The short version is that the federal government will operate as red states like Texas or Alabama have for some time. It will do so in terms of policy agenda (reactionary, neoliberal, evangelical moral panic) and what might be called political structures and practices (competitive authoritarianism).
For some time, the GOP has claimed to be conservative, and to have a policy agenda grounded in principles. It isn’t, and it doesn’t. It’s a coalition taped together by a strategic rhetoric of resentment, demagoguery, and in-group favoritism (e.g., if you support drones, and look forward to nuclear war in the Middle East, you are not pro-life).
So, the policy agenda will have a lot of moral panic/purity items that the “evangelicals” advocate (federal ban on abortion, probably some kind of requirement for prayer in schools, restriction of marriage rights, public funding of sectarian education, etc.). Neoliberals (really just the latest incarnation of sloppy Social Darwinists) will get draining and redirecting of public funds to private profit, policies that buttress current wealth disparities, and deflecting or demonizing of any discussion of long-term or structural issues like racism of global warming, (e.g., much of “Project 2025”). Reactionaries will get unlimited access to guns, removal of restraints on police, and generally in-group exemption from prosecution for violence, corruption, and abuse of power (e.g., Kenneth Paxton).
At the Federal level, we’ll also have the kind of “competitive authoritarianism” that states like Texas have been establishing. Political scientists (and others) have been warning about competitive authoritarianism for twenty years. From a 2002 article:
“In competitive authoritarian regimes, formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority. Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such an extent, however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy.” (52)
More recently Levitsky and Way have defined it as “in which the coexistence of meaningful democratic institutions and serious incumbent abuse yields electoral competition that is real but unfair.”
It’s interesting to me that scholars rarely mention the US South, but it’s a good example of competitive authoritarianism. There was a Republican Party, and, on paper, African Americans could vote. But, in fact, various structural and interpersonal practices (from lynching to refusing to register voters) ensured that neither African Americans nor Republicans were completely excluded from power. It was herrenvolk democracy. [1]
There are two ways that this will play out in the US. In purple states, it will mean gerrymandering, disparate access to polling places, formal and informal harassment of non-GOP voters, strategic voter registration requirements, and demagoguery about voter fraud rather than voter suppression. In other words, Texas.
For the nation as a whole, it will mean “The Great Divorce.” Purple states with the GOP in the dominant position will keep from going violet by passing laws that cause potential Dem voters to congregate either in cities (that can be gerrymandered out of power) or to leave the purple states entirely. If the latter happens, then high-population states may be overwhelmingly Dem (and the US as a whole might be overwhelmingly Dem), but the GOP will hold control of the Senate and Electoral College, and hence SCOTUS and the Presidency.
Levitzky and Ziblatt laid out the plan that Trump started to follow in his first term, and he’ll complete it this time. Important to competitive authoritarianism is control of the media, so we should expect that Trump will immediately go after Bezos (assuming he hasn’t already—hence WaPo’s refusal to endorse Harris). Putin used a combination of extortion and threats of prosecution for tax fraud to get rid of critical media—that’s probably the route it will take.
Not all critical media will be silenced; competitive authoritarianism is about looking like a democracy. But, they will certainly be corralled and underfed.
Friendly media will continue to promote a narrative of existential war (demagoguery), victimized “conservatives” (in-group favoritism), snobby elitists (resentment), and aggression/corruption as justified self-defense (projection).
Welcome to Texas.
[The wikipedia article says the term was first used in 1967, but Wilbur Cash used it in his 1941 Mind of the South.]
Your posts have been a lifeline for me. Thank you.
I always thought Trump is a trojan horse for the right to get its ideological wish list. This is a verifiable prediction, though we can imagine it getting much worse ie. civil war, failed state. There will eventually be some kind of crisis leading to a showdown- of course a lot hinges on the final outcome of the House
People will wise up to this ruthless scam, won’t they and won’t there be resistance of some kind, say as the California Governor just put into effect, or as a result of a disaster in a Blue state totally ignored by the Federal Government?
Or is resistance futile? You manage to live in a Red State, though I foresee the religious right and other elements of this coalition will always feel dissatisfied and victimized, so there will be something like a perpetual revolution- eventually the red states and the blue states will be like foreign countries to each other, won’t they?
This is the culmination of the putsch started by Goldwater or before isn’t it?
This is very enlightening, but there are details to work out in its execution and playing out in real world
Civil Wars, according to Randall Collins, result from splits in the military. Many Generals perhaps, like Milley and Kelly, despise Trump- if he oversteps his bounds, as he might, by court martialing Milley, perhaps some resistance will follow- they, sorry to use us vs them have an advantage, because of the ineptness of the Democrats and the misguided goals of the left as a social movement, but if the left were to become a truly dynamic party, if there were an ant-Trump so to speak, something good would come of the matter