As Gridlock Deepens in Congress, Only Gloom Is Bipartisan – The New York Times https://t.co/2EzX12xCdr

— USABloggen (@USABloggen) January 28, 2018

Med en despot i Vita Huset, med de båda amerikanska partierna i öppen, hatfylld konflikt, med utbredd fattigdom, The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem

This evidence supports on-the-ground observation in the United States. Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer have documented the daily horrors of life for the several million people in the United States who actually do live on $2 a day, in both urban and rural America. Matthew Desmond’s ethnography of Milwaukee explores the nightmare of finding urban shelter among the American poor.

It is hard to imagine poverty that is worse than this, anywhere in the world. Indeed, it is precisely the cost and difficulty of housing that makes for so much misery for so many Americans, and it is precisely these costs that are missed in the World Bank’s global counts.

med Gerrymandering, dvs röstdistrikt dragna för att maximera det egna partiets väljare, med miljoner amerikaner som vägras rösträtt, Florida Will Vote on Restoring Voting Rights to 1.5 Million Ex-Felons, med den kristna högern och vapenlobby som vägrar några som helst eftergifter, så saknar USA idag en fungerande regering och befinner sig i fritt fall. Hur länge kan det fortsätta såhär?

Sheryl Gay Stolberg och Nicholas Fandos skriver i New York Times: As Gridlock Deepens in Congress, Only Gloom Is Bipartisan

dysfunction has played out in ugly and puzzling ways. The three-day shutdown this month over immigration came and went so fast that even many Democrats saw no point in it. Last year’s futile efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act soured many conservatives. Mr. Trump’s sweeping budget proposal to reorder government was simply ignored. And issues that both parties say they agree on — from raising military spending to banning “bump stocks,” which allow a semiautomatic weapon to fire like a machine gun — remain undone.

To some Democrats, midterm elections this November that were once seen as a test for lunch-pail issues that could woo back white working-class voters are now seen as about nothing short of the future of pluralism and constitutional democracy.

Allt tyder på att eländet bara kommer att förvärras. Även om demokraterna skulle lyckas återta en liten smal majoritet i representanthuset så skulle det i principen inte betyda speciellt mycket och Trumps chanser att vinna 2020 års presidentval ser minst sagt goda ut, speciellt när allt mer ålderstigna demokrater som Bernie Sanders och Joe Biden ser ut att vilja ställa upp.

Frågan på bordet idag är om den amerikanska demokratin kommer att överleva.

STEVEN LEVITSKY and DANIEL ZIBLATT skriver i New York Times: How Wobbly Is Our Democracy?

President Trump hasn’t destroyed the republic. This should not surprise us. Our democratic institutions are strong. And Mr. Trump, despite his reckless attacks on democratic norms, is a weak and inept leader.

But that doesn’t mean democracy is safe. The problems we face run deeper than the Trump presidency. While Mr. Trump’s autocratic impulses have fueled our political system’s mounting crisis, he is as much a symptom as he is a cause of this crisis.

We should not take democracy for granted. There is nothing intrinsic in American culture that immunizes us against its breakdown. Even our brilliantly designed Constitution cannot, by itself, guarantee democracy’s survival. If it could, then the republic would not have collapsed into civil war 74 years after its birth.

Som Steven Levitsky och Daniel Ziblatt skriver så är det lättare än man skulle tro att avskaffa demokratin i USA, liksom i alla länder, titta bara på Ryssland. Alla tecken pekar på att de allt hätskare inrikespolitiska stridigheterna kommer att fortsätta och kanske också eskalera. Medan USA blir allt mer maktlöst runtomkring i världen.