On Bluesky Dan Nexon, professor at Georgetown University’s Department of Government, gives a clear-eyed assessment of where authoritarianism and democracy stands in the US right now and outlines key priorities. In short, the US is not in a pluralist “politics as normal” state and everyone better come to grips with that quick smart - US democracy is in a zero-sum world now:

🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics.

The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.
This consensus is correct. But I don't think enough people have actually internalized the implications. That is, they're perfectly happy to point out that too many Dem officials don't understand this, but they haven't updated their own understanding of what this means for taking the country back.

Let's start with the "best" scenario right now: that the US. remains a "competitive authoritarian" system. We have elections that are unfree and unfair, but not total and complete shams.

This means that:
1) it will be difficult — but not impossible — for the opposition to win elections; and

2) if the government overtly steals an election, it can be toppled via widespread popular mobilization *if* the security services split or abandon the regime.

We have decades of scholarship on how pro-democracy forces win in competitive authoritarian systems: they form a united opposition that brings together people with otherwise profound political disagreements.

One of the many ways the regime fights back is to try to use its considerable resources to wedge apart those coalitions. And it often succeeds, because it is *very* hard to hold together politically diverse coalitions *even* when elections are free and fair.

I have bad news and worse news.

The bad news: the more consolidated the authoritarian regime becomes, the harder it is to dislodge it. The opposition in Hungary finally got its act together in 2022, and formed a coalition that included far-right and far-left parties.

But it was too late. To understand what happened, you *must* read @kimlanelaw.bsky.social's @jodemocracy.bsky.social article ▼▼

In fact, just drop what you're doing and read it now.

How Viktor Orbán Wins | Journal of Democracy
The case of Hungary shows how autocrats can rig elections legally, using legislative majorities to change the law and neutralize the opposition at every turn, no matter what strategy they adopt.

The worse news: the bulk of successful cases had a "white knight" — and international power who facilitated the regime transition through some combination of pressure, brokering deals, and carrots.

Guess who that white knight usually was?

[insert image of a waving American flag here]
 
Okay. So there's a lot of uncertainty about how "free and fair" the 2026 midterms are going to be. If you forced me to speculate, my *low confidence* prediction is that they'll be less free and much less fair than in 2024.

1) We will still have an on-balance independent media. The MSM will be subject to state coercion, some of it successful, but it will also continue to break stories that are damaging to the regime.

2) GOP states will continue to aggressively gerrymander. When all is said and done, Ds will be able to offset some of this but not all of it. The GOP will still likely lose the House, but keep in mind that the we're in a long-term existential struggle. Bigger majorities > smaller than ones.

3) GOP states will also ratchet up voter suppression, with help from the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court. Expect some *very* aggressive efforts. We won't be able to stop them. But there is a non-zero chance that they miscalculate and drive angry voters to the polls.

Put differently, if a) what we're looking at is an unfair playing field but +/- free elections and b) the regime faces a unified opposition, Ds have a decent chance of taking the House. I am also cautiously optimistic about the Senate, but I wouldn't bet money (see @jonathanbernstein.bsky.social) ▼▼

Why Those Specials Matter
Plus all the links.

Taking one or both chamber may be enough to slow down, let alone stop, the consolidation of authoritarianism. But if GOP holds... then, all else equal, democracy is fucked. It'll also really matters that Ds do well at the state level. The fewer states that are laboratories of autocracy, the better.

Right now we're talking about the best case scenario. It requires a lot of things to fall into place. A lot of those things are outside of the control of Democratic officials and politicians. Even more are outside of our control.

There are things we can influence, of course. Most of what we can do right now is prepare, especially for participation in collective mobilization against the regime — and here I mean everything from becoming involved in local politics and civil society to learning the tactics of mass protest.

We also have some limited ability to influence how unified the pro-democracy coalition is. Remember, competitive authoritarian regimes rely on divide-and-rule tactics. The sooner the opposition unifies, the better the odds of dislodging autocratic rulers.

Wedge strategies are also a time-honored feature of routine democratic politics. Everyone uses them. My point is simply that *stakes* are different. We are *not* in routine democratic politics.

There's no point in punishing the nominees of the opposition for stances that we consider beyond the pale — let alone ones that are problematic. The logic of "teaching them a lesson" presupposes that we still have a system in which the opposition can win elections.

Pro-democracy politicians will *fail* if they don't have space to form alliances with people who don't share our beliefs and room to blunt successful wedge issues. That sucks.

But it's the truth: the choice is between a small-d democratic coalition — one in which a majority either supports or is sympathetic to the causes we're talking about – and a fascist authoritarian regime that will use every tool at its disposal — including violence — to suppress vulnerable "others."

It gets worse. Even if the Ds win the midterms, we should not expect a peaceful transfer of legislative power. The kind of people who stopped Trump from declaring martial law, seizing voting machines, arresting opposition leaders.... they're all gone.

They've been replaced with sycophants and true believers. The security services are being purged. Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill, the regime now has its NKVD. Each day more true believers joint its ranks.

If we are going to prevail against them, we need as large an opposition tent as we can get. We need disciplined counter-mobilization. That means protests where SJP doesn't get on stage and tell people that if they don't support the destruction of the state of Israel, then they need to go home.

We should expect the regime — with help from Russia and other foreign actors — to engage in active measures to stoke tensions within the opposition. They will accuse us of being foreign agents. They will attempt to infiltrate the opposition with the aim of radicalizing and discrediting it.

But remember, none of this requires that we abandon the causes we believe in. None of this requires backing candidates we don't trust* in nomination contests.

*I do mean "trust." We don't need politicians to say the all the right things. We need them to "do" the right things more often than not.
There are virtues to working with people you otherwise disagree with. 

It's much harder, for example, for people to "other" religious, sexual, ethnic, & racial minorities when they spend time working with them as allies. It's no accident that the authoritarian right now wages a war against empathy.

And that gets at a larger point. Competitive authoritarian regimes benefit from reduced social trust — which is why they actively try to destroy it.

They *want* people hived off into antagonistic groups; they *want* people to believe that they can't form cross-cutting social ties; and they *want* people to see all institutions everywhere as eternally compromised.

I don't think that people should abandon fighting for their rights or the rights of others. We all want to defeat reactionary authoritarianism and replace it with a new, better, pluralist democracy. Pluralist democracy is hard. It was too hard for MAGA and the post-liberals.

We haven't lost yet. But we are losing. And no one — and I mean *no one* — has figured this out. So we've got politicians who think the only way to expand the coalition is to triangulate; we've got ones who think what matters more is having the courage of your convictions.

I don't know what the correct balance is. But I do know that we need to expand the pro-democracy coalition, and I suspect that this *will* require approaches that abandon stigmatization of allies and potential allies in favor of empathy and persuasion.

it would be nice if, in this limited respect, power-political necessity and republican virtues align. Because the rules are shredded, the norms are gone, and our institutions are subverted. We are in a power-political struggle between fascist authoritarianism and pluralist democracy. Period. 
/end



US politics in a zero-sum world now