatly broadened the extent to which it’s possible (e.g. by dramatically expanding what can be disseminated and the capacity for populations to organize) and, as in all the things, the more often this capacity is exercised, the more wisely it will be used.¹⁸  Every state should allow citizens to place binding propositions on the election ballot (and why not the federal government as well?), participatory budgeting should be deployed as broadly as practical, and more…

• The decennial census must count all people in the United States, even if this can only be done statistically.  The language of the Constitution could not be less ambiguous on this, so whatever adjustments must be made in methodology to account for the facts that we: (a) Now live in a largely urban and suburban country, not rural (b) with many buildings containing dozens, even hundreds of families (c) many of them mobile (in ways no one could be in 1790), homeless (a word that did not even exist until nearly a century after the Constitution was signed), and/or otherwise itinerant, some in fear of being deported or otherwise sanctioned by participating (including some with a legal right to be here and/or having committed no crime other than melanism) (d) sum up to a population of 330 million+, not 3.9 (e) spread over a land mass of 3.5 million+ square miles, not 850,000+. (f) must be made.

• Any promises made with regard to any of the issues of the day must explicitly assume and build in significant progress on one or more of the tenets above. We, the people are done with politicians who consistently overpromise and underdeliver.  It’s time to tell the truth again and again until it hurts, that no significant progress is likely to be possible on any issue without fundamental democratic reforms, that these tenets are as key to unlocking solutions to every political problem as religious practices are to spiritual wholeness in other fundamentalist traditions.  Young Americans, in particular, who are the most important stakeholders where this agenda is concerned, will appreciate the honesty and authenticity.

• “Legitimacy” and “illegitimacy” have to start meaning something, and the same thing to everyone; they can’t continue to be the electoral equivalent of “taking full responsibility” without actual accountability.

Of all the demands in this mini-manifesto, the last might be the most fundamental and important.  What “illegitimacy” means today is that the party in power largely goes through the motions of governing to collect its paychecks and perks, while being passive-aggressively undermined by its opponents from the grassroots up at every turn, even sacrificing the lives of its supporters to gum up the works with their bodies, producing the remains of a ship of state that’s increasingly more like a blind pigeon with a broken wing resting on a piece of flotsam than the QE2 of democracy it used to be, upon which predators like Russia and China will feast.

Meanwhile, as we’ve indicated, there’s far more than enough common ground among American super-majorities on virtually every issue to provide a functional democracy with an endless supply of lifeblood and wash both “legitimacy” and its antonym into the dustbin of history.  That is, if we’re willing to do so, if we’re willing to cast aside those who aren’t, and if we’re willing to demonstrate a fraction of the fortitude of American generations past–and tens of millions of Ukrainians today.

The eternal pessimist among the founders, John Adams, famously observed that “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.”  At first, it might appear that Adams’ pessimism was unwarranted, and that we deserve a collective pat on the back for “keeping a republic” far longer than the astute Mr. Adams predicted.  But the truth is that our democracy, the one envisioned by the founders, was mortally wounded no later than 1804, when Madison v Marbury was decided, and has been dying by an ongoing blizzard of paper cuts ever since.   

The truth, also, is that the principles of Democracy Fundamentalism are far more in sync with and supported by the actual words of the Constitution, as well as its context, than the status quo. It’s a testimony to this truth that none of its core goals will require Constitutional amendments to achieve; in fact, some, as we’ll see, might not require legislation at all.  Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die, have written, in The Atlantic: “When contemporary democracies die, they usually do so via constitutional hardball.”  We say:

We know democracy fundamentalism will make the Democratic establishment uncomfortable.  This has been obvious from the increasingly absurd explanations they’ve given for how & why the 2020 polls were out of sync with the actual results (which we’ve covered here, here, and here), a series of contortions that seem to have undertaken for no reason than to avoid naming the real and obvious reason, one that explains not only the polling disconnect in that contest, but the dynamics of the relationship between polling and results for at least the last twenty years: voter suppression.

Frankly, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are plenty of high-level and even rank-and-file Democrats who would like to see certain groups vote, but only up to a point, just enough to keep or return themselves to power, not more.  They make their opinion of true representative democracy quite clear in the TV ads they run in their campaigns, which typically appear to assume rocks are more sentient than we, the people.  To them, giving the average voter, especially those in those certain groups, a real voice–which they’d pretty much have to do if 80-90% of us, not just their fanboys and girls, were showing up for every election¹⁹–would be a recipe for disaster, because, you know, they’ve done such a great job steering said ship of state without the rest of us.  But living as we do in a country where the average voter across elections is a non-voter, and has been for decades, it seems only reasonable to ask them: how do you know we’re really as brain-dead as you clearly think we are? Have you ever really tried us?

Further, if, as we have to hope, they believe the problem is voter ignorance, which is at least a little less contemptuous than voter stupidity, how many politicians and their consultants have really tried using any of the voluminous tools & formats available in digital media that can be leveraged for educational purposes–or, better yet, to help said voters educate themselves, each other, and ultimately, yes, politicians & consultants as well? 

As someone who has conducted a lot of research for tech companies over the years, I can attest that while early adopters & influencers are important constituencies to cultivate and please, every tech firm knows that if they want to make the jump from early adoption to mainstream–and stay there–they have to talk to and get feedback from a lot more ordinary users than influencers.  In the same vein, there’s no reason to believe that the committed idiologues who show up for every election know better what’s good for the country than the many who, for so many reasons, not only feel uninvited, but disinvited.  How many great ideas and means to execute them are we leaving on the table by telling most Americans that it’s a “privilege,” not a responsibility, to be part of the American family?

Our own educated guess? Millions.

I’m old enough to remember a time when the two parties played complementary roles in moving us towards a more perfect union. Democrats always seemed to be better at seeing and identifying problems that needed to be fixed; Republicans usually thought everything was fine with them as is.  But when it came time to come up with solutions, so often the Dems seemed to be one-trick ponies like the Republicans are today re: tax cuts for the rich, and that solution was always to create another New Deal-style federal agency.  At which point the Republicans, realizing all roads on such a path lead to Scandinavia, not the America that 150 million people around the world still want to come to, would come up with an alternative solution that did less to rend and more to mend the fabric of the country, solutions that, because they were bounded, were often more creative and effective.  Few of us seem to remember how much of the seminal progress made in the last century on environmental protection, for example, was led by Republicans, even Republicans the likes of Ronald Reagan.

Imagine a world in which Black American turnout is higher than every African country instead of near the bottom of the barrel, and Latinx American turnout tops that of every Spanish-speaking country instead of bringing up the rear.  Imagine a world in which this reality compels Republicans to apply their creativity to developing policies that win over Black and brown voters instead of finding ever new ways to keep them from voting.

It’s not like Republicanism–real Republicanism, not RINO Republicanism like Trump’s–isn’t chock full of appealing American ideals to work with–freedom (in all its forms), faith, free enterprise, free markets (not to be confused with capitalism), entrepreneurship, community, small government, small business, federalism (decentralization), immigration, lower taxes, conservation, tradition, the spread of democracy, a culture of life (not fetishly limited to the womb), and more.  In light of such a rich history and tradition, one can hardly blame Trumpists for thinking they were on the winning side in the Civil War because Lincoln, that old commie, had an R next to his name, even as they revel in reminding us that Democrats started the KKK.

As for Democratic leadership, it should be reminded of what happened the last time our nation reached this level of civic unrest, when a single meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin resulted in the replacement of the Whigs by the Republicans in a political blink of an eye.  If they aren’t willing to go fundy where the fundamental values of our country are concerned, then we, the people–Democrats, Independents, Never-Trump Republicans–will replace the Democratic Party with the Democracy Party instead, short-term consequences be damned, because we’ll all be damned if we don’t.

In the next parts of this series, we’ll go into more detail about each of the planks of the democracy fundamentalist platform, prove why and how they–and not the current anti-democratic system–represent “real originalism,” the founders’ true vision, to help you infuse yourself and other believers in democratic values with the vidvaga needed to establish the same decisive 3:1 fighter to fighter advantage Ukrainians continue to show over their Russian foes (in a country where we, unlike the Russians, hold every demographic advantage over our erstwhile opponents–and need to start acting like it).  We’ll also begin to get into the tactics required to stamp out authoritarianism once and for all, in our own country and beyond.

PS To those in the establishment who think they literally have a trump card to play against “too much voting,” we pose this question:

Is it an exaggeration to believe every person who supported him is represented by the 74 million (not 75) who actually did?  Sure, but if Trump’s the standard, not by much.²⁰ What’s not a tale any taller than reality is the role the elites have played in breaking democracy, fomenting polarization, and making Trump possible.

Creative Politics is the world’s first community-based political incubator, synthesizing the best of liberal and conservative ideals with technology and history to generate policies, strategies, applications, and actions for the post-modern era that are well outside the beltway, and well beyond just talk.  All Creative Politics blog posts are collaborative, living documents, the way Madison and Hamilton would create them if they were writing The Federalist today.  We welcome, nay urge, your feedback in the comment/discussion section below, and will be using it (with credit) to make what you just read come into focus as reality.  Try it, and let us prove it…

¹ Whenever you hear anyone spewing gloom and doom for the Ukrainians, find out what they were saying before the invasion–and since, especially those who call themselves “realists” or believers in “realpolitik”.”   Like market short-sellers, they’ve got a vested interest in talking down the Ukrainians and getting us to bail on them, so they can turn out to be “right in the end”–Donald Trump is hardly the only politician or pundit with a monstrous ego. And some, like Colonel Douglas MacGregor (who has predicted the imminent fall of Ukraine every week for more than two years now) should be considered Russian assets (or, in MacGregor’s case, an “expert” for hire for Autocrats Inc, he’s also predicted we would get more than our lunch money taken by the Iranians [a forecast that, like his anti-Ukraine screeds, hasn’t aged well] and warned that we’d better not try to defend Taiwan from a Chinese military machine that, like Russia’s, hasn’t taken on a real adversary in generations (or ever in the case of China). 250-0–remember that score. 250 is the midpoint of the estimated number of members of Russia’s elite Wagner Group and the Syrian army (200-300) who lost their lives when 500+ tried to overrun an American outpost in Syria initially manned by a handful of Marines–and no more than 40 by battle’s end (the zero is for the number of Americans they succeeded in killing) Back

² The proof that GOPers knew they weren’t in the majority: Look at what has happened in the case of every single election in the last two decades that really was stolen–all the “color revolutions,” including Ukraine in 2004, the Philippines, Myanmar, Venezuela, Belarus last year, etc. etc. etc. The people turned out in massive peaceful demonstrations, they stayed on the streets for days, even weeks or more, continuing to remain peaceful. Violence has been almost always initiated by law enforcement on the part of the government, not by the demonstrators, and still, violence on the part of the demonstrators is almost always limited and muted by comparison–I can’t think of a single case in which they’ve stormed the Capitol of the country, forced their way in, and took it over.

Meanwhile, for the January 6th insurrectionists violence was not a “last resort,” it was the first resort, and unprovoked violence at that. That’s what the Bolsheviks, who knew they were supported by, at most, 2% of the population did; that’s what the Nazis did in Munich in the attempted putsch that put their movement on the map–it’s even core to the philosophy of one of the leading groups in the event, the Three Percenters, who’ve claimed this name because they believe it took only 3% to win the American Revolution (not true, by the way) so it will only take 3% of the population to overthrow our government today. I realize that the kind of people who believe the election was stolen, to the point of violence, have no respect for the rich base of empirical, scientific evidence supporting our claim, but if so, they’re welcome to jump off a building and see if they can fly. Back

³ Very recent improvements in GOP Hispanic performance still fall short of George W Bush’s performance with this demographic nearly 20 years ago, Hispanics only represented a tenth of the electorate in 2020, and an 8 point increase in this group hardly makes up for how increasingly toxic the Republican brand has become^3a for the last two generations of all races, whose proportion of the vote is only going to increase as more become eligible, more decide to vote, as government increasingly impacts their lives and, sadly, as older, more Republican generations die off.  And the fact of the matter is that the scope of the Hispanic Republican conversion has been greatly exaggerated, a just-so story just waiting to be used as a cover for fraud–voter suppression, the real voter fraud. Back

^3a A dynamic that will not change until, at a minimum, the GOP makes a hard pivot on climate change (which even young Republicans oppose the party on), probably racial justice, gender identity, and, unless social mobility miraculously revives to the point where they can seriously imagine being the ones who will be paying those high “Democratic taxes,” income inequality.

⁴ E.g. Nancy Pelosi pulled her page-tearing stunt while he wasn’t looking, rather than to his face, which just makes her and them look weaker, like cowardly passive-aggressive back-stabbers, not leaders speaking truth to power. If she wanted to look like an American leader to an American audience, she should have tapped him on the shoulder, made sure he was looking, then slowly torn it up in front of him, never losing eye contact for a second. If he refused to look at her, or if he broke off eye contact during the act and turned away, she should have taken fistfuls of the pieces and gently, even playfully released them over his head like faerie dust, then when he turned, looked right at him, unblinking, with a faint smile. In fairness, Speaker Pelosi has also provided one of the best examples of how to do it right–her mock applause during one of his speeches earlier in the term, which makes it all the more disappointing that she blew it on this occasion when, like a typical Democrat, she succeeded only in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  If even the toughest progressive fighter in the arena can’t consistently dunk on the GOP, it’s indicative of a party-wide cultural challenge.  Back

⁵ It should be noted that Republicans also think Democrats “get away” with everything, too, with the media’s coverage of Trump as Exhibit A, starting with the Harvard study conducted in Trump’s early months showing that 90% of press coverage of Trump is negative, always forgetting to mention that, according to study, the vast majority of the negative coverage originated from sources that are traditionally Republican, such as the military, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement. It’s hard to accuse the media of rampant bias when it’s just reporting on what appears to be unprecedented and rampant criminality (which, for “balance” and profits, it repeatedly tries to absolve him of), and, in fact, Trump is actually Exhibit A for the Democrats–no matter what crimes he’s accused of committing and no matter how strong the evidence of his guilt, he continues to emerge unscathed, something that seems unlikely to change, given the improbability of empaneling a jury anywhere without at least one Trump supporter on it, a stig who will not vote to convict Trump even if he shoots their entire family in front of them in open court. Back

⁶ At least until they need to shed them in the interest of gaining more power, and really, even then, it’s no more than a reptilian skin shedding; the body of what they believe looks murky and milky in the process of shedding, but underneath, the absolutes re-emerge, bright, shiny, sharp, and the moment of hypocrisy is left behind like the old skin. Democrats can point at it and shout look, look, but the Republicans just keep striding steadfastly away until it can no longer be seen or associated with them. Back

⁷ Given the long political road ahead, and the challenges on multiple fronts that lie on it, passage of this bill must be thought of as a dog walk moment (like climate vs daily weather) until proven otherwise.  It’s also more than a bit naive to believe the public regards this as the triumph Dems do, given that nearly 80% of likely American voters aren’t even aware they passed a trillion dollar infrastructure bill last year. Back

⁸ Extremism, that is, to/for this country; to literally the rest of the world, what we’ll be discussing is known as plain old representative democracy–as the founders envisioned. Back

⁹ Or both, if they’re making their arguments in public, especially if supported by negative polling numbers, which as Rosenberg (and we) have pointed out, depresses turnout for your side. Back

¹⁰ Which is another reason voters cut Democrats less slack than Republicans–they may not care much for what the GOP is promising, but they know they’ll do what they say they’ll do, even if doesn’t produce the results they said it would (eg tax cuts for the rich that are supposed to pay for themselves, but never do), because they almost never promise to do things they can’t; Democrats do this all the time, and worse, they make promises that really matter, that if kept, would really address peoples’ needs, raising and dashing expectations over and over, promises that hurt when they’re broken. Back

¹¹ Predictably, the Democratic establishment has a different spin on the election, one in which Gen Z doesn’t figure, go figure . Their argument is specious, but has gotten enough traction that we’ve had to destroy it, for example here. Naturally, they’ve ignored our demolition job, but through channels they’re going to find that increasingly difficult to do.  Back

¹² And frankly, there’s nothing particularly quixotic about this point of view. Fans of the Danish political drama Borgen, (which every American with any interest in politics ought to stream) know, for example, that there are a wide variety of forms dishonesty takes that, in the Danes’ governing culture, are considered “anti-democratic” to the point where impeachment-level dismissals and even criminal prosecution are automatic. Not coincidentally, Denmark is consistently at or near the top rung of the happiest nations in the world. Back

¹³ Whose executive function exceeds that of the average adult over fifty by the time they are ten. Back

¹⁴ Decentralization is supposed to protect us from hackers, foreign or domestic, because there are so many different local election systems in play that there’s no way a hacker or even a team of them can break into enough of them to turn an election. But as long as the Electoral College decides elections, they don’t need to do that, do they? All they need to do is hack into a handful of key precincts or localities in a handful of states to flip the results. And they don’t even have to change votes to succeed–they can install malware that causes voting software to repeatedly malfunction, for example, creating voting lines so long that many would-be voters literally can’t afford to stay in them, and walk away. Sound far-fetched? There’s credible evidence that in 2016, the GOP told the Russians what localities it would be especially useful to hack (all Democratic), and in at least one municipality, Raleigh-Durham, in a key battleground state, North Carolina, voting machines using software provided by a company the Russians had, in fact, successfully hacked, repeatedly malfunctioned, resulting in extremely long lines for students and other voters. Back

¹⁵ We’re less convinced that the flavor of the day, ranked choice voting, is really about making the process more democratic, so much as it is about trying to steer the electorate into choosing more moderate, less extreme candidates.  That may well be noble and necessary in the current environment, but unless it’s necessary to prevent democracy from collapsing entirely, we don’t see it as a democracy position. Back

¹⁶ Nothing has done more to level the economic playing field and allow underrepresented groups to field viable candidates than the free Internet, especially broadband Internet. By contrast, we believe the primary effect of repealing Citizens United (which would make McCain-Feingold the law of the land again) would be to restore the traditional protections of incumbency by making it more difficult for challengers to raise enough money to successfully overcome its advantages. Back

¹⁷ Any centralized authority, , whether in governance or private enterprise, inherently reduces our ability to fulfill the democratic promise of self-government. In the case of the power grid, decentralization is of such obvious benefit to public welfare^17a it’s hard to conclude that the government’s determination to replace power plants with wind and solar farms represents anything other than a deliberate effort to preserve the power (literally in this case) of the few over the many. Back

^17a Three huge and obvious examples: (1) In a centralized power grid, more than 90% of the energy generated is lost (due to resistance) in the process of transmission from the central plant to individual homes–in a decentralized system, virtually all this energy would be available for us, dramatically reducing costs to the “too cheap to meter” level, were we focused on making every citizen “energy-independent,” rather than priding ourselves on the meaningless energy independence of our nation (which doesn’t protect us from paying the same price for oil and gas as the neediest, least independent in the world are willing to pay) (2) Centralized power grids are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattack by a growing number of increasingly sophisticated bad actors; a completely decentralized grid is, by contrast, practically invulnerable. We seem to understand this in our electoral system–even oversell it–why don’t we understand and accept the same when it comes to the stuff of life? (3) A fully decentralized power grid will produce millions of quality installation and maintenance jobs that can never be outsourced; the centralized grid never has and never will.  And of course, beyond all these and other advantages, (4) in a decentralized system, we, the people, are freer to vote as we please without fear that the government and/or private industry will be able to engage in price manipulation re: our basic needs to punish us for choices that don’t serve the interests of the elites.

¹⁸ It’s telling that many of the same people who claim to trust religiously in the invisible hand of the market are horrified by the possibility that increasing numbers of political decisions could be made the same way. Back

¹⁹ I.e. like 70+ countries from all corners of the earth do for every election. Back

²⁰ Were there Trump supporters among registered or unregistered non-voters. Sure, but probably not many–Hillary Clinton beat him by 6 among non-voters in 2016 and, as we’ve previously written, every element of his and his party’s response to COVID was designed to maximize turnout by his supporters and turbocharge what was, according to former FEC chair (and Republican) Trevor Potter, already the most extensive and concerted nationwide effort to suppress the vote in living memory. The proportion of voters who said directly that they didn’t vote because of the pandemic was only the proverbial tip of one of a flotilla of free-floating bergs at many levels he’s been responsible for. Nearly all the Americans who can’t vote at all are under 18, and no demographic hates him more than the young, with the possible exception of non-citizen immigrants, who make up the difference between our citizen and resident populations. PS Most polls showing that as much as 40% of the adult population approves him (which doesn’t mean they’d vote for him) are “likely voter” polls, about which we’ll have much to say in the next post in the series.  Back