A post-Trump strategy to repair democracy

Prepare not just for 2024, but for what comes after.

As attention turns toward the 2024 election immediately ahead, we need to be ready for both the worst and the best outcome - and plan for what comes after.

Democracy is in need of repairs. I see these repairs as a two-step process: first, understanding the bugs in the current, complex system of democracy; and second, making targeted changes to make the system more responsive to all its citizens, not just one faction. These changes both bring our system up to date and provide an answer to what the near-certain Republican nominee for 2024, Donald Trump, has to offer.

Trump has made increasingly clear that if he wins the November election, respect for democracy will go out the door. Anyone committing criminal acts on his behalf can expect a presidential pardon. He won’t accept election results that go against him and his allies. And now, he has started to compare political opponents to vermin. In short, tendencies that were evident in 2016 have now come into full authoritarian flower.

These sentiments go well beyond the gaming of politics that has occupied the national scene for the last 30 years. In 2004, legal scholar Mark Tushnet coined the phrase “constitutional hardball“ to describe a willingness to test constitutional principles to the breaking point as a means of gaining political advantage. Maneuvers such as blocking court nominees, shutting down government, and manipulation of voting laws have by now become routine. And with the resurgence of Donald Trump in national politics, we have a candidate who opposes democracy itself.

Not all Republican candidates seeking the Presidency feel this way. But it would be a mistake to think that somehow getting rid of Trump is enough to preserve democracy. Instead, think of Trump as the sincerely held preference of a substantial fraction of Republican voters. They constitute a small but influential faction of American voters. They want their views represented - and they chose Trump. They are likely to be sympathetic to other candidates who espouse the same direction for American democracy. Can this hijacking of American democracy by this faction be averted? 

I suggest that efforts to repair democracy can fit into a single framework, one that can be described using the tools of science and complex systems. This is not an academic exercise: having a framework gives us a theory for change. And it allows us to pursue change intelligently, and gets us where we want to go faster. By understanding how the long-term products of democracy are produced by its institutions, we can maximize our odds of making successful repairs - before it’s too late.

Ideals of democracy: representation and responsiveness

In civics class, we learn the details of government: the three branches of government, the fact that we have state and local officials too, and so on. Usually these come with information about the rules for how political parties pick nominees, or how judges are appointed. All of these details help in understanding news reports about what our government does, as well as help us carry out our duties as citizens. 

But let me take another approach, which is to ask: what do we want out of our democracy? Speaking as a citizen who happens to be a scientist, I want to back up and turn this into a more specific question: What features would we expect out of a well-running system of government in which the people are in charge?

Many of our intuitive ideas about a well-functioning democracy fall into two major categories: government should be representative of the people, and it should be responsive to the people. 

“Representative” means that government should represent the people as a whole. That can be by making sure that legislators reflect political views in an accurate manner. In a racially diverse society like the United States, it also means that different ethnic groups have a say in government. 

“Responsive” refers to what the government does in response to public sentiment. For example, if incumbent politicians don’t meet with public favor, they should be removed from office. Or if a difficult social or other issue arises, then Congress or local legislatures should take on the task of resolving that issue through deliberation. 

These seem like simple baseline expectations of our government. Yet it is easy to come up with ways in which our existing system of government fails us. Whether it’s abortion, or gun control, or the environment, policies often don’t move in directions that resemble popular opinion.

At a fundamental level, former president Donald Trump has answered these questions. In his past actions and current campaign rhetoric, government should represent and respond to his supporters, and his supporters only. In his view, the rules of elections should ensure that outcome under any circumstance. This message may not be pro-democracy, but it has the advantage of being simple and clear.

To show how well this message is penetrating in December 2023, more than 10 months before the election, here is a word cloud that comes from a survey of 1000 voters done by the Daily Mail. They asked what Trump might want from a second term.

This is so clear a depiction of Trump’s desires that he himself has seen fit to redistribute it on his boutique social media network.

Countering this message is not a partisan issue. The dangers of taking the Trumpian route have been highlighted by Democrats, Republicans, and nonpartisans alike. Former Republican representative Liz Cheney, daughter of Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, sees Trump’s return to power as “sleepwalking into dictatorship.”

However, a gap has grown between this general defense of democracy and specific actions proposed by reformers. Individual reforms sound granular, not grand. Let’s face it: “let’s change first-past-the-post voting” doesn’t have the same ring as “democracy is in danger.” Having a clear theory and framework is one way to fill that gap. 

Ideas for reform can fit into a single framework that can appeal to citizens of all groups. Based on my conversations with activists, fellow scientists, and regular people, repairs to democracy will be easier to explain - and support - if everyone worked from the same playbook.

Knife-edge elections in modern times

Trump’s advance to the Republican nomination is near-inevitable. The voters who have a say in that question are self-identified Republicans, about 30% of the voting public. The rules of Republican party primaries have  winner-take-all features that essentially guarantee the nomination to anyone who can muster 40% support of those primary voters. So about 40% of 30%, or specifically, 12% of public opinion, is sufficient to determine the Republican nominee. Trump has this amount of support pretty well locked up, just as he did in 2016. I wrote about it at the time, and flagged his rise as essentially unstoppable. Barring purposeful self-destruction, he is in the same position in 2024.

In short, Trump’s success at taking over the Republican party has been powered by a combination of his core voters and by a defect in the current political system that allows a committed 12% to bring their agenda to the general election.

In the general election, existing mechanisms have again left an opening for extremism to win. Extremist party nominees can win, given two features of national politics over the last 30 years: unusually close Presidential elections, and extreme polarization between the parties. 

This graph shows the popular-vote margin of the Presidential winner, for as long as votes have been tallied. For two major periods, a string of elections took place in which the popular-vote margin was less than 10 points: seven elections from 1876 to 1900, and eight elections from 1992 to 2020. Both of these periods were times of racial division, technological disruption, economic inequality, and deep partisanship. The first period was called the Gilded Age, named after a satirical novel of the time by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. 

When it comes to issues, the major political parties are farther apart than they’ve been in a long time, maybe ever. As seen in the battle for the House speakership in 2023, Congressional Republicans closest to the center of the distribution found far-right members of their own caucus to be more acceptable than any Democrat. 

As a result of these conditions, small shifts in votes have enormous practical consequences. For example, the red dots indicate times when the popular-vote loser became President: Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald Trump in 2016. If you know about or remember these elections, then you probably recall the rancor, extreme tactics, and large policy shifts that accompanied them. And in recent years, an increasingly extreme Republican base has turned to election denial and even insurrection. Trump’s return to office would continue this trend away from democracy.

How will the Second Gilded Age end?

Despite the existence of a path for Trump’s return to power, I believe that it is at least equally likely that his candidacy will mark the end of the second Gilded Age, allowing an opening to make lasting repairs to democracy.

Several times a century, a realignment happens that changes the face of politics. Examples include the foundation of a strong national government after the Civil War, or the shifting of Democrats and Republicans along racial lines after the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. We are due for another such shift.

In 2024, a Trump win is unlikely to be a landslide. Based on polls and election results, Donald Trump’s support has a ceiling of about 47% of the vote. Because of quirks of the Electoral College, that can be enough to win. In the event of a Trump victory, a major shift in our national system of government is likely. Based on Trump’s statements, he seeks to dramatically weaken U.S. democracy at a national level. He has already encouraged the overturning of state elections, and has referred to his political opponents as “vermin” and has promised to harness the federal government to be his personal instrument of “retribution.” That would certainly seem to meet the definition of a major shift.

But consider the converse. Multiple factors may lead us away from this knife-edge of close elections. Favoring Democrats, first is abortion: in 43 special elections since the Dobbs decision, the Democrat-versus-Republican margin has been a median of 7 points larger than the Biden-Trump 2020 margin in the same district. The second is the criminal and civil trials of Donald Trump (assuming he becomes the nominee). In four surveys, a criminal conviction moves the Biden-Trump margin in Biden’s direction by 4 to 14 points. If either of these effects were to emerge in November 2024, it would potentially increase the gap between the parties to a level not seen since 1984 - before the start of our Second Gilded Age. In these instances, Democrats come out ahead.

If a Trump loss ends the second Gilded Age, what comes after? Can that also lead to a major shift - in favor of democracy?

Restoring the status quo leaves democracy’s problems unsolved

Several political writers have argued that protecting democracy does not stop at defeating Donald Trump. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie has written that a plan is needed to build institutions that can resist the next Trump. Indeed, defeating Trump just gets us back to pre-2016 conditions - conditions that allowed Trump to come to power. That’s kind of retro - and it’s not enough.

The pre-Trump years were years of constitutional hardball, in which institutions of democracy were pushed to their limit. They were driven by the desperation of a party barely able to win national elections. Without intervention, this degradation will continue.

I believe the 2024 election provides our best chance in decades to repair broken systems of democracy. The institutions that gave us Trump were suited to a different political time. But the increasingly broken politics of the last 30 years has revealed an urgent need to remake those systems to suit modern times. 

Consider some of those institutions: a closed-primary nominating system in which a determined faction can determine their party’s nomination. Follow this with a general election that is determined by a plurality of votes, when those voters are forced to choose between two major alternatives. And if the gap between the parties is perceived to be vast, then those voters stick with the party that they think is closer to them, even if that party has nominated an extreme candidate. This process elevates unrepresentative officials, whether they are Democrats or Republicans.

To first order, these components allow well under half of one party to dominate a political contest. And as I have shown you, if that party comprises less than one-third of the electorate, then we have a situation in which the most extreme one-eighth of voters determines the Presidency. 

These mechanisms work at other levels of government as well. The same major rules - party-specific primaries, plurality general elections - exist for the great majority of elections across the nation. As long as the gap between the parties is too large for voters to consider crossing, these election rules open a path to creating Senators, Representatives, governors, and state officials who do not reflect the great majority of their constituents.

Today the two national parties are widely separated. If voters are offered only these two viable options, then in a mathematical model, they might look like this: 

But this simplification can hide voters who are forced into the choice. Some of those voters may not fit, and their views are not fully reflected. 

The third group of voters, whether they are in the middle or have views that are not easily described by partisan labels, or forced into a choice between two major alternatives. One of the major goals of reform is for all voters - including those who do not easily fit - to have a means of being represented by the political system.

Any repairs to democracy will also have to contend with the forces that got us here. Political divisions between densely-populated and sparsely-populated areas have become extremely strong over the last sixty years. In the meantime, increasing racial diversity has reduced the white population from 80% to under 50% of the population. Where these trends have brought us, and where they may go, are challenges that any reform must accommodate.

A Second Progressive Era 

The first Gilded Age was followed by the first Progressive Era. This was a time of significant change: a reformist president, Theodore Roosevelt; the popular election of Senators; and eventually, women attaining the right to vote. Some changes, most notably voting rights for Black people, had to wait for decades. But the early 20th century provided a start, and that period disrupted the stasis that marked the Gilded Age.

Jamelle Bouie points out that “defeating Trump is only the first step toward saving and revitalizing American democracy.” Those who cherish democracy need a strong countermessage and a plan to prevent the rise of the next authoritarian. As it turns out, many reformers are working on many different goals. Those goals need to be put into a single coherent framework. That can help create a unified strategic approach - and provide a message that voters can understand.

Would-be reformers of democracy have no shortage of ideas. Here’s a partial list:

• Do away with the Electoral College

• Do away with the filibuster

• Gerrymandering reform

• Let independents vote in first-past-the-post partisan primaries 

• Implement ranked-choice voting

• Convert party primaries to one big primary where multiple candidates advance

• Form a third party

To the average voter, this is a laundry list, and perhaps a somewhat incoherent one. And surely not every idea should be pursued everywhere at once, or with the same urgency. In our federalist system of national, state and local government, it’s essential to know how and where to advocate for a particular reform. 

Consider for example the No Labels organization, whose stated goal is to provide voters with a third alternative for the presidency. It sounds like a solution to representing the middle group. But this path, if pursued before the other reforms, can waste millions of votes and create a spoiler effect in which the most popular candidate loses. Of all the possible paths to repairing democracy, No Labels would be unusually disastrous. 

I argue that modern methods of science can help sort out the options, and make sense out of this zoo of proposals. 

Using scientific tools to make sense of the reform landscape

Complex systems often have pivot points where a small intervention can make a big difference. Building a science of reform allows us to understand democracy as a complex system - and understand how and when a reform is likely to work. 

I come into the study of democracy reform as a working scientist. I study how the brain works. You might think neuroscience is pretty far from what is needed for democracy reform. You might even make a joke about the broken brains of people in government. In some ways those would not be far off. But I come at this problem in a different way.

My line of work requires thinking of the brain as a system of many parts working together. Each part, whether it’s a brain region or a single cell, is itself complicated. In the lab and on the computer, we use technologies to understand how those parts work as individual objects. Then we figure out how they work together, using mathematics and computational tools. This is modern neuroscience.

The brain is one of the most complex organs that we study. I use the same tools of my field to study the product of many brains working together - elections. Those tools can power not only science, but practical applications.

Neuroscience is not just about understanding the brain. It’s also about repairing and restoring it. To do that, we have to be able to predict what will happen if we give a treatment, or do a surgery, or add a prosthesis. Indeed, billions of taxpayer dollars have gone into developing technologies that allow us to study the brain from the inside out - and understand it computationally.

Medical and scientific technologies can’t fix our politics. But they come from a way of thinking about politics that’s different from what you see from journalists, from historians, and from scholars of politics. Instead, it is the approach of the scientist.

I am also like most of you: I don’t have formal training in understanding politics. So I have to explain everything in everyday English. This is also something scientists do - get back to the basics. And that is a good way to understand political reform.

Having a scientific framework for reform can help in two ways. First, it matches what voters find so frustrating about democracy with the solutions - and clarifies which solutions to pursue. Activists and funders have intuitions about what might be a good idea. But what they lack is a way to assess whether a reform is urgent or takes precedence over other reforms. 

Second, a predictive framework provides an essential feature: speed. Current political conditions do not allow us to pursue change at a leisurely pace spanning decades. Traditional political science is an observational field: researchers typically wait years to find out the consequences of a change to the system. We need to think more like astronauts: identify the problem while the mission is ongoing - and make repairs before it’s too late.

In the weeks and months to come, I will describe how I see these reforms. Many of you will find the components familiar. But I hope that I can put them into a larger picture that shows how they form a cohesive whole. Taken together, they provide a clear alternative to the future that Donald Trump offers to our democracy.