Let's talk about the demise of democracy and how Republicans are trying to save it.
Wait. Republicans? I meant Democrats, right?
That's certainly how I see it. It's also how nearly all of you see it. But it's not the way everyone sees it. Republicans, in particular, have been convinced for a very long time that Democrats routinely steal elections. I wrote about this ten years ago in "The Dog That Voted and Other Election Fraud Yarns," and the following ten years have done nothing except cement this belief even further into the Republican psyche.
Do Republicans really believe this? Among party leaders, I don't know. Some always have. Some have convinced themselves just from saying it so often. And some probably don't but play along cynically.
Likewise, among the rank and file, some are believers and some aren't. But as time has passed, and both Fox News and party leaders have unceasingly hammered on this, more and more conservative voters have turned into believers. Trust in elections went down to a dismal 60% in 2008 and stayed there throughout the Obama years even as Republicans won landslide victories in congressional elections. It rebounded a bit during the Trump presidency, but by 2020 trust had already fallen back to about 60%. After the election it fell off a cliff:
The story behind the chart is a simple one: What do you do if Democrats routinely show disdain for fair voting? What if you've tried and tried to get them to clean up their corrupt ward bosses, fake voters, and laughable urban vote counts, but none of it has worked? Answer: You fight back harder. Because American democracy is on its last legs and someone has to do it.
So the stage was all set for Republicans to go ballistic after the 2020 election. They'd known Democrats were cheating for a long time, but never had it been this brazen. Never had Democrats managed to steal the presidency. It was time for war.
If the only way to ensure a fair vote was to restrict early voting and mail voting and other easy targets for cheating, so be it. If Democrats refused to get rid of crooked precinct counters, then Republicans would have to dive into local politics and do it themselves. And if even that wasn't enough, they'd have to reserve the right to let Republican legislatures intervene to make sure that votes were counted accurately.
Naturally, Democrats would fuss and fume and insist that it was Republicans who were playing dirty. But nobody outside their lackeys in the press actually believed that. It was all just pretense. The truth was simpler: Democrats had been all but open about their corruption for years, and in 2020 they finally went too far. Democracy—and America itself—was at stake now. If they wanted war, it was war they'd get.
My knee-jerk reaction to Republicans claiming voter fraud is to say "prove it, or shut up'".
And when they do neither?
Then investigations start, followed by arrests. Don't hold your breath while waiting for Republican evidence of fraud.
That's my issue: if they do genuinely believe this stuff, how do they account for their inability to catch anyone? Much of this "fraud" is taking place in Republican states, and yet they have caught and prosecuted essentially zero of the millions of people involved. This suggests that Democrats are so much smarter than Republicans that they can neither be caught nor imitated.
I’m not interested in fighting for any of my so called fellow citizens. A country that does this is not worth my time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/12/us/civilian-deaths-war-isis.html
Just got done reading that. Definitely preferable to a caliphate bestriding the ME.
Not to me.
So why are you here?
We all know that the Democrats stole the 1960 election. That great American Richard M. Nixon, in the only mistake of his life, decided not to challenge the results in the midst of the Cold War
Nixon did not challenge the results because his side also had questionable activities in downstate Illinois and Illinois wasn't enough to flip the results. The GOP also made allegations about Texas but the margin of error was too big and the evidence lacking so it was not credible. Analysis after the fact indicates that the Kennedy ticket won big enough in Texas that any cheating was moot.
Trust in election results is not a poll worth serving. It's partly why Republicans do nothing for me. Zionism in the name of "whiteness" is not "white". Corded Ware they ain't.
I don't believe Democrats are stealing elections, but our election methods need a comprehensive overhaul. There just can't be any more sudden large shifts in the vote from urban areas at 2:00 am because that does give the appearance of impropriety. I think these late reports from urban districts are the result not of fraud, but of an ancient creaky election system that cannot handle large numbers of ballots in a short time.
As a short term fix, embargo all election results until all districts have reported. Takes care of GOP running up a lead in early returns only to have that reversed by late returning cities. Yes, this would devastate live news coverage of the elections, but I value media ratings and web views much less than the soundness of our representative democracy.
Traditionally, one of the ways Republicans suppress votes in urban areas is by limiting the number of voting booths and precincts. Long lines, long waiting times, court ordered extended voting hours so those in line by the deadline, etc. all means later reporting. That's why we need the Voting Rights Act.
The other big issue is how the GOP works to fix how the results come in so as to prime the pump to doubt the results. In PA for instance they forbid cities and counties from counting early votes ahead of time.
You can't fix mistrust with secrecy and you can't speed up counts while Republicans try to slow them, and even if you did they would just keep believing/pretending this was a reason for their election fixing.
That's not how vote counting works.
Nah. The whole concept of MAGA was/is to go back to a time when "democracy" didn't include voting by women or minorities. Thus, whatever affection they had then, and express now, for "democracy" was not the democracy anyone else thinks of.
There are now amendments restricting what restrictions can be applied to voting rights. But much of protection of voting rights relies on Supreme Court precedents. If the "settled law" precedent of a woman's right to choose can be so easily overruled because that right is not explicitly stated in the Constitution, as it appears will happen, then other Supreme Court rulings can as easily be wiped off the books on the whim of the current conservative supermajority.
For example, Reynolds v. Sims (1964), which established the "one person, one vote" principal. States now must draw districts roughly equal in population. But because that's not explicit in the Constitution, the justices could say it no longer holds. That would be consistent with, and no more radical than, what they seem poised to do in the Dobbs case. Overrule Reynolds and red states could say every county gets "equal" representation in the state legislature, whether it's a rural county with a few thousand in population or an urban county with millions.
Interestingly, minorities are irrelevant to Obama winning the white house. Shows how absolutes do not always matter.
The majority of white women voted for Trump. So they thought they shouldn't have the right to cast their votes?
Kevin has a point. There are two things to explain this: First a sense of entitlement based on the feeling that the GOP is the "real American political party". Second projection: Trump accuses you of trying to cheat him at the exact moment when he is cheating you. It is his way of doing business. The GOP leaders have learnt from him that this works in politics. So they all do it now: They practically announce their intention to cheat by accusing the opposition of cheating.
I don't know how to deal with this. In the case of Trump it is part of his madness--which works well in his business by coincidence. In the case of Ted Cruz or McCarthy it is deliberate mendaciousness--it is impossible that they themselves believe the nonsense they talk. I find it hard to believe that the "base" is so gullible (given the kind of assholes that Cruz or McCarthy obviously are).
+1
But - not gullibility, much of the ‘base’ aspires to be the kind of assholes that McCarthy, Cruz and above all Trump are.
It's like Poland's attack on Germany. I had an old history textbook my school had retired. It had been published in 1938 and had a full chapter on the iniquities the Germans were facing with attacks on people with German ancestry in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. It must have been hard to get the blood off of one's nice clean jackboots. Schindler, the guy with the list, orchestrated the fake Polish attack on a German border outpost.
People who like crushing others always pose themselves as the big victims. It was the poor hard working slaveholders in the South who were being bullied by the horrid abolitionists. It was the nasty, vicious unions crushing the multi-millionaires with their strikes, dying on the job and other work actions. It's the 220 lb weight lifter who tells the police he couldn't take any more abuse from his 90 lb girl friend.
White American Southerners have been whining about how unfairly they're being treated since before the Revolutionary War. The party name might have changed, but they're the same people and the same snowflakes they've always been.
What Kevin appears to be offering here is the GOP's Kyle Rittenhouse defense for killing our democracy.
As long as you believe democracy is in danger from the other side -- regardless of the evidence -- you are entitled to do the dirty deed yourself.
Who knows, it might work.
The thing is, most of these GOP politicians saying Democrats are cheating actually believe it. That's good news. They will take over the election boards here and there, discover that there actually is no cheating. Look at the stupid "audit" in Arizona. They found that Biden actually won by a few more votes than officially reported. I don't think the Rs are actually trying to position themselves for widespread outright election stealing. Yes they will restrict people from voting as much as they can but that will only have a limited impact.
The one thing that is the most dangerous to our democracy is the increasing extremity of Gerrymandering. That's a serious problem and needs to be addressed.
"I don't think the Rs are actually trying to position themselves for widespread outright election stealing."
Good point. However, Trump himself would gladly jump straight to stealing the election if he could pull it off. More compliant election officials adds new risks.
For gerrymandering, there are algorithms that create compact districts that try to follow county lines. But both parties don't want them. Republicans want gerrymandering to help win elections. Democrats want race-based gerrymandering, and they district lines that help them win too.
“But both parties don't want them.”
Except that blue-controlled states are more likely to have politically independent commissions drawing their lines. But sure “both sides do it.”
Nope. Those commissions are rigged. It's why Democrats are picking up 4 house seats. Ohio has a indie commission too man!!!!!(yeah right).
Noted, no actual evidence presented...
I think a lot of the local Republican wannabe officials proclaiming that they wouldn’t have certified the Biden electors are just posturing for the rubes. But I’m concerned that they will paint themselves into a corner; that they will raise unrealistic expectations of GOP victory, and will feel compelled to deliver or face being turfed out themselves. They are taking unjustified risks.
if you believe they're taking over election boards as a serious means of preventing election fraud, you'll also believe that their gerrymandering efforts are good faith attempts to make districts more representative of the electorate.
Eventually one side will purge the other. Inevitable.
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When republicans take over, what will they do? Cut taxes again? Close the border again? Roe will already be gone by next year. Do they dare cut SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and / or ACA? Surely they will increase defense spending. Everyone does that.
Since they have no discernible governing area, I guess it I’ll just be one scam after another. Otherwise harmless? Really annoying for sure, but this is your despicable country.
"...but this is your despicable country."
Of what country are you a resident?
Rolling back legal same sex marriage, restoring anti-sodomy laws, making birth control illegal, rolling back legal thc.
My father is convinced that "everyone" knows that the Democrats stole the election, and that this fact has been reported widely by "every" European newspaper, including The Guardian.
He doesn't read The Guardian (I do, and somehow missed all that reporting on the Democrats stuffing ballot boxes...). I'm sure he heard it on one of his right-wing radio shows, or maybe someone on Fox News. Or maybe he just made it up because it's the kind of "gotcha" he can shout at someone who is liberal and they won't have a ready response because it's a totally bonkers argument.
Republicans believe this nonsense about voter fraud because the vast majority of people around them vote for Republicans, and they think that the vast majority of urban, non-white people are either convicted felons or illegal immigrants, and therefore ineligible to vote. They just can't imagine that there are a majority of voters who disagree with them on who should be running the country. Harping on imagined voter fraud takes up a lot of time and brain space, so that their voters have less time to pay attention to the unpopular stuff their party actually wants to do.
These beliefs about voter fraud are all backed up by random "facts" that they can stew about, without having to think too deeply about them. Most recently there is hoopla about Wisconsin voters who are supposedly over 100 years old. Of course, those are just voter registrations (mostly from small towns) where people were able to register years ago without recording their birth date. That resulted in an automatic assignment of Jan 1, 1900 when the records finally went digital in a statewide system. Will they actually try to remove all those voters from the rolls? Of course not. They know that they're legitimate voters, and that they are more likely to be Republican voters because they're more likely from rural areas.
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I would be interested in knowing what the Russians who support Putin think. Do they think their elections are free and fair, and that they are living in a Democracy? Do they think Putin’s margin of victory was because he is so popular? That the disparaging things said about him are fake news?
Do they know it’s all a sham, but don’t care, or do they truly believe the overwhelming majority of Russians want Putin as their leader for life?
Conservatism can not fail...it can only be failed!!!
Republicans have lost in the market place of ideas, and in reality, and can't handle that.
If you can stomach watching Fox News for a week, you will understand what is going on. That network is pure propaganda and they are destroying this country.
If you participate in any social media site and complain about a threat to democracy, it will immediately provoke protests that "the US is a republic not a democracy." I don't see Republicans fighting for democracy, but loyal fans fighting for their team and objecting to the calls of "unfair" referees.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
~~Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996)