Do we have a Democracy?

Where do we go from here?

Throughout my senate campaign last year, one of the biggest motivators for Democrats was that they felt American democracy was at stake in the 2024 election. Since then, that feeling has exploded, with No Kings protests and a full spectrum of dialogue on how the current administration is an existential threat to democracy.

Yet, on the flip side, I discovered during that same campaign that many Missourians outside the Democratic Party felt like electing Donald Trump was the single most democratic choice they had made in their lifetimes.

How can that be, and what can we learn from it?

At the root of this difference is a long growing frustration among Americans that our democracy is just an illusion. Many people, of all walks of life, believe that the Democrat and Republican parties of the last couple of decades had essentially merged into a “uni-party” whose primary objective was to those who have money, access, and power with little regard for how the rest of us were doing. Sure, the politicians fought about things on the margins, but they always seemed to agree on who should have power in this country: the “elites.” Academics, financiers, lobbyists, large corporations, big donors, etc.

This belief is strongly reflected in polling and surveys.

70% of Americans, for example, believe that the people who live in a representative’s district have too little influence over the decisions their representatives make. An even larger percentage believe that lobbyists, special interests, and large campaign donors have too much influence. I suspect many of you are among that majority.

And Americans think the barriers to changing this are insurmountable; a full 85% of agree that the cost of political campaigns make it hard for good people to run for office.

It’s not just a feeling, either. It’s backed up by fact. In 2024, 94% of federal house races were won by the person who spent the most money. My personal experience bears that out. In each election I was a part of, both primary and general, the winner was the one who had the most money (thank you to everyone who supported and made sure I was in that column at least once!).

Money, special interests, and lobbyists are a huge reason people think American democracy is an illusion, but the doubts don’t end there. Access to higher office has been gatekept for generations not just by campaign donors, but also by a small group of political insiders, in many cases, even the same families.

Our country is beset by political dynasties from the bottom all the way to the top.

Was George W. Bush really the most meritorious person in our country to be nominated by the Republican Party and then be President? Was Hillary Clinton the best nominee in 2016 for that matter, or was she also just part of the right family? How are there always Kennedy’s running around in multiple offices regardless of their talent-level or scandals? Would people be talking about a Trump kid or Michelle Obama running for President if not for their next of kin?

I don’t think so.

Crazy stat: There are more than 700 families in which two or more family members have served in Congress. In 1978, the most recent statistic I could find, these 700 families accounted for nearly 20% of the 10,000 total men and women who had ever served in Congress.

That’s mind-blowing.

And it’s at every level of our government. Every state and even municipality has multiple political families. The guy running for State Senate in my hometown? Son of the previous state senator. In St. Louis, political family members casually pass statehouse seats off to one another. If you walk through the halls of the Missouri Capitol and look at the classes of Senators and Representatives you’ll find the same names over and over and over and over again.

It’s pervasive in both parties. It feels anti-democratic and people are finally tired of it.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Congressman Chuy Garcia of Chicago gave us a classic example by literally hand-selecting his own Chief of Staff to serve as his successor in Congress by quietly withdrawing his re-election filing on the last day of the filing period, making sure that his Chief of Staff was the only person who knew he was retiring and who would be able to file before the deadline ended. He didn’t even hide it – he was literally the first person to sign her signature petition document days before he announced his retirement!

As far as a lot of folks can tell, the parties, the entrenched politicians, and the donor class pick candidates for the rest of us to choose between and make sure that, regardless of who we pick, it’s going to be someone who serves the “uni-party” interests. Normal people have no path to real representation and will never have access to the levers of power.

Ask them who they think is in charge in this country, and who is making the decisions, and essentially no one is going to say “the people.”

With that background in place, we come to the intoxicatingly empowering feeling many got by voting for Donald Trump.

Voting for him was the first time a disenfranchised voter felt like they could stick it to the “uni-party” and claw some power back for themselves. Because voting for Donald Trump, and Donald Trump winning, was a voter-led rejection of every single insider from both parties who were absolutely against him becoming president.

Not only that, but it felt even more democratic to vote for him in 2016 and 2024, the two times Trump won, because of how undemocratic the selection process for his opponent seemed, with the people in charge literally deciding what option voters would have and telling them how it was going to be.

In 2016, the Democratic superdelegate machine and others lined up behind Hillary Clinton and forced her nomination through to the finish line. In 2024, there wasn’t even a primary(!), and by the time Joe Biden decided not to run the only candidate who could take his place was Kamala Harris, a 2020 presidential hopeful who had been forced to drop out of that race before any primary or caucus voting even took place because she had so little support.

The Democratic candidates were machine picks running against a man that the machine hated.

I know a lot of people reading this don’t want to believe it, but electing Donald Trump was the first time that many Americans felt true democracy had been fulfilled in our country in their lifetimes. For them, it was a win over a broken system that had cast aside the will of the people for way too long. A feeling that made it natural for them to accept that the 2020 election was rigged. Of course the same people who hated Trump and had spent decades systematically subverting American democracy and neglecting the needs of the American people would rig an election to protect a rigged system. They had been rigging elections with money, power, and gatekeeping for as long as anyone could remember.

I heard all of this and more traveling the state of Missouri for four years over the course of two campaigns.

And I believe it is a massive mistake to ignore it or think it’s stupid. It is a strong signal that there is a massive group of voters who will vote to buck the broken system, regardless of party (the mythical Obama/Trump voter was likely doing that by voting for Obama in 2008 and again by voting for Trump in 2016).

And if a party can capture that aura going forward – by rejecting certain types of money, by running fresh faces and ideas, by saying things that the machine can’t stand – there is a massive victory there for the taking. The type of victory Democrats secured in the wake of the 1920s.

But right now, I don’t think there’s any way to tell where those voters are going. I would say now, more than ever, particularly after the chaos of this last year and the dragging economy, that they are open to breaking in the direction of either party, if someone captures that spirit.

But capturing that spirit is critical. It’s not going to come on the back of “protecting the ACA” or “returning to normalcy” or any of those half-measure talking points that don’t really mean anything. It’s going to take actions that look like real sacrifice– changes and positions that hurt. That’s how a party becomes believable and gains the trust of a very wary group of voters. Big moves like changes in leadership or changes in funding. Or truly bold ideas or bold rejections of past positions that seem comfortable for politicians but that have failed the people.

Whoever is willing to make those moves is going to be in the position to capture those votes.

If neither party tries, then who knows. The pendulum might swing back to Democrats, although the party’s favorability is still hovering near its decades-record low.

Or it might not.

Lucas