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When the ancient Greeks came up with the concept of democracy, they envisioned a form of government in which the power rested with many, and not just a monarch or some other potentially despotic tyrant. 

That’s quite literally what “democracy” means — “rule by the people.”

Of course, “the people” only meant Greek free men. After all, who knows what kind of craziness women, slaves and non-citizens would have come up with if they had been given a say in running ancient Greece.

Therefore, it is a bit unfair to criticize Republicans as “threats to democracy.”

Sure, when viewed through the lens of modern democracies, that label is certainly valid. After all, they are methodically trying to destroy the type of democracy that took more than 200 years to establish and improve in the United States until it was mostly inclusive (with more work to be done all the time).

However, the GOP very much embodies the spirit of the ancient Greeks by constantly trying to limit who gets a say in the government… and it ain’t “the people.” At least not if they vote for stuff Republicans don’t like.

Take Missouri, for example.

Last year, voters there emphatically backed Proposition A, a ballot initiative that increased the state’s minimum wage, indexed it to inflation, and required employers to provide paid sick leave.

While these are the kind of policies Republicans like to dismiss as “socialism,” the people in the deep-red state (Donald Trump won it by 18 points in 2024) liked them quite a bit and passed the initiative by a wide margin.

As it turns out, they shouldn’t have bothered, or gotten excited about a minimum wage increase that was going to benefit a quarter of the state’s workers. That’s because Republican legislators in the Missouri General Assembly swiftly passed a bill to reverse the changes. 

On Thursday, Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) signed it into law. “Conservative leadership is about keeping more money in the hands of Missouri families, and less in government coffers,” Kehoe said during a ceremony celebrating that the will of the people was thwarted.

Now, maybe we don’t understand how wages work, but it seems to us that paying people more for their work would make sure that Missouri families have more money.

Then again, maybe those are the wrong kind of Missouri families.

“Today, we are protecting the people who make Missouri work — families, job creators, and small business owners — by cutting taxes, rolling back overreach, and eliminating costly mandates,” he said when signing the bill (as well as another with a tax cut for the state’s rich).

In case you are wondering, “rolling back overreach” and “eliminating costly mandates” translates to “thwarting the will of the people.”

And, make no mistake, Missouri is the rule, not the exception. In state after state, Republicans are trying to make it more difficult for voters to participate in democracy.

Ballot initiatives are perhaps the best example.

After even red-state voters showed an appetite for Medicaid expansions and codifying reproductive rights, GOP lawmakers decided that giving them a voice is not a good idea.

In Oklahoma, one of the most conservative states in the nation, the Republican majority in the state legislature recently put in place new restrictions that make it extremely difficult to get measures on the ballot.

Specifically, instead of allowing organizers to collect signatures in the state’s populous cities, they now have to go to remote places with a low population density, which is arduous and costly.

Chances are that this will also expose supporters of ballot initiatives to additional legal challenges and other procedural hurdles aimed at curtailing attempts to widen voter participation in future elections.  

By the way, activists in Oklahoma are currently trying to get a measure on the ballot that would increase the minimum wage in the Sooner State.

From Florida to Arkansas and Ohio to South Dakota, it seems as though Republicans are trying to shut out the people from directly participating in democracy in every state they control.

But that’s only part of it.

GOP lawmakers are also constantly trying to make it more difficult for some of their constituents to vote — specifically those who are likely to back Democrats. They are creating barriers for college students, overseas voters, and anybody voting by mail. If they could, and it’s not for a lack of trying, they would target Black voters with surgical precision.

And we know that because they tried, for example in North Carolina, whose Legislature is perhaps the most gerrymandered in the nation.

However, there is a lot of competition for that spot among states in which Republicans enjoy supermajorities in state legislatures.

Then there is Texas, which is trying something different. With an assist from Trump’s Department of Justice, the Lone Star State is trying to redraw its congressional districts mid-decade to give Republicans a better chance of holding the House next year.

This, too, disenfranchises specific voters.

Finally, Republicans want to give outsized power to wealthy Americans and corporations, for example by weakening campaign finance rules (which barely still exist in the US).

Now, we would like to say that Democrats, who are sharply criticizing all of these Republican moves, are polar opposites and stalwart defenders of democracy.

Sadly, that is not the case.

While they are miles better than Republicans, they have their own ways of subverting the will of voters… especially their own.

Here, a primary process comes to mind that too often favors candidates backed by the party establishment. This is particularly true in presidential elections, where Democratic candidates are crowned more often than elected.

While Republicans embrace the chaos of primary challenges from extreme far-right challengers, and Trump uses the threat of such challenges to keep GOP lawmakers in line, Democrats keep bending over backwards to keep incumbents in office no matter what.

In many cases, they are sticking around years, or even decades, longer than they should.

This has proven to be costly for Democrats. Not only do they have trouble connecting with young voters, but three of their House members died this year and have yet to be replaced, which has given Republicans some breathing room to pass controversial bills.

And when Democratic voters do have the audacity to pick a candidate they like, Democrats act no differently than Missouri Republicans who don’t want to give peasants paid sick days or wage increases.

Case in point is New York City’s mayoral race.

After a popular insurgent defeated the unpopular establishment candidate, party leaders could have just accepted the will of the people. Instead, some establishment Democrats are trying to kneecap the primary winner, Zohran Mamdani, while others have been slow to endorse and embrace him, even though he is appealing to exactly the demographics that the party needs to defeat the GOP in upcoming elections.

Essentially, it’s just a different way of protecting different elites.

How will this all end? 

Right now, we are not optimistic. While there is a lane in American politics for a true “power to the people” movement, it would face considerable headwinds from both parties.

As things stand now, it is more likely that democracy in the US will suffer the fate of the protagonists in Greek tragedies: After flying high for some time, it is about to come crashing down in a truly tragic end.