Police state democracy 31/28/2024 ![]() MARTIN: But how does this actually work? I mean, is it - you know, we're familiar with certain groups like the Federalist Society, which plays an outsized role in recruiting and kind of, you know, keeping an eye on - creating kind of a list of preferred candidates for federal judgeships - right? - people who have - obviously adhere to their conservative political ideology. So this is how you get the threat of potential, for example, election subversion in the 2024 presidential election, where state legislatures may try to give electoral college votes to a presidential candidate who does not win their state for a national political project. But now you have national ambitions coming from all levels of government because the parties are national teams. So it's a very decentralized party system that went together with the decentralized federal institutional system. So a Northern Democrat in New York or Illinois was - tended to be pro-civil rights and pro-labor, and the Southern Democrats were the segregationists. But what was different about those times, especially in Jim Crow, is that the parties were very decentralized. So historically, you know, there have been huge threats to democracy from the state level through slavery and then later Jim Crow laws, which were state-level laws. You know, the politics starts at the local level, moves to the state and then rises up. MARTIN: And this is a big change because I think many people are used to thinking of it as going the other way. But what's unique about this time period is now the political parties are highly national, so they're using these state-level governments to engage in a national battle over the direction of the country and, to some extent, threatening American democracy in the process. It's typically state legislatures that threaten democracy, often enabled by the Supreme Court, and it's Congress, at the national level, that decides whether to step in and establish new rules to protect democracy or not. So that's where democracy has been battled over historically in the U.S. is pretty unique in having a constitution that puts essentially all authority over elections, legislative districting, police powers and other important democratic institutions at the lower level of government, the state level. As briefly as you can, for people who maybe have forgotten their, you know, high school government class, why do state governments matter, especially in politically polarized times? But first, let's talk about your research, which looks at democracy and the relationship between states and the federal government. MARTIN: I just want to start by acknowledging that some of the prominent national Republicans had a furious reaction to President Biden's speech, calling it demeaning. JACOB GRUMBACH: Thanks so much for having me. We called him because he writes about this in his book, "Laboratories Against Democracy: How National Parties Transform State Politics." And he's with us now from Seattle. Jacob Grumbach is a political science professor at the University of Washington. But one professor says it's also because state governments are like laboratories where national parties are influencing distinct agendas in red and blue states, fueling partisan divisions. ![]() ![]() That's because a core function of a democracy, voting, is managed at the state level. MARTIN: Right now, we want to focus on one aspect of his speech in particular, that this threat to the country is taking shape at the state level. And they're working right now, as I speak, in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. They do not recognize the will of the people. MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: And here, in my view, is what is true. During a rare primetime address, the president offered a stark warning about what he called the major threat to this nation's democratic norms and values. We're going to start tonight thinking more about President Biden's speech on democracy earlier this week.
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