A choice between “a better America and a rising autocratic movement”
A new ad from the Lincoln Project popped up first thing this morning bluntly laying out what’s at stake on November 8th.
“It’s a choice between compassion and conspiracy,” actor Mark Hamill begins, “between hope for a better America and a rising autocratic movement.”
Democracy is on the line. A violent and deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 proved that. We shouldn’t need missiles falling on our cities to drive the point home. And yet….
Lincoln Project senior advisor Stuart Stevens (“It Was All a Lie“) appeared Tuesday evening on “All In with Chris Hayes” to echo Hamill’s sentiment.
“There are those of us who believe that the [Republican] party would expand, that it had to expand if only because America was changing, but we were wrong,” Stevens said.
“Everything that is happening now is very anti-American on the right. It’s an authoritarian movement, not a normal political party.”
Indeed, many on the right now vocally support Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin. Or else support allowing him to overrun Ukraine and further threaten European democracies in NATO. They are “patriotically” rooting for an authoritarian strongman and for the demise of democracy.
Instead of expanding, the Republican Party contracted. A black man won the White House in 2008. Conservative heads exploded and their party collapsed in upon itself the way after exploding a massive star forms a black hole.
MAGA Republicans? The only thing American left about you is your birth certificate.
A few Republicans escaped the Trumpian gravity well. They adapted.
Those outside the autocratic event horizon have to adapt as well.
Karen Tumulty suggests that, seeing the clown show candidates Republicans placed on ballots this fall, some voters will adapt. Some polls show ticket-splitting may be making a comeback. Perhaps a few Republican voters, enough to make a difference, will vote for Democrats.
But Americans (including Democrats) accustomed to sitting out midterm elections need to adapt as well. Those apathetic about voting or cynically comfortable with not voting at all need to adapt.
Unless they’d care to wake up soon in Russia.
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