Brian Beutler has a good piece of advice for one of his readers today:
@suzannecloud: What should the Dems do if Trump calls off the midterms (for whatever reason) and the Republicans support it?
I’m going to take the liberty of rewriting this question just a bit: What should Dems do if (or, really, when) Trump takes illegal actions to subvert the midterms and Republicans support it?
Trump can’t just say “no midterms” and expect it to mean anything, but he could, say, order ICE agents to raid election offices, or seize ballots—criminal-dictatorial acts that would make the results of any subsequent election impossible to accept. In situations like that, I suspect things would get out of hand very quickly. Democrats can’t really plan for stuff like that, but they do need to look inside themselves and ask whether they’re courageous enough to resist in ways that might get them arrested or worse.
Short of Republicans embracing outright, violent criminality, I think Dems need to have two goals, which I’ve largely cribbed from Marc Elias.
- Be hyper-vigilant and hyper-litigious against GOP efforts to choose the electorate, through attacks on registration, familiar kinds of voter suppression, and more speculative ones, like, say, deploying armed federal agents to polling places.
- Prepare both legal and street-level responses to GOP efforts to steal elections post facto. They will try to get votes tossed, they will try to deny certification, they might even refuse to seat duly elected officials. Democrats should do whatever they can to pre-empt that kind of thing, but also be ready to fight it in court and maybe even with their bodies. Brooks Brothers riots, but for good rather than evil.
An important side note, though, is that they shouldn’t carry themselves like weaklings, fretting constantly about how Republicans might victimize them next year. That carries loser stench. They should treat all GOP efforts to cheat as totally expected and bound to fail. Insist that fair elections are non-negotiable. Try what they might, Republicans will not get away with any of it. Republicans feel empowered when they suspect they won’t meet resistance, and “I’m worried Republicans will try X, Y, Z” communicates something subtly but critically different from “We’re ready to stop X, Y, Z.”
That last is especially important. I know that my writing here on the blog often sounds weak and despairing these days but I’m determined to try to fight it. Brian’s advice about how to communicate the resistance strategy is sound. It’s impossible to know if the Dems can prevail in this battle. But it’s important to acknowledge that they are going to do this and that they are ready to resist. From what I’m seeing right now, they seem to be willing to do that.