Democracy Under Fire: Donald Trump and the Breaking of American History

Jacobs (Who Governs?), the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, contends in this unconvincing diatribe that the primary elections process is the cause of the country’s current political dysfunctions. Calling Donald Trump “a singular threat to American democracy,” Jacobs claims that Trump’s rise was a predictable product of a presidential nominating process “that sidelined party officials and senior officials and deferred to a relatively small number of ideologically motivated party activists, interest groups, and donors.” Though he briskly runs through the rise of political parties in the U.S. and the evolution of the primary system, Jacobs fails to convincingly explain why increasing the influence of party bosses or superdelegates would be more democratic and less likely to lead to a candidate like Trump reaching the White House. The book’s dense prose (“The history of democratic rules and procedures is contingent within the parameters of institutional development”) doesn’t help matters, but readers will be most disappointed by Jacobs’s failure to consider other factors in Trump’s rise, including social media algorithms, the Citizens United campaign finance decision, and race-baiting precedents set in earlier campaigns. This incomplete analysis falls short. (Mar.)