From here it looks like the USA is beyond the "cusp of autocracy", so I'm not sure if the 2026 elections will be fair. Your forecast seems to assume they will?
I'm not sure how to make a forecast about autocracy though.
Good question, Andreas. The Polity Project described the US as on the cusp of autocracy a few months ago and might well downgrade it now. But I think the midterm elections will still be mostly free and fair because they're administered by the states and not the federal government (I am very concerned the federal government won't honor the results of the presidential election in 2028). I think the US is probably now what political scientists call a "competitive authoritarian" society, in which opposition parties can still win elections even though the regime in power stacks the odds against them.
I agree that we need a broad movement if we hope to change course. I've seen articles saying that corporate leaders will put up with the nonsense until the stock market falls 20%. And I've been in discussions where people have said that probably we won't get *a lot* of people on the street until people's incomes start to fall. That's a bit grim, but it looks like we might be embarking on that route with these tariffs.
Wherever the US ends up, I don't think it will be able to put itself back together the same way again. So we definitely need to aim for a vision of something better.
From here it looks like the USA is beyond the "cusp of autocracy", so I'm not sure if the 2026 elections will be fair. Your forecast seems to assume they will?
I'm not sure how to make a forecast about autocracy though.
Good question, Andreas. The Polity Project described the US as on the cusp of autocracy a few months ago and might well downgrade it now. But I think the midterm elections will still be mostly free and fair because they're administered by the states and not the federal government (I am very concerned the federal government won't honor the results of the presidential election in 2028). I think the US is probably now what political scientists call a "competitive authoritarian" society, in which opposition parties can still win elections even though the regime in power stacks the odds against them.
I agree that we need a broad movement if we hope to change course. I've seen articles saying that corporate leaders will put up with the nonsense until the stock market falls 20%. And I've been in discussions where people have said that probably we won't get *a lot* of people on the street until people's incomes start to fall. That's a bit grim, but it looks like we might be embarking on that route with these tariffs.
Wherever the US ends up, I don't think it will be able to put itself back together the same way again. So we definitely need to aim for a vision of something better.
Good luck with that Democratic Party! The rate things are moving I doubt there'll be much democracy left to do anything about