Democracy may be in trouble, but Joe-mocracy continues to survive

Our aging republic is wasting away. Our democracy may be dying.

But the Joe-mocracy survives.

Too many Americans fail to understand the true nature of government in the United. Since 2020, our country has not been governed by its people or by representative institutions.

Instead, we’ve become a Joe-mocracy.

That is, we are governed by people named Joe.

But not by all Joes. The American Joe-mocracy is an avuncular autocracy, led by two elderly Joes from two states that, taken together, have fewer residents than San Diego County.

Over the past two years, compromises between President Joe Biden, 80, and Joe Manchin, 75, who occupies the powerful center in a divided Senate, have constituted  almost all significant governing by elected officials. And since this is a country of partisans, the Joe-mocracy succeeded mostly in uniting the left and right in frustration.

Given all that anger, the Joe-mocracy seemed likely to fall from power after November’s elections. But improbably, the elections provided an unexpected endorsement of the Joe-mocratic status quo. For the next two years, the Senate remains divided, under the narrow Democratic control that Manchin exploits.

The House, now barely in GOP hands, remains so split that, to achieve anything at all, the likely Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield — a city with five times more people than any West Virginia or Delaware municipality — will have to negotiate with the Joes.

This triumph of the Joe-mocracy is a huge political upset, because of the complicated cultural meaning of the name. America is supposed to be an exceptional place, and yet the name Joe — as I well know — is unexceptional. Nothing about Average Joe, Joe Citizen, Joe Blow, or Joe Schmo says “national leadership.”

That’s why, in the Democratic primaries, I thought that Biden never would get elected president. We’d never elected a Joe before, and this one seemed too tired, too old, too mediocre to win high office in a country of exalted dreams.

But when Biden won anyway, I realized that country was a thing of the past. We are now as tired and old and mediocre as the Joes in charge.

As the United States becomes less dynamic, its politics have grown inflexible. UCLA scholar Lynn Vavreck , calling the problem “calcification,” has said that “within parties, people are more alike than ever.” Our sameness makes Americans boring.

So, it makes sense that boring Joes are running the country.

Of course, the Joe-mocracy can claim some victories. Manchin and Biden got through a huge stimulus and major investments in infrastructure and climate change.

But the Joe-mocracy offers no clear vision of the future, because the Joes in charge are stuck in the past. In some ways, the Joe-mocracy has resembled a second Trump term, with violations of immigrant rights, protectionism, inflationary spending, and pointless fights with European allies. The Joe-mocracy’s best policies — like tax credits and cash supports that cut child poverty in half — are expiring. And in a very tired way, the Joes have given up on major American problems, especially gun violence.

The Joes talk a big game about democracy at international conferences, but they don’t always practice democracy at home. The Joe-mocrats failed to protect voting rights and centralized more power in the federal government. The Joe-mocracy has taken on China, but won few allies overseas for that effort. China may be a dictatorship, but the Politburo Standing Committee is a team of seven communists. America is ruled by just two Joes.

And if they can stay healthy and alive, those Joes will have another two years in power before they face difficult elections in 2024. They’d probably both be wise to retire, and hand power to people with different first names in 2025.

Because Joe-American can’t remain a Joe-mocracy much longer, right?

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California and Democracy Local columns for Zócalo Public Square.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Democracy may be in trouble, but Joe-mocracy continues to survive