Tämä on sellainen teema, ettei viitsi suoraan osallistua “sikamättöön”, mutta jälleen historialliset vaalit tulossa. Jenkkilän kehitys on ollut jo monta kymmentä vuotta alaspäin menoa monella saralla. Trumpin valinta oli osin tämän kehityksen looginen jatkumo. Jos Trump valitaan, kehitys saanee vauhdikasta jatkoa, jos Biden, niin ehkäpä Jenkeissä alkavat lopultakin tehdä korjaavia toimenpiteitä.
Muutamia linkkejä ja grafiikoita:
US no longer a ‘full democracy,’
The Republican Party really is different
A 2019 survey of nearly 2,000 experts on political parties from around the world asked respondents to rate political parties on two axes: the extent to which they are committed to basic democratic principles and their commitment to protecting rights for ethnic minorities. The higher the number, the more anti-democratic and intolerant the party is.
The following chart shows the results of the survey for all political parties in the OECD, a group of wealthy democratic states, with the two major American parties highlighted in red. The GOP is an extreme outlier compared to mainstream conservative parties in other wealthy democracies, like Canada’s CPC or Germany’s CDU.
Its closest peers are, almost uniformly, radical right and anti-democratic parties. This includes Turkey’s AKP (a regime that is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists), and Poland’s PiS (which has threatened dissenting judges with criminal punishment). Experts rate the GOP as substantially more hostile to minority rights than Hungary’s Fidesz, an authoritarian party that has made demonization of Muslim immigrants into a pillar of its official ideology.
The Democratic Party does somewhat better than the global average on metrics of respect for norms and support for ethnic minority rights. The GOP does not.
Pippa Norris/Global Parties Survey
In short, there is a consensus among comparative politics scholars that the Republican Party is one of the most anti-democratic political parties in the developed world. It is one of a handful of once-centrist parties that has, in recent years, taken a turn toward the extreme.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-state-of-U-S-democracy-as-seen-from-an-15610412.php
Finnish politics is boring.
A right-of-center coalition takes office, safety net programs are slimmed, the belt tightened for schools and universities, taxes raised and the deficit wiped out. A left-of-center coalition wins the next election, budget cuts are undone, new initiatives introduced and a modest deficit results.
Whether center-left or center-right, the winning coalition adopts an agenda that ever so gently rocks the boat.
The True Finns are the outlier, a nationalist party, like Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France, with abhorrent views on immigration, women’s and LGBT rights. But even they endorse the the social safety net that guarantees everyone a decent life, with free health care, free education, affordable housing, unemployment insurance and the like — everything that makes Finland the world’s happiest nation. Yet while the True Finns’ perverted nationalism is not going away any time soon, it doesn’t pose a threat to Finnish democracy. Here, democracy is built on bedrock.
Hooray(!) for boring.
American politics is anything but boring. Most of the time that’s a good thing, but these are far from normal times.
Our noisy political disputes have been reined in by the checks and balances embedded in the Constitution, an intricate structure designed to preserve the guardrails of democracy. We have seen ourselves as an exemplar — “the city on a hill,” as one of the founders called it — whose mission was nothing less to make the world a better place.
But now America is a failing — if not a failed — state. The guardrails are weaker than at any time since the Civil War. In the company of democracies, the country has become a laughingstock and a voice of unreasoning hostility.
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David Kirp is a professor of public policy at the University of California-Berkeley. He has permanent residency status in Finland.
Biden, once an engaging and quick-witted pol, was on his last legs. One thing seemed certain to me that November night: If he ran for president in 2020, Biden was going to get embarrassed.
Needless to say, I was dead wrong.
The reasons I expected Biden to get mauled by the likes of Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg are exactly the reasons he outlasted them all.
The reasons I wondered how he would fare against Donald Trump are exactly the reasons he outperformed the president in each of their two debates.
Biden is slow. He is steady. He is unspectacular. In other words, he is what much of the electorate seems to want.
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I remember thinking back then that Biden was little more than a glorified grandfather, tucking Americans in with a pacifying bedtime story. He was a glass of warm milk to put us to sleep. As it turns out, that’s exactly what he is—and after four years of being overcaffeinated, it’s exactly what a majority of America wants.
Presidential politics has always been about meeting the moment. In 2008, the electorate wanted someone to inspire them; Americans elected Barack Obama. In 2016, the electorate wanted someone to rock the boat; Americans elected Donald Trump.
In 2020, more than anything else, it seems the electorate wants a break from the Trump Show. Joe Biden is meeting that moment. If Thursday’s debate was a final audition, he aced it. Not because he dazzled the American people, but because he invited them to change the channel.