Summary of Minority Rule by Ari Berman E-Book
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Summary of Minority Rule by Ari Berman: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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PROLOGUE
FEAR OF A WHITE MINORITY
In May 1995, Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan announced a new immigration policy as the centerpiece of his campaign. He warned that white Americans would become a minority by 2050, warning that the country had an illegal invasion. Buchanan called for building a "Buchanan Fence" along the US-Mexico border to keep out undocumented immigrants, hiring 5,000 new border agents, instituting a five-year moratorium on legal immigration, and changing the Fourteenth Amendment to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented parents.
Buchanan was surrounded by leaders of six groups devoted to restricting immigration, such as the California Coalition for Immigration Reform and Floridians for Immigration Control. He held a copy of a book called Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster by conservative journalist Peter Brimelow, which proposed harsh limits on non-European immigration. The 1990 census predicted that whites would one day become a minority in the country. Buchanan realized that white anxiety about their impending minority status could be a powerful issue, especially for Republicans, and he styled himself as a leader of a “new restrictionism” movement advocating for the toughest limits on immigration since the 1920s.
In the 1960s, a new commitment to equality replaced the old age of explicit white supremacy, marked by a dramatic and sudden expansion of democratic rights. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Immigration and Nationality Act, a sweeping trio of antidiscrimination laws that transformed the politics and demographics of the country.
Pat Buchanan, a prominent conservative figure, was aware of the potential backlash against the Second Reconstruction of the 1960s and how to mobilize white voters who saw the extension of new rights to African Americans and other minorities as threatening their power. He helped steer Nixon away from the civil rights movement and advised him to ignore liberal issues like housing, education, and unemployment.
In his first presidential campaign, Buchanan used this white backlash strategy to target the South, visiting Stone Mountain and denouncing the civil rights laws of the 1960s. He also wooed supporters of David Duke, a KKK leader who had launched his own presidential bid on a platform of white supremacy.
Buchanan was the first major presidential candidate to mix antipathy toward the civil rights era with hostility to nonwhite immigration, making opposition to demographic change the centerpiece of his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. He mounted a strong challenge to incumbent president George H. W. Bush in the 1992 New Hampshire primary, winning more than a third of the vote against a sitting president.
Republicans adopted some of Buchanan's positions on immigration as the official party platform, pledging to equip the Border Patrol with the tools, technologies, and structures necessary to secure the border. Four years later, Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary during his second presidential run, calling his followers "the true sons and daughters of the Founding Fathers."
Despite being dismissed by many as a fringe figure in the 1990s, his dire warnings about the disappearance of the country's white majority have become a central organizing principle for the conservative movement today. The shrinking conservative white minority is relentlessly exploiting the undemocratic features of America's political institutions while doubling down on antidemocratic tactics.
The United States' democratic experiment has been marked by a central tension over whether the government should benefit the many or the few. The Constitution was designed to protect the interests of a propertied white upper class, with the Senate representing the country's elite and restraining the more democratic House of Representatives. However, as the country has democratized, antidemocratic features have metastasized, threatening the survival of representative government.
The central threat facing American democracy is the tyranny of the minority. For the first time in US history, five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court have been appointed by Republican presidents who initially lost the popular vote and confirmed by senators representing a minority of Americans. This extreme direction of the court is emblematic of how countermajoritarian distortions in American politics have intensified in recent years.
The level of inequality in the Senate is the worst among any advanced democracy, with the structure of the Senate magnifying the body's unrepresentativeness. The reactionary conservatives behind the drive for minority rule claim to be the only legitimate heirs of representative government, but they are trying to delegitimize and warp the institutions created by the founders. They are also trying to narrow the definition of citizenship and who is entitled to exercise those rights.
The struggle throughout US history between constricting and expanding democracy has reached a fever pitch today, with a minority of Americans striving to nullify the will of the people while also facing growing resistance.
LABORATORY FOR OLIGARCHY
In 2011, the Republican party in Wisconsin controlled the state's redistricting process for the first time since the 1950s. They were shown to the "map room," where their aides were drawing new political districts in secret following the 2010 census. The maps had titles like "Aggressive" to describe how they favored Republicans, and the maps were approved the next week on a party-line vote.
Publicly, Republicans downplayed the significance of the maps, but state politics had been transformed virtually overnight. This was evident in Racine, Wisconsin, where the 21st district was abruptly cut off to exclude the rest of the largely Democratic neighborhood near Lake Michigan. The new redistricting maps converted the swing district into one that favored a Republican by sixteen points.
Democrat John Lehman, who represented the district before Wanggaard, was in the awkward position of winning an election in his competitive old district but serving in the new, deeply Republican one. The new boundaries effectively nullified the recall election Wanggaard had lost and all the unpopular votes he had cast in favor of Walker's archconservative agenda.
Most of the state legislature's Republican majority was just as secure, with Republicans retained 60% of seats in the assembly under the Republican map. Under the Republican map, the number of safe GOP seats in the 132-member legislature had increased from 55 to 69 while the number of swing districts decreased from 24 to 13. This system ensured that Republicans would maintain control of state politics, even when they are an electoral minority.
Wisconsin's politics and culture have undergone a significant shift due to the rise of the Republican Party (R-P) dominating core democratic institutions. The state, known for its progressive reforms like women's suffrage and the direct election of presidential nominees and US senators, was once known for its democratic values. However, in 2010, Walker and the Republicans elected in 2010 launched a counterrevolution against this idea, focusing power in the hands of an elite and wealthy conservative white minority.
Todd Allbaugh, a Republican who became a Republican in 1980, worked for Wisconsin Representative Steve Gunderson and later became chief of staff for state senator Dale Schultz. Despite being one of the first states to adopt Election Day registration in the 1970s, Wisconsin never passed laws limiting the ability to vote. In 2011, the State Senate's Republican caucus considered a bill requiring government-issued photo ID to vote, a top priority for Wisconsin Republicans since the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. The party blamed losses on voter fraud by Democrats in Milwaukee and high turnout among Black and young voters.
However, no evidence of fraud was found when the county sheriff and district attorney launched a month-long investigation. Republicans argued that the voter ID law would boost the party's prospects in all races by depressing the votes of core Democratic constituencies. Schultz voted for the voter ID bill reluctantly but his concern grew when Republicans passed another law eliminating early voting at night and on weekends, which was used more often by Democrats in large urban areas like Madison and Milwaukee.
The voter ID law was one of thirty-three election changes passed in Wisconsin after Governor Walker took office, which included cutting early voting, curtailing voter registration drives, and adding new residency requirements to cast a ballot. The Wisconsin experience demonstrated that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermines confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities.
In 2010, Walker had dinner with the board and senior staff of the Bradley Foundation, which was started by Lynde and Harry Bradley, who manufactured electronic parts in Milwaukee. The foundation's president, Michael Grebe, took over in the early 2000s and began funding a conservative ecosystem that included groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. Wisconsin became the foundation's test case for creating a conservative counterrevolution in a place known for its progressive history.
Walker responded by introducing Act 10, which stripped public-sector unions of collective bargaining rights, ended automatic union dues, and required annual recertification. The bill was introduced in the state assembly on February 14, 2011, and tens of thousands of pro-union activists showed up to demonstrate at the capitol.
Walker was quickly surrounded by the largest resistance movement in state history, and a recall election to remove him from office was triggered just a year after assuming the governor’s office. In January 2010, a conservative majority on the Supreme Court radically rewrote America’s campaign finance laws to allow megadonors and corporations to contribute unlimited sums, often in secret, to political action committees.
