“We won with Abigail Spanberger, we won with Zohran Mamdani. They are part of a vision of the future”, celebrated the former president on the Pod Save America podcast, shortly after the 4/11 elections.
With Abigail’s victory, the government of Virginia will pass into the hands of an ultra-moderate former congresswoman, who was a CIA agent and defends a tough line against crime; Already, the majority of New Yorkers supported a young, openly socialist Muslim immigrant. Engaged in opposition to Trumpism, the only black person to occupy the White House gave another of his speeches, in which reason is a partner of empathy.
He argued that, despite their differences, the two Democrats share the pluralism that, in their view, represents the best of America.
In addition to pluralist convictions, what makes Spanberger and Mamdani coexist in the same party is the majority electoral system that imposes bipartisanship. If this were not the case, each of them would most likely be in a group that better represented their political preferences. And the task of bringing together the forces opposing Donald Trump would be much more difficult.
No one in their right mind is capable of predicting how the terrible experience of the Presidency in the hands of a declared aspiring dictator will end. There are those who believe that they are already in transition towards an autocratic system based on elections, for which political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, from Harvard University, reserve the concept of competitive authoritarianism. There are still those who believe that it is premature to declare the end of democracy in America: the final test will be Trump’s reaction to a possible defeat at the polls.
In any case, politicians like Obama know that, to beat Trumpism in the vote, it will be necessary to opt for neither moderation nor a shift to the left, to be the place, that is, where Spanbergers coexist with Mamdanis. In other words, it is possible to bring together different electorates with candidates of different political profiles.
The same thesis is defended by personalities close to the Democrats, such as journalist Ezra Klein, who runs an influential podcast at the New York Times. The idea is far from obvious when one is used to thinking of party life as a perpetual struggle between factions for control of resources and the predominance of their political views.
Obama and Klein know that the root Trumpists, followers of MAGA (Make America Great Again), are just a fraction of the majority that housed the far-right leader in the White House. They also know that the dispute is for the votes of those who chose Trump, but did not give him a mandate to dismantle democracy.
Under a radically different institutional framework, of exacerbated multipartyism, the challenge proposed to the Democrats by Obama and Klein is reminiscent of the one faced by Brazilian Democrats in the 2022 elections. To defeat Bolsonaro it was necessary to gather votes far beyond those available among voters loyal to the PT and on the left.
The same will be important to defeat once and for all the candidates who court the coup leader’s legacy.
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