Julia Azari: “Since January 2025, American politics has shifted decisively away from being based on legitimacy, and is instead now mostly a game of power. In other words, the Trumpist GOP – which controls the federal government and much at the subnational level – uses whatever power is available to them, without much concern about legitimacy. Typically, in a democracy, uses of power would be limited by what can be justified in terms of democratic values, accepted practices, and norms like reciprocity…”
“The Democratic Party is not well-suited to this style of politics. This isn’t entirely a knock – a party that’s deeply wedded to arguments about legitimacy instead of thinking about ways to use raw power isn’t the worst thing. But the particular way that the Democratic Party operates and has evolved makes it especially poorly equipped to respond to this year’s developments.”
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