Have We Entered A New Era Of One-Term Presidents?
Lessons from 2020, 2024, and The Gilded Age.
Imagine a period of Republican rule, even a brief one, defined by developments like the following:
Business elites and industrialists align with GOP pseudo-populists to support a system of tariffs absent any progressive taxation, dramatically increasing their own wealth and power at the expense of normal people who must overpay for staple goods to subsidize the fortunes of the ultra-wealthy.
This inherently corrupt alliance transforms into a plot against democracy, including efforts to flood society with anti-worker and anti-democratic propaganda, overturn elections, stack the Supreme Court with loyalists, tilt the playing field of elections to lock in minority rule, and even corrupt the decennial Census.
Democrats struggle politically despite this intolerable state of affairs, due in part to GOP power grabs, and to the influence of third party candidates. But they also stick with an old, unpopular incumbent who loses the presidency after one term.
Elections under these circumstances are all hotly contested, and narrowly decided, allowing Republicans to win the presidency most of the time without ever building majoritarian appeal.
This is something like the world Donald Trump’s Republican Party seeks to build today. But it’s also (in extremely, embarrassingly imprecise and abbreviated terms) the history of the Gilded Age, and the commandeering of the state by tycoons and robber barons.
With apologies to
for stumbling drunk on to her turf, I have felt more than once in the past couple days that today’s Democrats—more moral, ethical, and ideologically coherent than their late-1800s forbearers—have, consciously or not, taken an extraordinary step to stop this history from repeating itself.