Democratic Fascism

Biden and Harris's product was more extreme than their branding. For Trump, it's the inverse.

Originally published December 6, 2024.

As Donald Trump assembles his cabinet and sets the federal agenda, Democrats continue to debate how they lost to a convicted, twice-impeached, would-be fascist considered the worst electoral loser since Herbert Hoover. Trump’s first term defied initial fears of unchecked authoritarianism. Instead, it demonstrated a new phenomenon: a form of constrained right-wing populism, limited by democratic institutions but marked by authoritarian tendencies. A “democratic fascism” of sorts that blended inflammatory rhetoric and a madman theory approach to everything with executive overreach and policy outcomes that in many respects were indistinguishable from his predecessors. What Americans got was a product that did not reflect its branding — a dissonance commonplace in politics. Still, how Trump managed to get re-elected has about everything to do with the Democrats.

The debate among Democrats about why they lost is between progressives, who attribute defeat to a lack of policy progressivism, and center-left technocrats, who blame inadequate messaging or a lackluster candidate. The latter argue that Democrats needed to emulate Bill Clinton or Barack Obama: run as moderates and govern as progressives.

Bernie Sanders sought to run as a progressive. During each of his presidential bids, he emphasized that his version of socialism was “democratic”—to pivot the U.S. toward a European model of security over prosperity. The emphasis on “democratic” sought to soften the stigma attached to socialism. Although Sanders lost, his approach to governing wouldn’t have likely looked much different than the path Biden took with the American Rescue Plan and accompanying thin congressional majorities. In the end, it was the brand-product inverse of the Trump phenomenon that doomed Biden. The moderate brand Biden sold and the democratic socialist scale of his policymaking — to instead govern to the left of how one ran — proved especially financially costly to Americans and aggravating to those delivering Biden more votes than any candidate in history.

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Biden, initially seen as a moderate dealmaker and Republican whisperer, buckled under pressure to cement his legacy as a progressive. He pushed $7 trillion in new spending, with about one-sixth receiving Republican support. While the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan and regressive $430 billion in student loan forgiveness didn’t fully advance, the 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP) reflects the flaws of running as a moderate but governing as a progressive. Doing so sank the near-term political fortunes of the Democrats. First, in the 1994 midterms after Democrats pursued universal healthcare and wound up losing a 40-year hold on the Democratically-gerrymandered House of Representatives for eight years. The second, in 2010, after Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act, precipitating an emaciation of not just federal but state-level Democratic power that shaped the partisan landscape today.

If anyone is looking for a concrete example of why someone might think Kamala Harris was viewed as “too liberal”, one can look to the ARP— the most left-wing and partisan piece of legislation passed with her tie-breaking vote and Biden’s leadership.

In spring 2021, despite economic demand for a large-scale bill having passed as local economies reopened and states led on vaccine uptake, Democrats rejected a $600 billion GOP counteroffer and plowed ahead with a $1.9 trillion reconciliation bill. Inflation risks were dismissed because of resentment over Republican fiscal hypocrisy under Biden’s two direct predecessors and a belief that the Democrats’ response to the 2008 financial crisis had been too weak. The ARP wound up significantly exacerbating inflation at a time of disruption to the global supply chain. On paper, though the U.S. had a quicker recovery than most developed countries and also suffered from distinctly higher and longer-lasting price spikes. The checks and tax credits for Americans could be interpreted as a meager loan to subsidize two years of rising prices. As a result, the Democrats’ mythology as the party that cleans up after Republican incompetence was tarnished.

Trump’s first term reflects an inverse — a faschy brand paired with many conventional neoconservative and even liberal policies. Some of Trump’s policies mirrored those of center-left technocrats, like cutting the corporate tax and subsidizing big business to boost domestic industry. For his second term, tighter antitrust enforcement, support for labor unions, and penalties for offshoring jobs may become more of a priority but not out of line with the aims of his predecessors. Trump’s trade war didn’t involve the 200% tariffs he threatened, and retaliatory tariffs from China and the EU were absorbed thanks to a growing economy and a strong dollar. Instead of shredding NAFTA, Trump effectively rebranded the agreement as the USMCA.

Trump hasn’t sought to lean into American imperialism, nor has he withdrawn America from global partnerships — except for the Paris Climate Accords, a moot point as U.S. greenhouse emissions continued their decade-long decline during and after he was president. Trump’s bellicose rhetoric contrasted a reduction in military engagement in Afghanistan and warmer relations with the leaders of China and North Korea. Although he ordered targeted strikes against Iran and Syria, these were interventions not outside the realm of the neoconservative establishment. Trump’s praise of dictators like Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin could be seen as both genuine admiration and a tactical move to lure them into negotiation (and perhaps capitulation) the way a reporter might for access to a source.

On immigration, Trump’s initial “Muslim ban” was reined in by the Supreme Court. His inflammatory rhetoric conflating undocumented immigrants with criminals culminated in an appalling family separation policy he abandoned. Yet despite having made combatting illegal immigration the cornerstone of his campaign, Trump wound up deporting far fewer migrants than Barack Obama. More recently, Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, told the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board in November that mass deportation will be limited to “targeted arrests.” Trump himself tellingly told the board, "I don’t want to go too much into clarification, because the nicer I become, the more people that come over illegally.”

Critics argue that his second term will be much worse. They say, this time there won’t be institutionalists around to contain his worst impulses. They could be right, especially given newly upheld presidential immunity.

But on the issues of politicizing the Justice Department and election denialism—two major grievances for any democracy defender—there may be no strong incentive for Trump to retaliate. He’s said he will not prosecute his political rivals. The former was sparked by a two-year, borderline conspiratorial investigation into his campaign’s alleged ties to the Kremlin. That Trump interfered with the investigations, he didn’t pursue the imprisonment of his political rivals. On the future implications of Trump’s election denialism, that did coincide with an egregious plot with his lawyer to stay in office despite losing the 2020 election, but it’s hard to see Trump expending energy to undermine faith in democratic contests that don’t involve him anymore.

What we’re more likely to witness is a cabinet full of clashing heterodox figures, fairweather liberal federalism, the federal judiciary, slim congressional margins, Democratic filibusters, fresh anti-bureaucracy constitutional precedent, plus leaks and insubordination from the civil service all serving to check Trump.

By 2029, the worst example Trump may set is further aggrandizing the presidency and involving the federal government in more of the economy, all in the name of a glorious “national interest.” To that end, there is little daylight between the party the GOP could become after Trump and an increasingly micro-managerial Democratic Party — one that has become more hostile to checks on federal power and whose commitments to American-style democracy are ever more contingent on the outcomes it does or doesn’t produce.

In the decade to come, what Americans might get isn’t democratic fascism or democratic socialism but an insidious bipartisan federal nationalism at the expense of the places the democratic experiment plays out every day.