America Votes; Democracy Wins (Maybe)

The US mid-term elections are (almost) over. We know the headlines: Democratic Senate, Republican House, many election deniers denied election. Democrats win by not losing; Republicans prove that when bad candidates deserve to lose, they do. Perhaps most importantly—after all the sturm und drang of the last election cycle—voters voted, ballots were counted, winners celebrated and losers conceded. In other words, America had a normal election.

But is it too early to say that democracy has healed itself? Is the absence of wild allegations of fraud too low a bar for a country that likes to think of itself as the gold standard for representative democracy? What are the implications of the massive amounts of money—almost $17 billion—that candidates raised and spent during their campaigns? Does the way-too-early launch of the 2024 presidential election cycle signal that politicking, rather than governing, is what American politicians are best at?

We invited Richard Gephardt, former Democratic congressman and long-time party leader, and Scott Miller, one of America's most successful political strategists, to sift through the evidence and speculate on the future of democracy in America.

This material was originally recorded during a Tällberg webinar and has been lightly edited for this podcast.