“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” So asked Ronald Reagan in October 1980, in the line that doomed Jimmy Carter’s re-election hopes. Now, as then, large numbers of Americans are inclined to answer “no.” Joe Biden himself is not better off than he was four weeks ago, let alone four years ago, while Donald Trump, having survived an assassination attempt, is better off if only because he is alive.
Supporters of global democracy have even more reason to feel less better off. From Moscow to Pyongyang, Caracas to Harare, anti-democratic strongmen have rarely had it so good, writes Anne Applebaum in Autocracy, Inc. “Shored up by the technologies and tactics they copy from one another, by their common economic interests, and above all by their determination not to give up power, the autocracies believe that they are winning.”
