The Right to Oppose (Trump v2)
How to beat populist elected dictators — 3
The populist mind game has one central, antidemocratic, trick. The leader assimilates himself to the real people; and denies the rights and legitimacy of opposition.
But the right to oppose is the most important right in a democracy, and what distinguishes it from electoral dictatorship. Every country gives effect to this right in its own way: Britain though its parliamentary tradition; France through its politics of the street; Ukraine that fights its oligarchs with every bit of the tenacity it has visited on Russian invaders.
The US is no exception. It has the separation of powers: two separately elected parliamentary chambers as well as the presidency, together with the courts. 50 states rule independently on most of the things that matter to people. It has a civil society second to none, funded a by a broad base of donors from across America, large and small. They all have the right — if they want to exercise it — to oppose.
In democracies, we don’t elect kings. We elect people to specific offices, and regulate the powers by law. And Trump’s victory was clear, but narrow. Trump won the electoral college 312 to 226, a shade more than Biden, 306 to 232, but nothing compared Obama’s or Reagan’s or even Nixon’s 1972 victories.
Make America Latin Again
About three thousand miles due south of Philadelphia, and a hundred and fifty years after the Constitutional Convention, in Quito, Ecuador, José María Velasco Ibarra would personify a different political tradition, rhetoric-fuelled populism. Give me a balcony, and I’ll be president (dadme un balcón y seré presiente). He would come and go from the office five times, proclaiming himself dictator twice.
His power came personally from the people, and this, he thought, gave him the right to do what he wanted. He first came to power in 1933, a good vintage for this kind of politics, in which balcony speeches would be augmented by radio. (Some food for thought in Peter Pomeranzev’s superb How to Win an Information War: the Nazis won power despite being banned from the national airwaves).
Velasco Ibarra was a classic elected autocrat, who perverted institutions to promote his own power. And this has been the difference, until now, between politics in North and South America.
Democracy works on two levels: the rules that put people in power, and the rules we use to determine the first set of rules, and what powers they have when we elect them.
We call these the constitution, or maybe just norms, and they only work when everyone makes a reasonable attempt to uphold them. If one side sticks to them while the other doesn’t, they’ll lose.
So when you oppose Trump, remember that your job isn’t to live by the norms, but to restore a world where those norms are upheld. Stay within the law, but don’t give his administration the benefit of the doubt it doesn’t deserve. He’s out to destroy the North American constitutional tradition, and replace it with the South American one.
And there was a reason, when I was growing up in Argentina, we had regular power cuts, you couldn’t make international phone calls unless you went to a special phone booth and the bank notes had 000’s and 000’s on them: populism is just a worse way to run a country than a liberal democracy with a separation of powers and a market economy.
Narrow victory
It would be one thing, if Trump had won by a massive landslide, and all America had chosen his policies. But this is not true. As the counting continues, it’s clear he got less than 50% of the vote. His lead over Kamala Harris is about 1.5% of the vote. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans will likely have a majority of 2. In the senate the Democrats won races in Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona. Had Harris carried those, she would have lost by only 4 electoral votes. Had she carried North Carolina, where the Democrats won the governorship, she would have won narrowly, with 278 electoral votes to Trump’s 260.
This was not a two-party landslide, like Obama, in 2008, who won 365 to John McCain’s 173 (Bill Clinton’s electoral college votes were inflated by Ross Perot, the Trumpist avant la lettre), or HW Bush’s 426-111 against Mike Dukakis, let alone Reagan’s 525-13 thrashing of Walter Mondale.
Let’s not forget that Nixon won 520 electoral votes to George McGovern’s 17 (and 60% of the popular vote). That didn’t stop Americans opposing him, and he was out. impeached and convicted by the Senate, two years later.
Sure, Trump’s control over the Republican party appears stronger than we remember Nixon’s to be. But he’s only strong as long as he’s popular. When he stops being popular, the Senators and Congressmen will look after their own reelection first.
Trump won the right to govern, but not to change the system of government. And even the right to govern doesn’t give him the right to override other constitutionally defined powers. You have every right — maybe the duty — to oppose.
Oppose the Trumpists, wherever you find them
Now the job is to make things as difficult for him as possible. Ukrainians in New York and Poles in Illinois: call your Republican congressmen. Don’t let them abandon Ukraine. Meat-packing plant owners: demand they resist his attempts to deport your workforce. Pore over the careers of the incompetent loyalists he wants to appoint to the executive branch and run ads in swing districts about them. He won by an edge, and that edge can be taken away.
But don’t forget, the purpose of opposition is not to scream and shout at the system but to assemble a majority at the next election to beat Trump, and that means some people who voted for him this time, will have to vote against him in the 2026 mid-terms.
Trump thrives on his ability to get people to imagine he wouldn’t actually do the stuff that he does — but he will. His special power is his ability to fool people with his goofiness. So be nice to the people he fooled, make them feel good about changing their minds and repudiating him. Use every opportunity to persuade them he’s let them down.
Oh, and drop “Latinx” - you can’t pronounce it in Spanish.