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Kai Wright: America has a democracy problem.

Speaker 1: Members of Congress are single-minded seekers of re-election. Once you understand that, you understand the rest of politics.

Speaker 2: Many of the actions taken today will invalidate the results of the will of the people and shows direct contempt for the voters.

Speaker 3: It doesn't take very many elections to catch on that you aren't getting anything back for your vote.

Kai Wright: Do you feel like you're represented?

Speaker 4: I'm a proud Texan, but I'm a double minority because I'm Black and I'm gay, so I don't feel like-- No. I would say no.

Kai Wright: Feeling apathy about our broken, dysfunctional government is a rationale response. You're not wrong for feeling this way, but you must resist this impulse because if we let our logical sense of apathy lead to inaction, then nothing will ever change.

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Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome to the show. Democracy, it's easier said than done and the challenge is on a lot of minds again this election. Here's just one data point for you to hold as we talk. It's a stat that my guest this week often cites. Take this in. By 2040, 70% of the residents of this country, the vast, vast majority, will live in just 15 states with 30 senators. Now, think about what that means in terms of power.

It means that the remaining 30% of the country, the vast, vast minority, will control 70% of the US Senate, the most powerful and consequential legislative body in the country. It means that roughly 15 years from now, less than a third of the population will have unrivaled power to set the law of this land and likely permanently so. That is just one stark example of what journalist Ari Berman has been writing about for many years. He's been chronicling the threats to American democracy since long before Donald Trump or January 6th.

His new book is called Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It. It's his latest take on the dire state of our democracy, at both the federal and local levels. He joins me this week to talk about the long history of this fight. Ari Berman, my friend, welcome to our show.

Ari Berman: Hey, Kai. Great to talk to you again. Thanks so much.

Kai Wright: Welcome back to our show, I should say. Listen, so the subtitle of your book with the reference to the right-wing attack, I feel like it's a misnomer because, yes, you're very much naming the modern assault on democracy as coming from the political right, but you tell this long history that it feels like it's more about a battle among elites against democracy. We're going to cover as much of that history as we can.

Give us the topline here in your telling the foundational challenge in American history has been this tug of war between the advocates of plural and multiracial democracy in a sort of elite-restricted democracy. Yes, this is the top line, right?

Ari Berman: Exactly. The story that I tell in my book is this long history of the battle between the forces that want to expand American democracy over time and the forces that want to constrict American democracy over time. I started with a contemporary problem, which is the problem of Donald Trump and his supporters holding a majority of power despite having a minority of support. That was the contemporary problem that I was looking at, but then I wanted to peel it back to show how did we get here?

How was it even possible that an elite and privileged white minority can hold a majority of power without having a majority of support? That's where you have to go back all the way to the beginning of the country and understand that there has been this fight between democracy and oligarchy throughout American history. In fact, America is not one or the other, America is both. America has this incredible democratic tradition. It also has this incredible anti-democratic tradition. Often, they're happening at the same time.

Kai Wright: There's a difference between good majority rule and bad majority rule. I imagine that's the first thing a lot of people are thinking about, or at least as we want it in a plural democracy, and that is a long tension also in our history. What is the difference between these two? How would you describe the difference between the good majority and the bad majority rule?

Ari Berman: What I would say is the protection of minority rights is critically important in a democracy. I think when we think about the protection of minority rights, we're thinking of the protection of rights for historically disenfranchised communities. I'm talking about a different kind of minority rule. I'm talking about an elite white minority basically holding power by disenfranchising and diluting the power of those groups that we think of as historically disenfranchised communities.

I think that it's really important to have minority rights be protected in a democracy, but I think it's dangerous when you have a powerful minority faction that can hold majority support despite not having a majority support for their actual agenda. Meaning, they hold a majority of power despite not having majority support.

Kai Wright: Listeners, there's a ton of history to cover and we want to prioritize what you want to know about. If you have a question about the structure of our democracy from 1787 to 2024, why it works this way, why it doesn't quite work, chime in. Call or text us, 844-745-8255. That's 844-745. Talk with whatever questions you have about the history of our democracy struggle with majority versus minority rule for Ari Berman. Ari, we could start the history in a lot of places, but let's do start with the modern era.

You put the marker for this era in 1992. Pat Buchanan gives a keynote address at the Republican National Convention that year. It's the year they renominate George H. W. Bush for president. For those who don't recall, who is Pat Buchanan briefly? More importantly, what did he say that was so notable in that speech?

Ari Berman: Pat Buchanan was a conservative commentator. He was like Fox News before Fox News. He was on things like CNN Crossfire giving the conservative perspective. He ran for president twice as a Republican in 1992 and 1996. He had credibility because he had worked for the Nixon and Reagan administration, so he went back a long way in Republican circles. Buchanan gives this very famous speech at the RNC convention in 1992 where he talks about a cultural war for the soul of America.

What Buchanan was talking about before any other major presidential candidate was that there was one day going to be a white minority in the country. The Census Bureau predicted this would happen by 2050. The first time they predicted that this would one day become a thing, that we'd have this majority-minority future was in the early 1990s. Buchanan begins to seize on this. He says, "We're going to become eventually a majority-minority country and that is going to mean the death of white Christian America as we know it.

It's also going to be an existential problem for the Republican Party because the Republican Party is so reliant on white voters who are shrinking as a percentage of the population." He basically calls on Republicans to do something about this coming majority-minority future before it's too late. I argue that that's the seeds of the modern attempt by the Republican Party to try to institute minority rule, to try to protect what Buchanan calls the emerging white minority.

Kai Wright: Let's hear a little bit of this. This is Pat Buchanan at the 1992 GOP Convention.

Pat Buchanan: Friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself, but this war is for the soul of America.

Kai Wright: You hear that, one, it sounds oddly familiar now. Also, the idea of a culture war, the idea of Evangelical Christians, it didn't start in 1992 with Republican Party. What is it that he says that's new in this speech? Why is what he said there so distinct and important?

Ari Berman: Exactly. He, in many ways, is talking about the kind of culture war issues that have motivated Republicans for a while. You have the whole Christian Coalition, Jerry Falwell, all that stuff in the 1980s. In that sense, it's not new. What I think is new about Buchanan is not just the culture war thing, but he's talking about culture war on behalf of white America. What Buchanan is doing that's new that other Republicans aren't doing yet is he's mixing antipathy towards the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

He's denouncing things like the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. He's also mixing that with antipathy towards non-white immigration, and that is what's new because Republicans previously had been pretty pro-immigration. There was this amazing moment in a debate between Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in 1980 where they're both arguing that the Republican Party should be welcoming of immigration, that things like building a wall is immoral, basically. Buchanan says the opposite. He calls for building a Buchanan fence along the US-Mexico border. He calls for denying citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants. He calls for a moratorium on all immigration. That is something that was new for Republicans at the time, and he wants this to be a culture war issue. He's saying we have to go beyond opposition to abortion, we have to go beyond opposition to gay rights.

Those kind of things that a lot of Republicans are talking about, we need to make a culture war, the defense of White Christian America more broadly. That becomes a rallying cry for Republicans. Buchanan never wins the nomination, but clearly, he's given a major platform too about his views.

Kai Wright: Arguably, he wins the debate. Arguably, he wins the argument. If those ideas are now on all sides of the political conversation, what the core political debate now is the one that Patrick Buchanan wanted to have?

Ari Berman: Well, it wasn't George H.W. Bush that gave rise to Donald Trump, the guy Buchanan nominated. It was Pat Buchanan, right? He lays the groundwork for Donald Trump. Donald Trump quite literally takes Buchanan's platform from the 1990s and markets it to a much bigger audience. Buchanan famously said he wanted to take the policy platform of David Duke, who was a Klansman turned Louisiana State representative, turned presidential candidate. He wanted to take the platform of David Duke, which is basically a platform of white supremacy, and market to a larger audience.

That's what Trump did with Buchanan. He took this America First platform, which is anti-immigrant, anti-civil rights. Also, populist in nature, anti things like free trade, word against globalism, talking about these issues in a way that he thinks will rally the white working class. Trump takes this America First platform and he markets it to a much bigger audience and he realized the Republican base, they don't really like the civil rights movement, they don't really like immigration, they don't really like this whole globalist agenda that's being pushed by Republican elites.

A lot of that starts the contemporary era with Buchanan and I think it starts to push the Republican Party in a more of a backlash direction. They're not just having a backlash against the civil rights movement, which is very familiar, but they're having a backlash against the whole changing future of America, the whole changing demographics of America. That starts to push the Republican Party in a much different direction.

Kai Wright: I'm Kai Wright and I'm talking with journalist Ari Berman about his new book Minority Rule. It tracks the battle between democratic and anti-democratic, small D, forces in American politics all the way back to the crafting of our Constitution. We can take your questions about that history or about how it shows up today. Call or text us at 844-745-8255. Coming up, we go back to the beginning, 1787, and the choices that still shape power in America today. That's just ahead.

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Kai Wright: It's Notes From America, I'm Kai Wright. I am joined by journalist Ari Berman, who has been reporting on voting rights specifically, and democracy generally for many years. His latest book is titled Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It. We can take your questions about the history of our democracy and its struggle over how much power should, in fact, go to the people. Ari, let us go back to the founding and walk through some of the big choices that in your telling make our Constitution.

I heard you describe this, "The first counter-revolution against democracy." That's what the Constitution is. James Madison is a well-meaning good guy in this history. He believes in the majority rule, but it scares him. Tell us about James Madison's role in this history. He's of course the intellectual architect of the US Constitution, but what's he bring to that role?

Ari Berman: Exactly. The founders are wrestling with this problem because in 1776 they say that democracy should be based on the consent of the govern and the Declaration of Independence and they create these early democratic institutions that are actually quite democratic for the time. Then they start to worry that the people are doing rash and impulsive things. An economic crisis hits, it feels like the poor are being favored over the rich and the federal government doesn't have much power.

The Founding Fathers convened in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a new constitution to basically try to figure out how do we balance majority rule with the protection of minority rights. When they think about minority rights, they were thinking about a very specific minority, themselves.

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Ari Berman: They're basically worried.

Kai Wright: Me? How do I worry about me?

Ari Berman: They're basically worried about this elite white minority, which is rich, prosperous white men who own a lot of land, many of whom own slaves, and they want their in-person--

Kai Wright: Just to pause on that for a second, because I don't think people think of really depending on your political standpoint today, but whatever, when you think back to history of America, you don't think about these elite slave owners as the minority, but they were, in fact, a vast minority of United populations.

Ari Berman: Yes, exactly. Not just the slave owners, but the likes of Madison themselves. Most Americans didn't have that kind of money and you're just also only talking about White Americans, and you're talking about white men. You're talking about white men who own a lot of land and some of whom own slaves. That's a very distinct minority because it doesn't include poor white men who don't own property, it doesn't include women, African Americans, Native Americans, lots of other people.

Basically, they want to protect their own interests. They want to protect their own interests by essentially limiting the public's role in the process of selecting the government. The way they set up the government is the president is not directly elected by the people, senators are not directly elected by the people, the Supreme Court is a product of presidents and senators who are not elected by the people and only the House of Representatives is elected by the people. Then there's these compromises. They're more like concessions that are worked out as part of this process. Basically, the slave states say if there's a free election in the House, we'll have less power. That's how they come up with a three-fifths clause, basically saying--

Kai Wright: Well, just slow that down. Let's start with the Senate. Of all those things you just described, let's start with the Senate because I gave that stat at the beginning of the show about how few states, how little of the population will be represented by the majority of the Senate by 2040. How did we get there? The beginning of the idea of the Senate was not that every state will have equal representation.

Ari Berman: No, it wasn't. James Madison, who was the architect of the Senate, wanted the Senate to be an elite body. He didn't want senators to be elected by people, but he wanted that elite body to operate on the basis of majority rule. He wanted the Senate to be based on proportional representation. The larger state would have more senators than the smaller states because he thought that would maintain the legitimacy of the Senate, that even if senators weren't elected by the people, they would still represent the greatest number of people.

The problem was the small states quickly rebelled and they basically said, "If you don't give us the same number of senators, we might leave the Union, we might join France." Which is about the worst thing you could say in 1787. Essentially, it was an act of hostage-taking. Delaware, Rhode Island, these kind of places said, "If you don't give us the same number of senators, we'll leave the Union." That meant that Madison and the like [crosstalk]-

Kai Wright: Secession.

Ari Berman: -had no choice.

Kai Wright: The northern states were talking about I'm going to secede.

Ari Berman: Yes, exactly. They said we're going to secede. The small states basically get this incredible concession of equal representation in the Senate. Madison is very unhappy about it at the time. He said it's going to allow a more trifling minority than ever to control the body. He knows there's a future where western states are going to join the Union, they're not going to have a lot of people, but they're going to have the same number of senators.

He's basically saying this is putting America on a path to minority rule. I want specific protections for this elite white minority in the Constitution, but I don't want a situation where the minority just outright controls the majority through these levels of government. You see the same kind of thing happen. What I was saying earlier is the same kind of thing happens with the House. Then when the debate over the House, the slave states say, "If we don't have special power then we won't have the same level of influence." They basically came up then with a three-fifths clause, which says that enslaved people will be counted as three-fifths of a person only for purposes of representation." They're not going to get three-fifths of rights of free people. They're just going to be counted as three-fifths of a person so that gives the slave states more power.

When the federal government is founded and created after the Constitution, not only is the public's role limited, but these very powerful minority factions, the small states in the Senate, the slave states in the House, they have a lot more power, and because the president is also not directly elected by the people, the president is elected through this complicated electoral college arrangement, that means the president also is indebted to the small states and the slave states in a way that also puts the nation's highest office on the path to minority rule as well.

Kai Wright: Backing up a step there, you mentioned in the course of this, one of the things that James Madison and others were originally afraid of, are worried about. When they conceived of majority rule was, there was an economic crisis, and that poor white farmers actually were an important part of this story. There was something happening at the state level with poor white farmers that actually spooked them, they created these concerns in the first place. Can you explain that history? What was going on?

Ari Berman: Yes. There was a really bad economic crisis in the 1780s. It was the worst economic crisis, the Great Depression of the 1930s'. Essentially, it fell most heavily on farmers, and farmers couldn't pay their debts, and they started being thrown in jail and this led to a lot of unhappiness. What they wanted to do was they wanted to pay off their debts essentially using paper money instead of coins that weren't popular at the time.

This then led to a flood of paper money. It led to high inflation. The state legislatures at the time were passing these laws, so the founders felt like the state legislatures were too enthralled to the common man. In some states, there were actually uprisings. In Massachusetts, there was something called Shays' Rebellion, which what happened was farmers marched on the Federal Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts tried to get weapons, and tried to shut down essentially courts that were jailing people.

This led to a lot of angst. It felt to some of the framers like there might be an armed uprising against them, against the federal government and against the state governments, and they started saying things like, maybe we should have never had a democracy after all. Maybe it would've been better off as a monarchy. You see these conversations between Daniel Webster and James Madison and George Washington where they're rethinking this whole idea of democracy, and they don't go that far.

They don't say we want to become a monarchy again, but they basically realize, we have to be a democracy that puts lots of checks on the power of the people to organize, or else we'll create the situation where there might be populist uprising in the states, where there might be populist policies that they think favor the poor over the rich and the country might be on the brink of chaos and we want to basically be able to create a stable government that serves the interests of elite, wealthy white men.

The way we're going to do that is create a constitution that gives us a lot of power and provides a lot of checks against these populist uprisings and against the people themselves.

Kai Wright: At the same time, it wasn't like-- and this is one of the things that stood out to me as I've heard you talk about this book, it's not like everybody thought it was a great idea even amongst the framers. So many of them actually felt like the compromises that they had made, and you challenged that word compromise, but the compromises they had made such as every state regardless of their size getting the same number of senators was a fundamental flaw. They thought that at the time. Right?

Ari Berman: That's what was fascinating going back and looking at these constitutional debates. I mean, I read the entire thing, the entire history of the Constitution, and there's a lot of debate about this and there's a lot of framers that are unhappy with what happened. There's people that are unhappy with the three-fifths clause, people that are unhappy with equal representation in the Senate. There's people that are unhappy that the president isn't directly elected by the people, and they say this at the time.

That's what's so interesting about this whole idea of originalism that we hear so much on the right. Go back and interpret the Constitution as it was intended. Well, how was it intended? If you talk to James Madison, he would've been very unhappy with how the Senate turned out. If you talked to Benjamin Franklin, he would've been very unhappy with how the House turned out. If you talked to James Wilson from Pennsylvania, he would've been very unhappy with how the Electoral College ended up turning out.

In a lot of ways, the framers themselves were unhappy with the Constitution. It became as you said, this product of compromise, but compromise is a good thing. I tell my kids compromise, share the toy, [laughs] but this wasn't more like compromise this was a concessions that were really the product in many ways of hostage-taking that they had to ratify the Constitution, so they had to give in all these different functions.

Kai Wright: Because the small states said, we just won't go along with it. Delaware as I understand, went as far as saying that they were going to ally with France or maybe it was just any hostile ally.

Ari Berman: It was any hostile ally, but there weren't that many. It was England, France, one of those places, but Delaware is saying, "We might join France, we might join England if you don't give us the same number of power." The slave states are basically saying, when it comes to the House and when it comes to the President, we won't sign the Constitution either. They don't want to spend this unbearably, muggy summer in Philadelphia with nothing to show for it. Some of the framers have to note their objections and then move on.

The problem is, I don't think they realize that we'd still be dealing with these problems-

Kai Wright: 230 years later.

Ari Berman: -230 years later because in some ways, our institutions have democratized, but in other ways, they haven't at all. We haven't changed the structure of the Senate. We still have the Electoral College. In a lot of ways, these problems that I think they thought would eventually be democratized or changed over time, these institutions have remained stubbornly hostile to democracy, and I think in ways that are surprising to many people today.

Kai Wright: Related to that, let's go to David in Anaheim. David, welcome to the show.

David: Hey, thanks for having me. Congratulations on the book.

Ari Berman: Thanks so much, David.

David: Yes, absolutely. This is a great time of year obviously with the fourth coming up to bring this up. I'm originally from Pennsylvania and the Founding Fathers, how far off are we from the original Constitution, and where is this country headed given what's going on in the world right now?

Kai Wright: Thank you for that, David. Let's take the first half of that because we're going to talk here in a little bit a lot about 2024 and the voting now, but how far off do you think we are from what those founders thought they were doing in that constitutional convention?

Ari Berman: Well, it's a complicated question because you could say how much have the institutions changed. I mean, senators are now elected by the people. The Electoral College electors generally follow the popular votes of their states, but in some ways, the institutions haven't changed at all and that, Senate still favors small states. The Electoral College still shuts out the power of the people from directly choosing the president. I think the founders would've been horrified though by things like the insurrection. I think that's exactly what they were trying to step up.

Kai Wright: Ironically, this is precisely the thing that is their worst ever.

Ari Berman: I think it's funny because you hear them say over and over, they don't want these populist uprisings. They don't want the government to be toppled or overthrown, they want stability. It's ironic because it's those very institutions they created that got us to a place where the free government itself is being threatened. Where you could have a candidate like Donald Trump who could exploit the Electoral College, who could exploit the US Senate, who could exploit the structure of the Supreme Court to try to expand and keep hold of power despite not having popular support.

Those were things that were put in by the framers, and so, in a lot of ways, we are living with that constitution in terms of its undemocratic aspects, but in a lot of ways, I think the vision of the country they wanted was for a stable democracy is also under grave threat, because we have anything but a stable democracy today.

Kai Wright: You've mentioned the slave states a few times. You mentioned the Three-fifths Compromise just so that doesn't blow by people. Again, this was the idea that southern states would receive representation akin to three-fifths of their-- they would count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for apportionment of representation in Congress, whether or not they voted. This compromise you have pointed out-- I mean, this is one of my so boxes. This became such an important part of American history in terms of the amount of power that it gave those states for the next I don't know how many years. Talk about that. What the long-term impact of that compromise was?

Ari Berman: It gave the southern states a huge amount of power because it was basically incentive for them to keep slavery going. Knowing that they would get more representation, but they wouldn't have to give enslaved people any rights. It was probably one of the worst if not the worst parts of the original Constitution itself. The net effect of it was that 10 of the first 12 US presidents were slaveholders. 18 of the first 31 Supreme Court justices were slaveholders, and pretty much every speaker of the House for the country's first four decades were slaveholders.

Because as I mentioned, the Electoral College is based on representation in the House and the Senate, along with overall representation. What that means is that the slave states have a lot more power to choose the president. It's interesting. It's really because of slavery that the Electoral College exists in the first place, Kai, because James Madison who we were talking about earlier, he's the most influential framer. He actually says, "I would be for direct election of the president. The problem is that in my State Virginia, slaves can't vote. Therefore, we're at a disadvantage in a free election."

Then they have to come up with this complicated arrangement of how do we elect the president if the people aren't going to elect him? If Madison had come up and say, "You know what? I actually think the people should elect the president." He had so much power, he may have been able to push things in that direction. Instead, he basically says, "I want to elect the people to elect the president, but it's going to hurt the slave states, so we can't do it." Then the slave states get a lot more power through the Electoral College.

This is something that I think really plagues the federal government until the Civil War. You could argue even after, because what the three-fifths clause, what the equal representation in the Senate, what it does is it basically enshrines this idea of minority rule in the Constitution even after these things are taken out of the Constitution. This is something that people can look to as a rallying cry afterwards to say that we want special protection, if it's not the slave states we want special protection for white supremacy in our institutions.

Kai Wright: It establishes the idea, the cultural notion that we can bargain away people's humanity in order to have a balance of power. That the balance of power was the most important thing regardless of the human beings involved. I'm Kai Wright, I'm talking with longtime voting rights journalist Ari Berman, about his new book Minority Rule. It tracks the battle between democratic forces, small d, and anti-democratic forces in American politics, all the way back to the crafting of our constitution.

We can take your questions about that history and how it shows up today, 844-745-8255, and call or text with those questions. Coming up, we fast forward to the modern era, the political earthquake of 2010, and how it set the stage for the fight over democracy today. That's just that.

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Regina: Hi, I'm Regina, a producer here at Notes from America with Kai Wright. I hope you're loving this episode. As we cover a lot of issues and ideas on this podcast, and we don't want to do it without you having your questions, stories, and experiences in the conversation is so important to us. Let me tell you how to be in touch. In the show notes of this episode, there's a link that takes you to our website notesfromamerica.org, where you can record a message for us.

Plus our inbox is always open at notes@wnyc.org. You can write us or even better, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to us there, that's notes@wnyc.org. I'll be looking there for a note from you soon. Thanks for listening.

Kai Wright: Welcome back. It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright and I'm talking with journalist Ari Berman. He's been covering voting rights and democracy in general for many years. His new book is Minority Rule, and it tracks our debate over how much democracy is the right amount of democracy going back to the founding. Ari, we are getting a lot of people who want to talk about solutions, so we're going to get to that. One thing that we've got a couple of times I just want to throw out to you is, "Hey, we're not a democracy, we're a republic." Do you want to address that to help people understand the difference and why it does or doesn't matter?

Ari Berman: Well, you've heard this a lot on the right recently, and I traced when this idea really became popular and it became popular with the John Birch Society in the 1950s and the 1960s, which is militantly right-wing group, super anti-communist. Basically, there was international communist conspiracy that included Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Dwight Eisenhower, who I don't think anyone really thought was a communist, the Civil Rights Movement.

Basically what they were arguing was that in a democracy, rights are given essentially to the majority for the common good. In a republic, individual liberties are preserved in such a way that you don't have to extend democratic rights to formerly disenfranchised communities. To me, this is a false choice because we're clearly our representative democracy. We created institutions that where we elected people to represent them.

Now, I think we keep hearing we're republic, not a democracy because that's the easiest way for people to say, we don't need to protect democracy, because if we're not a democracy in the first place, why should we protect it? I think it's very obvious to me why Trump and his followers are pushing this so hard, but I think it just reflects one of many misreadings of history.

Kai Wright: Perhaps intentionally. Let's go to Danielle in Glenside, Pennsylvania. Danielle, welcome to the show.

Danielle: Hi, thanks for having me on, and thank you for your work. I'm a big fan, great work. My question pertains to a disenfranchised majority that has been long ignored, women. We are 51%, and yet we just cannot seem to get out of second-class citizenship status. I see us at a very pivotal moment with the Dobbs decision, with so many things that are basic, like human and civil rights are under attack. My question to you is, what can women do as a political class that's not a minority by numbers in this kind of very important moment?

Of course, we can vote and do many things, but women are known world round for being amazing organizers and pushing human rights and civil rights forward, but yet, we are disenfranchised in so many ways. What do you think could be the most effective things that women could do right now to help democratize our system?

Kai Wright: Thank you, Danielle.

Ari Berman: Good question, Danielle, and thanks for calling in the kind words. I think part of the problem is that women broadly don't always have the same agenda. I mean, we saw those statistics that white women voted for Trump, non-white women did not vote for Trump, and there was a big divide there. When you talk about women, it's almost like talking about men. There's lots of disagreements in terms of what the policy solution should be.

I also think you're absolutely right that a lot of the policies that have been passed most recently that are most unpopular fall most sharply on women. I think it's often this reactionary white minority that is largely male that is doing these things in terms of the Supreme Court. You look at the Dobbs decision, only one woman signed onto that decision. I think what's most important to me is to figure out a way to organize for these things at both the federal level and the state and local level.

Kai, I know we're going to talk about solutions, but I think the solutions I think have to be longer-term movements on the federal level for institutional reform. Which would benefit women, but I also think would just benefit a lot of other people. Trying to make the Senate more effective of the country, trying to potentially reform the Supreme Court, trying to abolish the Electoral College so many, many more people have a say. Then also, organizing at the state and local level.

A lot of states have taken action to protect abortion rights when the federal government has not. One of the most fascinating stats recently that I've seen is eight states have voted directly on abortion since the Dobbs decision in all eight states abortion rights have been protected. This actually tells me we're not as divided as we think we are. We always hear that thing we're so divided.

When people are actually voting directly on things, do you want to protect abortion rights? Do you want to make democracy work better? Large majorities are supporting these things. The problem is that people often aren't given the opportunity to vote directly on these things, and the majority often isn't given the opportunity to actually rule.

Kai Wright: We're asked to consider it through a partisan lens, and yes, very divided through a partisan lens as opposed to a population as a voter lens or even just a residence of the United States lens. Ron in Hillsborough, New Jersey texts a good question. He ask, "Why did democracy seem to work relatively well into the last 10 to 15 years? Do you agree with that premise? [laughs] If so, how would you answer Ron?

Ari Berman: I would not agree with that premise because I don't think democracy worked particularly well when we had a civil war. I don't think democracy-

Kai Wright: Morden democracy perhaps.

Ari Berman: -worked pretty well when we had Jim Crow. I think that basically, both parties were, in terms of recently largely committed to democratic norms until the election of Barack Obama. I think what happened with the election of Barack Obama is the Republican Party saw not just the power of the first Black president, but the power of this emerging multiracial democracy and this majority-minority future that we talked about, and that pushed the Republican party in a far more radical direction.

Instead of trying to change their policies or change their ideas, they wanted to change the voting system and rig our institutions to try to manufacture an electorate that would be older, wider, and more conservative instead. It pushed them on the path toward minority rule. First at the state level, and note, we're going to talk about this Kai, all of these states like Wisconsin passing these anti-democratic policies and then looking for a leader like Donald Trump that would preserve white power before it was too late. I think it really-- Go ahead.

Kai Wright: Well, let's do talk about the state level. You spent a lot of time on Wisconsin, both in the book and in much of your reporting over the past several years as the first laboratory for anti-democratic policymaking that has happened since 2010. First off, I brought up that 2010 election. This is, I think, one of the most consequential elections in modern times. Explain why that's such a big deal, that what happened in that election, and then situate us in Wisconsin.

Ari Berman: Well, it was a hugely important election in 2010 because Republicans took back power in all of these key swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, et cetera, et cetera. They used the states to become their laboratories of autocracy, to not just fight the election of the first Black president, but to essentially come up with this anti-democratic model that they would export to state after state, and then nationally as well. It also coincided with redistricting.

They didn't just take back power for one election, they were then able to draw redistricting maps in all of these states to cement their power for the next decade and more. Wisconsin really was the blueprint for this, because Wisconsin was a state with a long progressive history, and instead they wanted to move it in a very different direction the Republicans who took over there, most notably Scott Walker, wanted to change the state's institutions to benefit instead of the common good, to try to benefit this elite white minority by doing things like taking away labor rights, by taking away voting rights, by radically gerrymandering, by stripping power from Democrats.

All of that created a radicalization against democracy within the Republican party that predated Trump, and then also made the Republican Party much more sympathetic to a figure like Trump. Since the Republican Party had already radicalized against democracy before Trump, when Trump comes along, they're then very receptive to his message, which is basically the Make America Great Again is when he's saying, again, it's a time before multiracial democracy. That's what I always hear. It's a time before someone like Barack Obama could be elected president.

Kai Wright: On Wisconsin, just again, if people aren't following this story, take that out of partisan terms. Why isn't the version of the history you just told that, well Republicans won and they flexed their power in the state and they were popular and so the state became different ideologically than it had been in the past? Why is that this--

Ari Berman: Well, it really was a case study in the battle between majority versus minority rule, because Wisconsin was a state that embodied the idea that government should work for the people. There was this whole idea called the Wisconsin idea that Wisconsin would be a laboratory for government as the common good. That it was the first state to pass things like unemployment insurance and collective bargaining for labor unions and the first policy for social security.

When Scott Walker and Republicans came in in 2010, they radically changed that. They said, instead of government working for the common good, government is going to instead, work for this elite white minority. What we're going to do is we're going to figure out a way to take away voting rights for democratic communities. We're going to take away union rights, we're going to take away all sorts of different rights from people.

That became a blueprint that Republicans would use all across the country, that they would export state over state, and then nationally as well. It wasn't just an ideological disagreement, over something like taxes, right, Kai? It was an ideological disagreement about what should be the role of government in a democracy, should the role of the government be to promote the common good, to promote majority rule, or should government institutions be used in such a way to benefit this elite and powerful conservative white minority at the expense of everyone else? I think Wisconsin in the modern era incubates that idea.

Kai Wright: Let's go to Steve in Manhattan. Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve: Hey, hi. There's an easy fix who a lot of these problems of gerrymandering and the excessive influence of states that have two senators and one representative, and really going back to the founding have districts that are 30,000 to 70,000 people. Again, we stopped increasing the number of districts after every census starting basically in about 1920, 1928. Everyone agreed so what are we at 435 when you add in Alaska and Hawaii? We should have more like 4,000, 4350 or maybe 10,000 representatives. I'm not quite sure of the math on this, but wouldn't it even be up to 20,000 to get 30,000 districts? 70 might be a better thing.

Kai Wright: Steve, I'm going to stop you there just for time, but I think I get the question you're asking. It's like, why can't we grow the number of districts? Why can't we go back to smaller districts as the idea? That grows the number of districts. Would doing that solve some of the problems that you are articulating already?

Ari Berman: It might solve some of the problems. You could argue that would lead to a more representative government. They could still gerrymander those smaller districts though and it wouldn't solve the problem of the US Senate and it wouldn't solve the problem of the Electoral College. I think to some extent, we need more fundamental reform. That's one possible reform, but I think we need to go further than that.

If we can't change the structure of the Senate, at the very least, we could put in place new states, places like Washington DC that have large minority populations that would at least make the Senate more reflective of the country. Abolishing the Electoral College, which I think is an idea that is still supported by 70% to 80% of Americans, could be done through two ways.

It could be done through a constitutional amendment or it could be done through the national popular vote interstate compact, which is basically a different way to get around a constitutional amendment, essentially, when states that have 270 electoral votes get together and pledge that they're going to appoint their state's electors to the winner of the popular vote, that would then abolish the electoral college through another way.

Now, this is very controversial. It'll be challenged before the Supreme Court, but those states that are part of this compact have 209 electoral votes now. They're 61 votes short of 270. That may or may not happen anytime soon, but it's a lot more promising than a constitutional amendment because constitutional amendments require the passage of two-thirds of the Congress in three-quarters of the states, which is another way that minority rule is built into the system. Right, Kai?

That allows a very small minority of states to block things that are supported by 30-plus states, which I think is another fundamental flaw of how the Constitution was designed. A lot of other countries make it a lot easier to amend their constitutions.

Kai Wright: Julia in Long Beach texts wants to know, "Can you talk about ranked-choice voting and what the possibility is of shifting America towards a more equitable system of voting like this? Ranked-choice voting, a bit of a wonky idea for people who don't follow voting as much but it gets rid of a-- Well, maybe I'm going to let you describe it so I don't get it wrong. The idea is that you're voting for individual candidates instead of just parties. How do you feel about ranked-choice voting as a solution?

Ari Berman: I'm for it. It eliminates this notion of a spoiler because you can rank your candidates and if your candidate doesn't get 50%, your votes get redistributed to your second-choice candidate. Let's say you like two candidates. You can list both of them without being so worried about the outcome or let's say you want to vote for a non-traditional candidate. You have the possibility of doing that.

It allows different people to be elected. In Alaska, for example, they were able to use ranked-choice voting to elect a democratic member of the house because a lot of Republicans crossed over to vote for that person over Sarah Palin, who was the Republican nominee. A lot of Republicans in Alaska didn't want Sarah Palin. A lot of independents didn't want her. They felt more comfortable voting for the Democrat through ranked-choice voting because if their preferred person didn't win, their votes are redistributed.

It allows people to build a consensus. It doesn't always lead to better outcomes. I would argue that the current mayor of New York, who was elected through ranked-choice voting, has not always been that committed to democracy and so to vote madly.

Kai Wright: We were not weighted to New York's political problems.

Ari Berman: That's a conversation for another episode. It's not a panacea, but I think it's one possible reform that could be implemented that could make democracy more reflective of the people.

Kai Wright: What are you watching going into 2024? Well, we're in '24 where the debate is this week, the GOP conviction is coming, the election is upon us. What are you watching in terms of voting in this election? Maybe start with the threats.

Ari Berman: Well, in terms of threats, a lot of states change their voting laws after the 2020 election. This was one consequence of the insurrection. The insurrection failed, but a lot of state legislatures turned around and changed their voting laws in a way to make it harder for democratic constituencies to vote. A lot of those laws are going into effect for the first time in 2024, so I'm paying attention on that.

There's the increased risk of election subversion. That was really another consequence of the insurrection. If you don't like the election results, just challenge them altogether. That is a new threat that was not something that I was particularly concerned about when I started covering voting rights. In 2010, people were not just trying to overturn elections altogether now that's something that's on the table. Then I think more broadly, what I'm concerned about is just a full-on authoritarian takeover of the federal government.

I don't think that people are taking that threat seriously enough. If Donald Trump in the current state was able to take back power and his coalition was able to take back power, I think it would be a lot more radical than it was in the last Trump term because so many people have been purged from the Republican party who were relative moderates because Trump himself has radicalized so much against democracy that I think that people are worried about a second Trump term, but I think they may even be understating the threat that would pose to our democratic system and to democratic norms.

Kai Wright: 20 seconds, what are you looking forward to?

Ari Berman: Well, I think we're at a pivotal moment for democracy. There's these moments where race representation and political power are on the ballot. We had that after the Civil War, we had that during the civil rights movement. I think we're at one of those other inflection points today.

Kai Wright: Ari Berman's book is called Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It. He's the voting rights correspondent from Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Tight Media Center. Ari, thanks for this time.

Ari Berman: Always great to talk to you. Thanks so much, Kai.

Kai Wright: Notes from America is a production of WNYC Studios. Follow us wherever you get podcasts and check us out on Instagram @noteswithkai. That's where we start a lot of conversations you hear on this show and where you give us ideas about the conversations we need to be having.

This episode was produced by Siona Petrous. Our theme music and sound design is by Jared Paul. Matthew Miranda is our live engineer. Our team also includes Caterina Barton, Regina de Heer, Karen Frillman, Suzanne Gaber, Varshita Korrapati, and Lindsay Foster Thomas. I'm Kai Wright. Thanks for spending time with us.

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