What Trump will do, Decius insists, is champion the wishes of “the sovereign people.” But who are these people whose wishes are being trammeled by the transnational managerial class? Surely it isn’t the majority of Americans who voted to make Barack Obama president. Twice. Or who currently give him an approval rating of well over 50 percent. No doubt such considerations lead Decius to deny that he’s advocating “crude majoritarianism.”
But that merely sidesteps the problem of determining just who is included in the sovereign people. If it’s not the sum total of citizens who are eligible to vote, whose preferences are measured by counting ballots and pronouncing the candidate who receives the greatest number of votes the winner, then what procedure should we use instead?
One gets the feeling that, as far as Decius is concerned, the sovereign people is the sum total of those Americans who are prepared to vote for Donald Trump on November 8. But this presumes, of course, that this plurality of Americans is actually voting for Trump for the same reasons Decius will vote for him: in order to break the back of the administrative state. It’s far from clear whether, on Decius’ own terms, Trump voters who cast their ballots for other, less lofty reasons should be included among the sovereign people.
We seem to be left with the following: Those who agree with Decius about the need to smash the administrative state are the sovereign people. And everyone else? They may be a people. But they obviously don’t deserve to be considered sovereign.
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