A Four-Month Run at Hope

For too long, we’ve been trapped in a cynical democratic process. We’re finally (maybe) changing that

The Democrats did something!!!

Yesterday was thrilling. I don’t just mean this in a too-online, coconut-pilled, “brat”-memed, collective-internet-hysteria way (though I’m also guilty of this. Please don’t look at my Twitter DMs).

I mean it’s actually been civically thrilling. An idea, that for weeks felt like whispering into the wind, has actually come true: An unexpected coalition of voters, party leaders, elected officials, public opinion, and mega-donors have successfully persuaded President Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. Despite all odds — and truly, there were so many — the Democrats responded to the people! The system has worked as intended!

While we’re in this wild, historic moment of flux, it feels important to emphasize that this game is not just a gamble for who can win in November. This moment signifies something much deeper — a critical effort to revitalize American democracy. For the first time in many years, a key constituency of Americans are hopeful.

It’s a wonderful surprise. But it’s only the first step to restoring our confidence and trust in our core principle as a nation: That a democratic system of governance can be used to build a better collective future.

This Surprise Started With Another One: How Similar Trump & Biden Had Become

The public’s engagement with the 2024 presidential election has been one of the most cynical and checked-out in modern American history. Trump’s cynicism has been more obvious, for longer — he is attracting millions of disaffected Americans who believe our ideals of representative governance should be tossed aside. His attempts to refuse a peaceful transfer of power have attracted cynical people who have fully abandoned trust in the system itself. Trump’s cynicism is the chaotic, will-to-power kind — “the system isn’t for us, so we’ll remake it in our image, or destroy it.”

But Biden also fatally violated trust in the system. His cynicism emerged more slowly, as his team repeatedly refused to engage with the question of his cognitive fitness. The signs were there for months, from failing to proactively position his VP as his ready successor, to failing to encourage primary participation to engage and encourage his base. But it wasn’t obvious until the debate, when his disastrous performance revealed the plain truth of his condition to millions of Americans, and the aftermath, when he ensconced himself with advisors and refused to leave or engage on his condition in good faith. The message to the public became, loud and clear: I’m the only candidate to beat Trump, and it’s worth anything, even repeated violations of the will of the people, including my own base, to make that happen. The ends had come to fully justify the means.

As a result? We’ve spent the last four weeks living within not one but two party-wide cynicisms, colliding at the same time. Trump supporters’ cynicism in the system, and Biden supporters’ cynicism in their candidate, left the majority of America not just unhappy about their choices, but wondering if we even had a choice, and a shared process, at all.

Trump Is Scary. Cynicism Is Worse

This level of cynicism is dangerous to any democracy. It’s fatal for a country like America, one of the few countries in the world whose national myth is predicated on the future — the U.S. is a young country with a short history and multiple origin stories, but what brings us together is an agentic sense of the future. We look ahead, out of a desire and belief that we have a chance to build the best days of our collective lives. In other words: We have hope.

Both candidates participated in the production of cynicism. And in doing so, they both alienated a vital constituency of the American public: People who believe in democracy as a process — as the means itself toward a better end.

Psychologist C.R. Snyder describes hope as made up of three core components: Goals, pathways (how you get toward your goals), and agency (the belief you can actually participate in these pathways).

To defeat entrenched cynicism, we will need hope — anti-cynicism candidates, backed by an anti-cynicism party, promoted through an anti-cynicism process. We will need shared goals — stories about the future. We will need shared pathways — clear processes, and touchpoints for the public along the way. And we will need a sense of agency — the trust that leadership is listening, and responsive to us along the way.

We’ve needed that all along. And the Democrats just created an opportunity to do it.

Biden Dropping Out Puts Us Back in a World Where Hope (& Agency) Has a Chance

What will happen next? Impossible to say (exciting, right? In a good way!). Regardless of path, right now Democratic leadership has opened up a new window for civic participation in our process. By doing this, they’ve taken an urgent first step to reconnecting our system of governance with the will of the people.

The way they manage this process can ensure civic agency and, with it, restore our trust in the process and hope for the nation itself. If done well, Dem leaders’ moves over the next four months can restore our confidence in a founding principle of our nation: That democracy is an agentic tool to realize a collective vision.

A healthy democracy operates by several heuristics for social life that, until today, were totally absent from this presidential race. If we want a healthier range of possible ends in our democracy, whether we’re headed into an open convention, a Harris appointment, or some combination of both, we have to figure out a way to reclaim these civic heuristics as means along the way. We have to go all in on restoring trust with voters.

What can this look like in practice?

Let’s Reclaim Hope In Our Democracy, In 3 Easy Steps

Just kidding. It won’t be easy! But it’s possible.

Millions of Americans just spent 4 weeks (for some: many more) feeling disaffected and hopeless about the possibility of a responsive election cycle. Democrats’ key aim must be to meaningfully bring these people back into the fold, and quickly. Time is short, so these gestures will need to be more intentional and overt.

Moving forward, how can leadership model this?

THE MOVE: Clearly communicate the rules of the system. (As of this writing, Dems haven’t done this yet.)

In 1994, design usability pioneer Jakob Nielsen developed ten heuristics for user interface design. The heuristics were developed to help users improve decision-making, through effective communication and transparency. The first heuristic? Visibility of system status. A healthy system should always keep users informed about what is happening, and where they are in the process.

This can easily be applied to democracy as a system. It’s been a long time since we’ve had an open convention, and a long time since we’ve replaced an incumbent late into a race. We’ve forgotten what it feels like, and what our options are. Dem leadership will need to make the process explicit, and also make it clear how we as voters can engage it.

If Democrats pursue an open convention: Spell out, repeatedly and enthusiastically, how it will work. Who are the voting delegates, how were they appointed, how do they represent us? And, crucially, where will our voices fit in?

If Democrats align around Harris: Spell out how this process actually happened. Who makes this decision? Who else has to agree to it? How is this process more democratic, participatory, and trust-building than Biden’s candidacy was? And, crucially, where did our voices fit in?

A party that respects its voter base should do everything it can to sufficiently educate its public on what possible pathways are ahead. Don’t dismiss curiosity. Invite challenge. Really dig into how this process is more hopeful and agentic than what was our status quo until yesterday.

THE MOVE: Make it easy to participate in the process. (They’ve started doing this!)

By listening to growing concerns about Biden from all quarters, Democratic leadership proved they are responsive. By persuading an incumbent to step down (in July of an election year, no less!), they proved they are iterative — willing to change their assumptions and update their ways of working.

This is exciting — and it’s this responsiveness, more than anything, that animated so much of yesterday’s outpouring of excitement and energy, and sense of optimism and relief.

But Democratic leaders have to keep going. Back to design systems for a moment: Design is not simply what users see. It’s a process, tested and refined, for identifying and solving collective problems.

Similarly, democracy is not simply what voters see on their ballots — at its best, it’s a reliable process, a means, for identifying collective goals, and solving collective problems. A party that wants to encourage a sense of agency and participation in the means must continue to communicate touchpoints for that process.

If Democrats pursue an open convention: How will public input influence decisions about the eventual candidate? What touchpoints do we as citizens have for engaging and making our preferences heard, well before a vote in November?

If Democrats align around Harris: How will we know that leadership heard our preferences? How will we know that Harris is listening? What touchpoints do we still have ahead, for making our preferences heard, well before a vote in November?

Most crucially: Whomever is eventually named at the nominee, it cannot feel like a closed-door decision. It is tempting to restore stability by quickly presenting an heir anointed. But taking this step by end-running around public opinion and voter touchpoints for engagement will only plunge us back into cynical instability. We must be given reason to believe that our voice can and will influence decisions.

THE MOVE: Tell good stories about who America can be. [This is Critically Overdue!!!! We are dying from lack of good stories.]

For almost 10 years, Democrats have abdicated telling a good story to sharing big fears about Trump. This is fair, but it’s never been enough. We know Trump is dangerous. A story of “not that guy” / “not that party” is not a sufficient story about who we want to be, and it’s not an acceptable shared goal for the future.

Democrats have the urgent, exciting challenge to produce good visions for the future, and to re-establish these stories as shared goals with the American public. Every candidate hopeful is now on the hook to make pitches, and good ones, about who we are and who we want to be. Give us the dream, the appetite for beautiful ends. And then give us policy objectives as goals we strive for to help get us there. Americans are desperate for compelling stories about how to make sense of our moment, and how to best share life with our neighbors at a national, state, local, residential, ecological, and global digital communities-scale. Give us reasons to be excited and hopeful again!

This Hail Mary Is for Hope

Democrats have embarked on a process to rebuild trust with voters. They have already struck a winning blow against the cynicism of the Biden administration. And now, they have a chance to move further into opening up engagement, trust, and transparency in service of reviving our democratic system.

I don’t know if they see the full potential in this moment. I don’t know how committed they are to the opportunity. I hope they are. Whatever’s ahead, it will be messy, risky, uncertain, and possibly chaotic. It has already been sensational, and it will continue to make riveting TV. But, unlike most of the headline-grabbing political scandals over the last decade, this spectacle is, right now, in service of an engaging, agentic, pro-civic purpose: Can we regroup, try our darndest, and figure this thing out together?

I, for one, cannot wait to find out.