The Tragic Pattern of American Democracy: Progress, then Backlash

It never fails.

I teach my election law course in the Fall.

Just as major elections are hitting the homestretch at the same time.

Which also means that stunts and shenanigans to suppress voters often begin to happen in real time, in the precise weeks that I am teaching about the worst of the suppression tactics from the past.

The parallels and echoes—from purging and last-minute restrictions now, to similar tactics way back when—are always so blatantly obvious.

And with me hardly having to say the words, the lesson is so clear: the pattern in America that democracy has always been a struggle—and almost every moment of progress has been met by fierce backlash, and often major backsliding.

Along with the most painful lesson of all, which I share in the video above: if you don’t keep fighting for a healthy democracy, you can lose it….for generations.

In Class 1 of my Democracy Academy, we reviewed the original Constitution and the sparse language within it addressing voting, elections and democracy—and how that language and structure have shaped the battle over voting rights that has followed ever since.

Now let’s look at how the post Civil War Amendments altered that founding picture.

Needless to say, the XIII, XIV and XV Amendments addressed issues of voting, equality and democracy far more than the original Constitution. But while those changes sparked a revolution for a short period of time, aspects of how they were written and ratified still left gaping holes that opened the door to a brutal backlash not long thereafter.

And the consequences still reverberate today. As do the parallels.

XIV Amendment

The abolition of slavery by way of the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, opened immediate and enormous new questions for America’s democracy: