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The only way to save democracy is to vote for Democrats

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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By Max Boot


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It has been stirring to see so many Americans come together to support Ukraine’s fight for freedom. But it is dismaying to see that there is no similar consensus on defending democracy at home. Indeed, much of the country remains in denial about the threat.
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A year after the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol, a CNN poll asked whether it’s likely “that, in the next few years, some elected officials will successfully overturn the results of an election.” Fifty-one percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Democrats said it’s not at all likely. Only 46 percent of Democrats and independents said that U.S. democracy is under attack, which helps to explain why Democratic candidates aren’t campaigning on defending democracy.
This reminds me of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denying before Feb. 24 that a Russian invasion was imminent and telling people not to “panic” even as Russian armies were massing in plain sight. Panic is generally a bad idea, but sometimes it is warranted. Now is one of those times for anyone who cares about the fate of U.S. democracy.
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Republicans have succeeded in restricting voting rights in 19 states. Democrats have failed to protect voting rights at the national level because they can’t break a Senate filibuster. Meanwhile at least 23 supporters of the Big Lie – which holds that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump – are running for secretary of state posts to oversee elections in 19 states. Other election deniers are joining election boards.


Fealty to the Big Lie has become a litmus test for Republican candidates because it has become gospel for Republican voters. More than 70 percent of Republicans regard Biden’s victory as illegitimate. Despite all the damning details that have emerged about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Trump remains the dominant figure within the GOP, which means that most Republicans have tacitly accepted that inciting an insurrection is no big deal.
Look at what just happened in Ohio’s U.S. Senate primary: J.D. Vance, who had been languishing in third place, won the nomination after Trump endorsed him. A fervent, born-again Trumpkin, Vance told a Vanity Fair reporter that Trump supporters “should seize the institutions of the left” and launch a “de-woke-ification program” modeled on de-Baathication in Iraq. (That worked so well, right?) He says that if Trump wins again in 2024, he should “fire … every civil servant” and “replace them with our people.” If the courts try to stand in the way, ignore them. As Vanity Fair noted, “This is a description, essentially, of a coup.”
If Trump wins again, he undoubtedly will be eager to implement such an authoritarian agenda. We continually learn more about his deranged desires, which were only thwarted by the kind of responsible officeholders who will never get appointed in another Trump term.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper writes that Trump wanted to shoot peaceful protesters and launch missiles at Mexico. “He is an unprincipled person who, given his self-interest, should not be in the position of public service,” Esper concludes. Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton says that having Trump back in the White House would threaten U.S. national security. Trump’s former communications director Anthony Scaramucci tweets, “Anyone who worked for Trump knows he is a maniac.”
Yet 70 percent of Republicans want this “maniac” to run again in 2024. If he does run, he will win the nomination – and on the present trajectory (with inflation spiking and Biden’s approval rating plunging) he has a good chance to win the White House.
His “trump card,” so to speak, is the House, which is likely to be under GOP control after the midterms. CNBC founder Tom Rogers and former Democratic Sen. Timothy Wirth point out in Newsweek that controlling the House can allow Trump to steal the presidency if the election is close.
Republican state legislatures in swing states that Biden (or another Democrat) narrowly wins can claim the results are fraudulent and send in competing slates of electors pledged to Trump. The House and Senate would then vote on which electors to accept. Even if the Senate remains Democratic, a GOP-controlled House could prevent Biden from getting the 270 electoral votes needed to win. It would then fall to the House to decide the presidency.
A majority of House Republicans already voted in 2020 to throw out electoral college votes for Biden. Even more are likely to do so in 2024 after four years of Trumpist purges. With the support of the Jan. 6 Republicans, the orange emperor can waltz back into the White House and finish destroying U.S. democracy.
There is no plausible electoral college reform bill that could avert such a catastrophe. The only way to save democracy is to vote for Democrats in the fall. And I say that as an ex-Republican turned independent. It doesn’t matter if you disagree with Democrats on some issues. The overriding issue is the preservation of our democracy.
That may sound hyperbolic to some – but that’s precisely the problem. Like so many Ukrainians before Feb. 24, most Americans remain in denial about the threat to our country.
 
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The problem is that we don’t even have a democracy anymore. That’s not just my opinion, but it’s actually something that President Carter said almost a decade ago after the Edward Snowden leaks. Scholars for the last couple years have categorized the United States as an “Anocracy“, a direct result of the situation caused by Trump and his supporters.

It’s unclear whether propping up the establishment, which is almost entirely corporate, would be better than allowing it to collapse, because it will sooner or later. Our constitution is irreparably flawed, catastrophically dysfunctional, and I don’t believe that the United States will exist as such in a generation from now. That doesn’t have to mean it’s going to be total chaos and Civil War.

it’s not Democrat versus Republican in other words.

It’s a libertarian hyper capitalist and/or corporate fascist surveillance state hellscape versus a more egalitarian and communitarian and sustainable social democracy on the other.

i’m sure people will be triggered by the word “social“ because we’ve had more than a century of paranoid propaganda hurled against it, so have at it trolls.
 
Whatever it is, it's absolutely rigged for the wealthy and the Republicans are trying to make it even moreso. They don't even pretend to try and do anything to help everyday Americans. NO to everything. Infrastructure. Cheaper drugs. More affordable health care. They're against everything that doesn't make money for big oil and wealthy corporations - their donors.
 
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