Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson – Review Part One

by James Wallace Harris

Americans have general thought of America as a democracy, although it’s never been a true democracy. When the United States of America was first created a limited number of white males could vote. As time progressed more white males were allowed to vote. As liberals and radicals influenced politics, they advocated for wider suffrage state by state. See this timeline for details, but the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 gave black men the vote, and in 1920 the Nineteenth amendment was passed that gave women the vote in all states. Whites have always suppressed black voters, and even some men still resent women voting. And political parties have always tried to control who could vote and how, and even suppressing voting.

A true democracy would allow every citizen over a certain age to vote, or universal suffrage. Before the 21st century most Americans didn’t see that as a problem, but as ethnic demographics have changed it has turned some Americans against democracy.

America is supposed to have a representative democracy, but it inspired the formation of political parties supported by various special interest groups fighting for power. In America Awakening Heather Cox Richardson describes how we’ve reached the current state where liberals advocate more democracy and conservatives push for less, apparently wanting authoritarian rule instead. Authoritarians general promote some ideal in the past as the authority of how things should be govern. Most modern American authoritarians look to either the Founding Fathers and the Constitution or to God and The Bible, or a combination of both. Modern American authoritarian leaders tend to be white and paternalistic, and their followers tend to want a strong man, or strong father figure, although more women are wanting to be Republican leaders too.

Richardson says it’s important to understand that many terms like conservative, liberal, radical, Republican, and Democrat have changed over the centuries. In the 19th century Republicans were for African Americans voting, and for gun laws, and in the early 20th century, for regulations on corporations. In the 19th century and through the first half of the 20th century, Democrats tried to keep African Americans from having the vote. The Republican and Democratic parties went through a polarity change in the 1960s. Richardson says its important understand how words have changed meaning because authoritarians often abuse them and justify their abuse by claiming history supports their new definitions. In other words, history gets distorted and abused.

I’m reviewing Democracy Awakening because I think it’s an important book everyone should read for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, but also to push my ability to remember. I love reading nonfiction books, but their information often feels like it goes in one ear and out the other. I can only retain what I learn in the vaguest way. Since I’m also reading about memory and aging, I’ve decided to read Democracy Awakening differently. I’m going to distill what Richardson is saying into my own words but in some concise form that I hope I can remember. I’ll do that in a series of blog posts, outlines, tables, etc.

My friend Linda and I are reading Democracy Awakening together and for our first discussion we are covering Part 1, Chapters 1-10, which I hope to cover today. Here is the Table of Contents.

Because I’ve also read other books on this subject already, including watching related documentaries and YouTube videos, I’m going to reference them in this series to show how there’s a synergy in my reading.

Heather Cox Richardson is a history professor who has specialized on the history of the Republican Party through a series of books. I have not read these books, but I have read some about each and it gives me confidence that Richardson is an expert on this subject. On the internet there are zillions of people claiming to be knowledgable on specific subjects but when you check into their creditials, you find little to back their claim of authority.

• The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War (1997)
• The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 (2001)
• West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (2007)
• Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (2010) (2010)
• To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party (2014)
• How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America (2020)
• Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (2023)

Richardson makes her points by citing historical events. I wish I could remember all the cited dates and important changes in history because they show an evolution of how we got to today. The first ten chapters progress mostly in a linear fashion, so I hope to eventually create a timeline.

Richardson also quotes significant papers, speeches, books, and other sources to reveal how concepts emerged that cause people to seek political change. Just the history of African Americans seeking Civil Rights reveals many connections to how conservatives and liberals changed their parties and political goals. I’d like to make a list of the most significant quotes to remember. And I’d like to read the books Richardson references, including books by conservative writers. But this will take a lot of time.

And there’s another problem, both conservatives and liberals use the Founding Fathers as historical authority even though members of both political parties distort history for their cause. Republicans like to cite the past, both the Founding Fathers, and The Bible, as how to create or interpret laws. This is rediculous. 2023 isn’t 1776, or 800 BCE. Yet, reading Richardson’s book Democracy Awakening shows the democracy we have today is constantly changing, and how those changes comes from actions in the past.

It is well documented that Republicans feel the United States took a wrong turn in the 1930s when FDR’s administration created the New Deal. They’ve been trying to undo it ever since. And their methods and philosophy of why and how have evolved over the decades. Part of that evolution is moving away from democracy, which is what Richardson’s book is about.

Richardson believes we didn’t fall into fascism in the 1930s because the United States has a long history of various groups fighting for suffrage. That the history of United States is one of a ruling class struggling to keep power from various groups of people wanting to vote. This includes poor whites, African Americans, women, and immigrants. The current Republicans know they cannot win with universal suffrage and fair elections and so they have to do an end run around democracy.

Republicans formed coalitions with special interest groups that the leaders of the party have no interest in supporting. What has changed is the special interest groups have taken over the power from the old Republican elites. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats have a clear majority with voters, and depend on Independents who swing their votes.

The main problem revealed in the first part of Democracy Awakening is the country is dividing itself into two camps. Those who want an authoritarian government based on their version of the Founding Fathers and their version of Christianity, and those people who want universal suffrage and a true democracy.

The authoritarians cannot get what they want by existing voting laws and population demographics. That’s why they are undermining the election process. Since majority rule is 50%, these two groups are polarized. Neither Republicans or Democrats have a majority. They depend on swing votes from Independents.

What I’m hoping to see in the next two parts is whether or not Richardson thinks democracy can survive. I was recently terrified by a New York Times essay, “Trump Has a Master Plan for Destroying the ‘Deep State’” by Donald P. Moynihan. In it Moynihan says Trump has three goals which I’ll take out of context and quote here:

The first is to put Trump loyalists into appointment positions. Mr. Trump believed that “the resistance” to his presidency included his own appointees. Unlike in 2016, he now has a deep bench of loyalists. The Heritage Foundation and dozens of other Trump-aligned organizations are screening candidates to create 20,000 potential MAGA appointees. They will be placed in every agency across government, including the agencies responsible for protecting the environment, regulating workplace safety, collecting taxes, determining immigration policy, maintaining safety net programs, representing American interests overseas and ensuring the impartial rule of law.

...

The second part of the Trump plan is to terrify career civil servants into submission. To do so, he would reimpose an executive order that he signed but never implemented at the end of his first administration. The Schedule F order would allow him to convert many of these officials into political appointees.



Schedule F would be the most profound change to the civil service system since its creation in 1883. Presidents can currently fill about 4,000 political appointment positions at the federal level. This already makes the United States an outlier among similar democracies, in terms of the degree of politicization of the government. The authors of Schedule F have suggested it would be used to turn another 50,000 officials — with deep experience of how to run every major federal program we rely on — into appointees. Other Republican presidential candidates have also pledged to use Schedule F aggressively. Ron DeSantis, for example, promised that as president he would “start slitting throats on Day 1.”

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The third part of Mr. Trump’s authoritarian blueprint is to create a legal framework that would allow him to use government resources to protect himself, attack his political enemies and force through his policy goals without congressional approval. Internal government lawyers can block illegal or unconstitutional actions. Reporters for The New York Times have uncovered a plan to place Trump loyalists in those key positions.



This is not about conservatism. Mr. Trump grew disillusioned with conservative Federalist Society lawyers, despite drawing on them to stock his judicial nominations. It is about finding lawyers willing to create a legal rationale for his authoritarian impulses. Examples from Mr. Trump’s time in office include Mark Paoletta, the former general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, who approved Mr. Trump’s illegal withholding of aid to Ukraine. Or Jeffrey Clark, who almost became Mr. Trump’s acting attorney general when his superiors refused to advance Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

This is why I believe everyone should be reading Democracy Awakening. I believe Richardson’s book is defining what the 2024 election will truly mean at the deepest level.

JWH