Comparing today to 1850s
Heather Cox Richardson is a historian. She writes an entry (almost) everyday, recounting the day's big news from her perspective. Today's entry is less about today's happenings, and instead takes the readers back to the 1850s.
I know people are on edge, and there is maybe one last thing I can offer before this election. Every place I stopped, worried people asked me how I have maintained a sense of hope through the past fraught years. The answer—inevitably for me, I suppose—is in our history.
If you had been alive in 1853, you would have thought the elite enslavers had become America's rulers. They were only a small minority of the U.S. population, but by controlling the Democratic Party, they had managed to take control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They used that power to stop the northerners who wanted the government to clear the rivers and harbors of snags, for example, or to fund public colleges for ordinary people, from getting any such legislation through Congress. But at least they could not use the government to spread their system of human enslavement across the country, because the much larger population in the North held control of the House of Representatives.
Then in 1854, with the help of Democratic president Franklin Pierce, elite enslavers pushed the Kansas-Nebraska Act through the House. That law overturned the Missouri Compromise that had kept Black enslavement out of the American West since 1820. Because the Constitution guarantees the protection of property—and enslaved Americans were considered property—the expansion of slavery into those territories would mean the new states there would become slave states. Their representatives would work together with those of the southern slave states to outvote the northern free labor advocates in Congress. Together, they would make enslavement national.
But this is not how the story turned out, she explores what happened as a reminder for his week and what it might portend.
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Kamala on SNL
Maya and Kamala on SNL's cold open really should have been on my radar, but it wasn't. Quite the surprise.
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"Kamala Harris Is Not Our Savior. But a Donald Trump Win Would Be Catastrophic."
It continues to be one of the weirder parts of this timeline that TeenVogue remains an important journalistic political voice. The linked is a letter from their Editor in Chief, Versha Sharma.
As the head of this publication, dedicated to young readers, I have been closely following younger generations' collective disbelief at the Biden administration's support of the Israeli government during its all-out assault on Gaza, following the brutal terror attack from Hamas last Oct. 7 — including the horrific killing of civilians in Gaza, the targeting of journalists and aid workers, and the reports of children being shot in the head.
The Democrats' policy on Israel has been disastrous. What is also true: Trump would, somehow, be even worse.
"To stop crises like genocides, climate change, and pandemics, we need strong mass movements," writes Dr. Lucky Tran, a science communicator based in New York City. "But when more people are vulnerable to deportation, sickness, poverty, discrimination etc, it's much harder to build strong movements. The living conditions under which we organize matter.
"Allowing far-right governments to hold power harms people and greatly weakens social movements. Voting alone is insufficient to win justice, but ignoring its importance makes it much harder to achieve. To win, we need to use all the tools available, including strategic voting."
Dr. Tran is elucidating a conclusion many progressive activists and organizers have come to: that we must view voting as a chess move to get us closer to the outcome we all want.
This point is extremely salient and important for understanding another part of the shadow reality of our capitalist society and conservative power brokers' motivations. "Trickle down economics" necessitates that that money passes through the hands of bosses, furthering an employee's reliance on the employer financially. I don't wholeheartedly believe it's meant as a power for bosses, I do believe originally there was an earnest belief that that money would naturally disseminate, but time has clearly shown that is not the case.
Later in the article Sharma transitions to directly discussing the effort required to maintain a democracy and further political goals even beyond winning this election. The emphasis at the end is my own:
I feel pretty confident that a majority of Americans do not support Trump. He's lost the popular vote twice now; it's why he's set the stage for baselessly claiming election fraud or encouraging political violence as a means to hold onto power.
But that majority will only make a difference if we turn out to vote and organize.
It's not enough to beat a fascist with razor-thin margins; ideally, we need to run up the margin of victory so high it becomes that much harder for Trump and his cronies to claim they represent the will of the American people. It's why voting even in "safely blue" or "safely red" states matters. To achieve a more equitable America, we need to pay attention to the democratic popular vote — and if Harris wins, we'll have Vice President Tim Walz, who believes, as so many of us do, that "the Electoral College needs to go."
I know we've all compartmentalized in various ways to even make it this close to Election Day. We've avoided the news or ignored headlines and stories because we need to get on with our lives. But democracy is not guaranteed. It is a group effort that requires we all be involved.
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Slam Dunk
Pulled from this post on Bluesky.
But the real treasure is this picture in the replies, with poorly photoshopped John Maynard Keynes dunking on Robert Lucas.
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"Donald Trump Is Done With Checks and Balances"
It is not an exaggeration to say that, to me, Jamelle Bouie is one of the most important voices regarding current US politics and racial division. I follow him across social media (BlueSky, TikTok, and his articles.) This is an excellent article which reminds us that Trump is a serious threat to our country because what he proposes isn't new, in fact, it's explicitly how the country was founded:
It is important to remember that the Constitution was neither written nor ratified with democracy in mind. Just the opposite: It was written to restrain — and contain — the democratic impulses of Americans shaped in the hothouse of revolutionary fervor.
"Most of the men who assembled at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 were also convinced that the national government under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to counter the rising tide of democracy in the states," the historian Terry Bouton writes in "Taming Democracy: 'The People,' the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution."
We were not given a democratic Constitution; we made one. We unraveled the elitist and hierarchical Constitution of the founders to build something that works for us — that conforms to our expectations.
But nothing is permanent. What's made can be unmade. And at the foundation of Donald Trump's campaign is a promise to unmake our democratic Constitution.
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Dan Conover discussing WaPo an NYT on this election
Dan Conover, a "recovering newsman" wrote the following about "the failure of the NY Times and Washington Post to adequately defend democracy" (according to Dave Winer.) Dan posted it to his Facebook page.
After the whole "1. Bezos hell-boxed the WaPo Harris endorsement; 2. No he didn't, it was a decision by the publisher; 3. I'm Jeff Bezos, and I'm writing to tell you why I killed it" fiasco, people I admire and respect posted arguments for why people should cancel their Amazon accounts, rather than "punishing" the journalists at the Post by abandoning one of the last quality news staffs in the United States.
It's really not a bad argument. I just disagree with it. Here's one example of why.
Yesterday, Joe Biden responded to the comedian at Trump's MSG rally calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. It went pretty much as you'd expect until the President said the only garbage was Trump's supporter's.
Or was it "Trump's supporters?"
Little Marco Rubio was so excited that Biden (who, you'll recall, isn't running for President) might have been referring to ALL Trump supporters, rather than the very SPECIFIC supporter who made the "joke" (which, btw, had been vetted by the campaign), that he ran onto the stage during Trump's speech at another rally to read the alleged insult aloud.
Set aside the fact that Trump insults Harris' supporters every fucking day. He's actually upped the ante this time: We've been promoted from "very bad people" to "The Enemy Within," which sounds so much better in the original German.
Forget that the White House issued a statement clarifying that Biden was, in fact, referring to Trump's comedian, not Trump voters in general. And try, if you can, to ignore the fact that Trump put on a high-visibility safety vest and took a ride in an actual garbage truck on which his campaign painted "TRUMP" so as to milk every ounce of insult and phony media umbrage out of the latest Biden gaffe nothingburger.
Instead, pretend you're the Executive Editor of the Washington Post, and ask yourself: Considering all those factors, and the proximity of Election Day, where would you run that "Did Biden Call Trump supporters 'Garbage'?" story on your print newspaper and website?
Here's what I learned from Talking Points Memo's David Kurz this morning: Not only did The Post give the "garbage" story top-billing, so did the fucking New York Times.
There was a time in my life, long ago, when I got paid decent money to stand around a desk in the middle of a newsroom on a deadline and shout at other editors (and sometimes reporters) about headlines and placement. And lemme tell you: When the people who would put that phony garbage story above the fold win those ethical headline-and-placement arguments, you've got a big, big problem.
We're not talking about HuffPo or Salon here. We're talking about the last two "unique nationals" standing in American print journalism. Instiututions with long and storied histories. Both took the same test at the same time, and both failed it.
Do I have beefs with Amazon? Of course. But when it comes to monopolistic practices, the problem isn't Amazon -- it's a legal systems that either can't or won't prosecute those practices. And, while I'm at it, if it weren't for Amazon, my ficition [sic] career would have ended with the last literary agent who deleted one of my query emails without a second thought because "that's too different from what sold last quarter, and he's not related to anyone famous."
Amazon Publishing isn't a perfect publishing platform. But it's a chance for indies like me to find an audience, and that's all I ever asked for. So thank you for that, Jeff Bezos, you Lex-Luther-looking motherfucker.
I didn't quit The Post because I hate Bezos personally or because I demand that the paper endorse Harris. I quit The Post because journalism may be a business, but it's supposed to be MORE than a business. It's protected by the First Amendment because an informed electorate is essential to the health of a democratic society. And if you look back at the history of American journalism, you will probably not be surprised to learn that it's ALWAYS been a mixed bag, at best.
But I can't, and won't, forgive The Post for backsliding at this crucial moment.
The Post has a talented roster, and does some great reporting on matters of significance. But its editorial policies -- not to mention its retrograde executive hiring practices -- are sending a message to news organizations across the country: If The Washington Post and The New York Times -- the two papers most responsible for holding Richard Nixon accountable for his crimes -- are going to blatantly suck-up to the rich, powerful and unethical, why aren't we?
Trust me: No matter what they might say in public, there's nobody at The Post who misunderstands this message. Two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand subscribers didn't quit this week because they hate Dana Milbank or Aaron Blake. They quit because Post management rolled over for Donald Trump, and then fucking lied about it.
I don't want The Post to go away. I want The Post to change. And if that means they should fear their readers more than they fear Donald Trump, so be it.
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Schwarzenegger Votes for Harris/Walz
I don't really do endorsements. I'm not shy about sharing my views, but I hate politics and don't trust most politicians.
I also understand that people want to hear from me because I am not just a celebrity, I am a former Republican Governor.
My time as Governor taught me to love policy and ignore politics. I'm proud of the work I did to help clean up our air, create jobs, balance the budget, make the biggest infrastructure investment in state history, and take power from the politicians and give it back to the people when it comes to our redistricting process and our primaries in California.
That's policy. It requires working with the other side, not insulting them to win your next election, and I know it isn't sexy to most people, but I love it when I can help make people's lives better with policies, like I still do through my institute at USC, where we fight for clean air and stripping the power from the politicians who rig the system against the people.
Let me be honest with you: I don't like either party right now. My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results. Democrats aren't any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime.
It is probably not a surprise that I hate politics more than ever, which, if you are a normal person who isn't addicted to this crap, you probably understand.
I want to tune out.
But I can't. Because rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets. To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America is a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious.
And I will always be an American before I am a Republican.
That's why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
I'm sharing it with all of you because I think there are a lot of you who feel like I do. You don't recognize our country. And you are right to be furious.
For decades, we've talked about the national debt. For decades, we've talked about comprehensive immigration reform that secures the border while fixing our broken immigration system. And Washington does nothing.
The problems just keep rolling, and we all keep getting angrier, because the only people that benefit from problems aren't you, the people. The only people that benefit from this crap are the politicians who prefer having talking points to win elections to the public service that will make Americans' lives better.
It is a just game to them. But it is life for my fellow Americans. We should be pissed!
But a candidate who won't respect your vote unless it is for him, a candidate who will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke, a candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else else, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea - that won't solve our problems.
It will just be four more years of bullshit with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful.
We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won't do that. He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger.
That's enough reason for me to share my vote with all of you. I want to move forward as a country, and even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform, I think the only way to do that is with Harris and Walz.
Vote this week. Turn the page and put this junk behind us.
And even if you disagree with me, vote, because that's what we do as Americans. http://vote.org
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"A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for school shootings and measles"
Such a good read. Everyone needs to read this.
Donald Trump is a dangerous maniac who can barely complete a sentence, and it is lunacy to believe he can even recognize the existentially threatening collective action problems facing our nation, let alone actually solve them.
Collective action problem is the term political scientists use to describe any situation where a large group of people would do better for themselves if they worked together, but it's easier for everyone to pursue their own interests. The essential work of every government is making laws that balance the tradeoffs between shared benefits and acceptable restrictions on individual or corporate freedoms to solve this dilemma, and the reason people hate the government is that not being able to do whatever you want all the time is a huge bummer. Speed limits help make our neighborhoods safer, but they also mean you aren't supposed to put the hammer down and peel out at every stoplight, which isn't any fun at all.
It is extremely frustrating that the Harris campaign keeps going on about Trump being a danger to democracy without explaining why his whole deal is so deeply incompatible with America, so here's the short version: the radical founding principle of the United States of America is the idea that the government's authority to make laws and solve collective action problems comes from the consent of the governed. A clean rewrite, replacing centuries of architectural debt with what was, at the time, a cutting-edge foundation mostly unproven at scale. We vote for our leaders, they are given the power to tell us all what to do so that we might help each other reach better outcomes and be happier, and if they are bad at their jobs, we can simply throw the bums out. We open-sourced the authority, in other words. It was a big bet, and so far, it's paid off.
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I Voted!
Wife and I sat down and filled out our ballots tonight. I'll drop them off on the way to work tomorrow morning.
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Election Time, Endorsements, and Washington State Blue
We got our ballots this past weekend and tonight will be the night we fill them out, ahead of me leaving for a work trip. So they are done and counted well ahead of election day. Along with reading the pamphlet Washington State sends out, I always review the endorsements of the Seattle Times and The Stranger.
For those not in Seattle, The Stranger is our local small newspaper. Saying it is Independent is factually correct, but unfair as a comparison to the Seattle Times, which is also independent in that it is not part of any larger news organization such as the Tribune etc. The Seattle Times does trend comparatively conservative to The Stranger's much more liberal leaning.
To be clear, I don't strictly follow either set of endorsements, but I do read them as additional insights as I'm making my decision on how to vote.
When it comes to national elections, Washington is one of the states which is not up for question. When the polls close on election day, the news teams will immediately announce Washington (and presumably, California and Oregon) as Harris states.
Why? As of this morning polls have Harris with a very solid +15 over Trump for Washington, well outside a margin of error.
That said, I am growing to hate the narrative of "These seven states will decide the election." The feeling of voters that their vote doesn't matter here because the outcome is decided is understandable, but also not true. Without those votes, the outcome changes, or could change. It's like saying, "I work on a factory line and my spot isn't the last one in the line, so the car coming off the line isn't something I want to contribute to."
I get the psychology of it, and I get the clickbaity headlines are what the internet is geared towards. But I find it disappointing all the same.
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What a moron
When I was in middle school, I had a substitute teacher who told us about how the CIA controlled the weather. It was on that day that I realized teachers could be morons.
I can't say I'm shocked that Greene said this.
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Highlights from Georgia Judge overturning their abortion ban
Originally posted to X by @MuellerSheWrote, I've pulled their post copy here:
NEW: THREAD: A new ruling from Judge McBurney in Georgia overturning the abortion ban and allowing the procedure to continue has some REMARKABLE quotes. Let's take a look at just a few. 1/
"While the State's interest in protecting "unborn" life is compelling, until that life can be sustained by the State -- and not solely by the woman compelled by the Act to do the State's work -- the balance of rights favors the woman." 2/
"Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have." 3/
"For these women, the liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid's Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could -- or should -- force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another." 4/
"When someone other than the pregnant woman is able to sustain the fetus, then -- and only then -- should those other voices have a say in the discussion about the decisions the pregnant woman makes concerning her body and what is growing within it." 5/
"There is nothing so urgent or important to the State about the medical records of women who end pregnancies that the privacy rights of those women -- and the Fourth Amendment protections that attach to those rights -- can be bulldozed away by statutory enactment." 6/
"...liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices." 7/
"Accordingly, Section 4 of the LIFE Act is hereby DECLARED unconstitutional. The State and all its agents, to include any County, Municipal, or other local authority, are once again ENJOINED from seeking to enforce in any manner the LIFE Act's PECAP termination ban in Georgia." END/
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Barack's charisma remains incredibly impressive. His ownership of stepping on stage was fantastic. The "Only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama" was a great line too.
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The swelling of support around Harris feels historic. The mobilization and general mentality feels monumental. Hearing that Harris' campaign raised $250 million dollars in its first few days is incredible.
From this article:
ActBlue, which acts as the fundraising platform for Harris for President, and many other Democrats, on Sunday alone took in almost $67 million, according to a third-party ActBlue tracking program. President Biden’s announcement was made around 2:00 PM ET that day.
On Monday, as of 3:30 PM ET, ActBlue has taken in another $35 million – for a 25-hour total of over $100 million.
...
In addition to the $100 million infusion Democrats just received, Politico reports, “Future Forward, the flagship super PAC blessed by President Joe Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major Democratic donors in the 24 hours since the president announced he would step aside from the race.”
“Future Forward already had $122 million on hand as of the end of June, according to Federal Election Commission filings.”
That means approximately $250 million – about a quarter of a billion dollars – was just added to the coffers of Democratic campaigns, including Kamala Harris’s, and PACs
My TikTok feed has also been awash with videos supporting Harris. I was introduced to the "Divine Nine" which is a term for the National Pan-Hellenic Council, nine historically African American fraternities and sororities. They have fully thrown their support behind Harris and are working to mobilize their groups to help her campaign.
This definitely feels like a moment.
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Historic
After weeks of discourse, Biden has officially announced he will not run for re-election. Ultimately I support this move, while I believe he could have done it, there was a sizable percentage chance that he would need to resign in the middle of his second term and that would potentially harm Kamala.
I do think there is a definite risk that Kamala (or whomever gets the nomination) does lose some of the people who would support Biden, but overall I think that loss will be minimal as most people will reasonably acknowledge that the candidate is unquestionably better than Donald Trump.
I personally expect we will see Kamala / Shapiro as the ticket in November, but who knows. Things are about to get very interesting.
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July 14, 2024 by Heather Cox Richardson
Yesterday will be a date in the history books, perhaps not the specific date, but the events will be notable in the same way we learn about Reagan's attempted assassination.
Here is how Heather Cox Richardson began her entry for yesterday:
Shortly after 6:00 yesterday evening at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a shooter on the roof of a building about 400 feet from the stage appears to have shot eight bullets at the former president and into the crowd. Trump appeared to flinch and reach for his right ear as Secret Service agents crouched over the former president. When the agents got word the shooter was "down," they lifted Trump to move him out. He asked to get his shoes and then to put them on.
With that apparently accomplished, Trump stood up with blood on his face, exposed to the crowd, and told the agents to wait. He raised his fist in the air in front of an American flag in what instantly became an iconic image. He appeared to yell, "Fight, fight, fight!" to the crowd before being ushered offstage.
Pennsylvania firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed. David Dutch, 57, was injured and is hospitalized in stable condition. James Copenhaver, 74, was also injured and is in stable condition.
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"Jacob's Dream" - Lunch with the QAnon Shaman, the author delves deep in a shallow lake
I am loathe to give these burgeoning characters more attention, but this article on Harpers is excellent. The author sits down for lunch with Jacob, and truthfully the content is like 1/8th of the article, the rest is delving into past philosophy, logic, and conspiracy.
A quote about Jacob from the article:
Which would include January 6. When he reached the west side of the Capitol, he moved as if in a dream, gliding onto the Senate floor as if he were some fabulous pooh-bah whom no one had ever heard of yet. He ambled down the center aisle of the Senate chamber, past one hundred abandoned desks.
“Fuckin’ A, man,” he said.
“What then is the American, this new man?” J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur asked in 1782. At long last, Jacob provided the answer: He is a pagan straight out of central casting, a bro tripping on the hidden figures of the cosmos, a natural man convinced of his own self-evident truths, a hero ready to fight for his blessed fatherland, notwithstanding the fact that he still lived with his mother. Jacob stepped onto the dais, looked out on the sea of marble columns, and flexed his naked biceps.
A cop asked him to leave.
“I’m gonna take a sit in this chair,” he said. “’Cause Mike Pence is a fucking traitor.”
And on the inherent issue with overcoming the conspiracy theorist mindset, even when fact is against them:
With this intellectual lineage, conspiracy theorists are not about to back down from their truths, because their own scientific method possesses a historical claim as deeply entrenched as ours. And they have a point: their spooky correspondences, their spheres of influence, their invisible forces, their gravities and their magnetisms, their parsing of the invisible effluvia—without these, there never would have been any science at all. And that’s the reason reason has yet to dent the citadel of MAGA, and never will.
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There was a post which made the rounds, an article on Substack from a man who discusses his white nationalist beliefs and his disillusionment after moving to the Midwest. I can't bear to even link to the post. It's pure drivel.
He starts out discussing how he left white nationalism, but what the author means is that he stopped feeling it was necessary that he made it the defining feature of his personality, nor to go to the rallies, etc. He goes on and on about it, making it clear that he is still firmly rooted in it and just isn't driven to be politically active about it.
The segment which was getting traction was about him moving to the Midwest. But even then, people are laughing and I just shake my head. The guy was disillusioned because he felt superior to all the contented midwesterners, living simple lives without motivation to chase greater success or money. He even talked about them in racial terms, comparing them to Asians, and other "inferior" groups.
The article was repugnant and I feel sad that feelings like the author's are so common.
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Adjunct PoliSci professor compares Republican reply to State of the Union to far-right European movements
Link goes to the ThreadReader unroll of the thread of this post.
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LGBT Conservatives (w/ Contrapoints)
I enjoyed this entire conversation, but I did get curious and want to look up what percentage of LGBTQ+ people are what political leaning. This was the top result I came across:
Nearly nine million LGBT adults are registered and eligible to vote in the 2020 general election.1 Half of registered LGBT voters (50%) are Democrats, 15% are Republicans, 22% are Independents, and 13% said they identify with another party or did not know with which party they most identify.2 LGBT voters are racially diverse, nearly half (47%) are under age 35, and one-third have at least a college education.
2019 Study about the 2020 LGBT Vote by the Williams Institute
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Trump ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3M
From the Washington Post recap, we get this statement by the Judge:
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan told the anonymous jury that while they are now free to speak publicly, he didn't advise it. "My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury and I wont say anything more about it."
What an awful reality to live in where jurors are suggested they never speak of their serving, while serving on a civil suit with an ex-President.
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"The Jan. 6 Riot Inquiry So Far: Three Years, Hundreds of Prison Sentences"
An interactive article on NYT about the progress of the cases against January 6th rioters. It has animations as you scroll to provide visuals for data points, helping give context to the numbers it rattles off.
As of December, about 1,240 people had been arrested in connection with the attack, accused of crimes ranging from trespassing, a misdemeanor, to seditious conspiracy, a felony.
Around 170 people have been convicted at trial, while only two people have been fully acquitted. Approximately 710 people have pleaded guilty …
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2024 is going to be the year of elections
Obviously the US election will be a major item, but India as well as Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and more than 40 others means there's going to be a lot of politics going on this year, and the transitions all taking place at once is going to be chaotic as hell.
2024 is the year of a rare planetary alignment. The world’s biggest democracy, which has parliamentary elections every five years, will go to the polls within months of the world’s second-biggest democracy, which has a presidential vote every four years. India and the United States join three other of the world’s six biggest democracies—Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—in what will be the year that the greatest number of people in history vote.
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