This is not a drill
Republicans and their allies “are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system,” a “wide-ranging and methodical effort … to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump.”
You heard multiple speakers claim that this week in Milwaukee. It’s not just rhetoric (gift article):
But unlike the chaotic and improvised challenge four years ago, the new drive includes a systematic search for any vulnerability in the nation’s patchwork election system.
Mr. Trump’s allies have followed a two-pronged approach: restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of Election Day and short-circuiting the process of ratifying the winner afterward, if Mr. Trump loses. The latter strategy involves an ambitious — and legally dubious — attempt to reimagine decades of settled law dictating how results are officially certified in the weeks before the transfer of power.
That’s on top of state legal challenges to Democrats changing candidates in midstream if thatn happens.
Stuart Stevens looks back on his days in Republican politics in Ohio for The Atlantic and ponders how that state went from having a “high-functioning party with a boringly predictable pro-business sentiment” to electing J.D. Vance as senator. The sad truth is “that the old guard surrendered to forces contrary to what it had espoused as lifelong values.” Ohio Republicans have a lot of company from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
“The once staunchly midwestern, mainstream Ohio GOP has now given us the first vice-presidential nominee who has pledged not to follow the Constitution if it stands in the way of political victory,” Stevens writes.
It’s the conclusion that should draw your attention:
As historians frequently observe, autocrats are skilled at using the tools and benefits of democracy to end democracy. In the preface to their brilliant How Democracies Die, the Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote, “Blatant dictatorship—in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule—has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by different means.”
You’re watching that happen in real time … if you let it.
Stevens is watching too.
Stevens is not alone.
But let’s let someone (formerly) close to Donald Trump speak plainly to what’s at stake. BTW, her uncle “is currently out on bail in three jurisdictions.”
“Please, vote accordingly,” says Mary Trump.
But more importantly, do more. Don’t sit on your asses while members of a fascist movement march the streets and run for office where you live. It’s not someone else’s job to defend the republic. It’s yours. With your money, with your time, and with your sweat. That’s my daily public service announcement.
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