You can look at Florida as a sign of the direction this country is going in. Ten percent of the adults in that state have been disenfranchised by various laws. If you can take away the right to vote for a million people and not cause an uprising, you can take it away from ten million or fifty million or whatever amount you need.
We’ll still have elections. But the Republicans will control the elections by deciding who is allowed to vote. By controlling the elections, they can stay in control of the government. And by staying in control of the government, they’ll be able to control the election.
They’ll allow the Democrats to still exist and even let them win a few token elections. But the Democrats will never be allowed to have enough power to change anything. Their role in the political system will be to serve as the equivalent of the Washington Generals.
Why would the current leadership of the Republican party allow this? They can control the primaries even easier than they can control general elections.
If people think this can’t happen here in America, keep in mind it has happened here. The Democrats created a one-party system in the south that lasted for generations. And there was nothing in their political or legal system that would have stopped it from going on forever. The only reason one-party rule was broken up was because the federal government finally decided to intervene. But if one party ever succeeds in establishing similar control over the federal government, there will be no higher level to stop them.
Lemann’s analysis is that whenever post-Trump happens, whether in '21 or '25, the Republican Party is going to have to figure out what it is going to be instead of the “party of Trump”. He identifies three possible directions:
(Emphasis added, for clarity.) Interesting discussion, especially since AFAICT these aren’t just theoretical speculations about hypothetical alternatives. The Republican Party is really at some kind of a crossroads with a heavily divided constituency. They have papered over the divisions for decades by encouraging non-wealthy white voters to believe that wealthy conservative elites are their natural allies and defenders, but ISTM that that pretense is wearing thin now.
Some kind of shift has got to happen soon in the GOP: either
(1) double down on the Trumpian politics of delusional ignorance and embrace it as an identity rather than an aberration, or
(2) try to re-establish the ancien regime of the Republican establishment and keep stringing along the non-establishment Republicans with the standard social-liberalism boogeymen such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage, or
(3) pivot toward actual economic populism and abandon the elite-friendly anti-government posturing, acknowledging at last that government has a legitimate job to do in service to the people’s well-being and demanding that it be held accountable for its responsibilities.
Add Democratic senators. That requires adding states that will likely vote Democrat. DC is a no brainer. Then maybe Puerto Rico. Then maybe some conglomerated territories in the Pacific.
Expand the Supreme Court.
This would be the best assurance for a Democratic hegemony and a Republican demise. All legit, allowed by the Constitution, and (arguably?) in accordance with the will of the majority of the American people.
Agreed. Step 1 is obviously the most urgent, and is likely to happen if the Republican cheating can be contained.
Steps 2, 3, and 4, assuming step 1 occurs, will be up to Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi. They will have the power to either end the Republican Party as we know it, or delay the demise of the Democratic Party should they fall into the misguided trap of bipartisanship in the style of Obama’s first two years.
My predictions are that (1) will definitely happen in the event of a Trump victory. 2024 will be a primary of who can out-Trump who, possibly with Donald himself running for a third term.
In the event of Trump’s defeat, I think that (1) is still a distinct possibility, but with (2) at least being plausible. Someone like Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton could be nominated in 2024, with the idea that they are trying to be a current day Reagan rather than Trump. The success or failure of either strategy in a general election will depend on how well Biden does.
The 3rd option seems silly to me. I don’t see any way that could happen without a drastic change in society. Basically it would involve the evangelicals rejecting their bigotry. That’s difficult to imagine.
Which has happened to both national parties in the course of their histories. See Little Nemo’s post re: the old-time segregationist Southern Democrats. The name does not make the thing.
Now, if we’re going into the “what could go wrong” line of thought, w hat may be a concern would be that we may be headed into a new age of ultrapopulism/ultraidentitarianism, where whatever incarnations of the parties replace their familiar versions, neither will be about what you and I consider the best or finest intellectual understanding of liberal democracy, if they want to win, but about both promising their “base” sweet opposition tears, and profit/benefits. The society itself embracing those politics as a way to not end up always losing.
This is the key difference between the two Doomsday Scenarios. The Democrats have been pretty consistently getting more votes than the Republicans for a long time now, and this is what would enable them to carry out such a scorched earth policy. The Republicans can only pull such as stunt by gaming the system with gerrymandering, voter suppression and the like.
And that means that, while Democrats would be screwed if the Republicans win, because there’s no way they could overcome those means of “winning”, the Republicans actually have a way out, if they can bring themselves to take it. That is, they need to start advancing policies that might win over voters, and convince said voters that they’re actually serious about those policies.
Now, maybe that’s very unlikely to happen, but it’s not impossible, and if the Republicans can’t do it, they’ve got no one to blame but themselves.
I’m not using that as a dog whistle for rigging elections in their favor. I’m talking about getting rid of all the rigging. Establish the basic principles of everyone having a right to vote, everyone’s vote being counted equally, and elections being won based on who gets the most votes. It’s a little thing I like to call democracy.
Had RBG survived until 1/20/2021, that would have been an excellent plan. Unfortunately it’s no longer viable with the current makeup of the SCOTUS, even with a blue tsunami election this fall. Any such laws that Democrats pass will be ruled unconstitutional. The reasoning won’t matter, they’ll come up with something. The only way around it is to pack the court and to then prevent the Republican from re-packing it by destroying the current version of the party.
ETA: My suggestion on how the Democrats can destroy the current Republican Party is for them to pass laws that actually benefit the people. Voting reform needs to be part of it, but also fixing healthcare, environmental legislation, fixing the social safety net, and so on. Things that will work and make the Democrats popular enough to win the 2022 mid-terms and 2024 POTUS race.
I don’t feel we’re that far apart in our overall positions. We just differ on how best to achieve them.
I agree with the idea of the Democrats presenting a platform with popular appeal. But I feel the next priority has to be making sure we have a system that allows popular appeal to be translated into winning elections. Otherwise we’ll continue with the same pattern we have now; the Democrats have the support of the majority of people but the Republicans hold political power.
And you can be sure that the Republicans in such a situation will do EVERYthing they can to disrupt, delay and block such legislation. The “Party of Hell No” will re-emerge. There will be a sudden anguish (again) about debt and deficits. The Republican party as it is currently formulated has nothing whatsoever to do with governing the country; they are about destroying institutions and making sure that good governance cannot happen.
This is why Schumer needs to get rid of the filibuster on Day 1. He and Pelosi then need to work on a bill to update the Judiciary Act of 1869, which would be the first step in packing the court.
One thing to be sure - the Democrats need to know that there will be NO support from Republicans, NO bipartisanship, NO decorum, NO attempt to work with them, NO thoughts whatsoever about doing what is good for the country.
The Republicans have burnt that bridge, stomped on the ashes and pissed on the remains.
I agree. ACB joining the court and the rulings they are now handing down mean (at least in IMHO) that SCOTUS has declared themselves to be more loyal to the Republican Party than to the United States. I don’t think they will back down. What I’m left to conclude is that the only two options are a complete Democratic victory or a complete Republican victory, which would mean the end of the US as free country and put into the same category as Turkey, Russia, and Hungary.
For the record, I think the underlying issue that drove us to this point is the demographic changes that have made the current Republican Party an almost guaranteed loser in a fair election. Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona are shifting blue due to demographic changes. In a world without Republican voter suppression they would likely be reliable blue states by 2028. South Carolina would have likely followed in the 2030s. The Republican’s only choices were to either adapt and enlarge their coalition or to try to cheat their way to victory. Adapting to enlarge their coalition would have meant rejecting bigotry as a part of their platform, and it looks like they were unwilling to go there.