Wouldn’t that all be State issues though? I understand the Federal government would have little control? Or am I wrong.
You are under the misconception that lack of polling stations is a funding issue. Lack of polling stations is a voter suppression issue, plain and simple. I have been voting in California for over 3 decades, and have never had to travel more than a mile or wait more than 10 minutes to vote. That’s because my county actually believes in democracy and wants people to vote. The places that you see on the news with the ludicrously hours-long waits are all in states where the powers that be don’t want the “wrong” people voting.
It has to do with the great difficulty any elected authoritarian faces in dismantling the rule of law. It took Putin roughly a decade.
Trump wants to jail his political opponents. He says it at every rally. He just hasn’t figured out how to make it stick yet.
Newest example:
Leaders who joke about becoming a full lock-up-the-opposition dictator usually become one.
So Sam, did you read that concurrence by Kavanaugh in the Wisconsin decision? Did you see where he made shit up about the necessity of having the election wrapped up by election night? Originalist? Yeah, that was original, alright. (Also a total piece of crap that people have spent a day tallying up all the mistakes in it, but I digress.)
And now Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch have said that, no, they can’t reconsider the Pennsylvania non-decision before the election, but afterwards, when everybody knows whose ox might be gored by counting the ballots that arrive between Tuesday night and Friday afternoon, then they can reconsider it.
Can’t be any more fucking blatant than setting themselves up a ‘heads they win, tails we lose’ opportunity.
Then there needs to be rules on the number of polling stations per district population. What you really need is an electoral commission that is operated independently and at Federal level that has teeth and can impose rules and conditions over the governance of elections.
To quote Atrios:
Back in 2000, the idea that the Supremos would intervene at all was seen as an extremely out of the ordinary event, whatever one thought about whether that they did and how they did was appropriate. Now they’ve decided they are the local election board of 50 states and 3000 counties.
Originalism!
Perhaps even literally in light of calls from some on the far right for a “Second Constitutional Convention”.
Let’s remember that the “permanent defeat” is a pretty rare bird. The biggest losses seen in recent history (defined, as always, as being in my lifetime) were by the Republicans in 1964 and by the Democrats in 1972. In both instance the party that suffered said crushing blow won the White House again not 3 or 4 elections later, but in the very next election.
If it is the democratic party, you can say good-bye to democracy forever. I would equate that to the transition of Rome the Republic to Rome the Empire.
I meant that literally. Trump hasn’t changed the Republican party, he’s simply put the focus on the actual core of the party, people who hate the Constitution for giving freedom and equality to people they don’t like.
Sure, but that was an era where people had fast and loose political identities and many millions could flip from D to R or vice versa from election to election. We’re a far more baked-in, hardened electorate now, bitterly entrenched. Which means, also, that a political lead is far more solid and reliable than before. If Democrats can get a consistent 5-10 percent lead over Republicans in national elections from this point on, they’re likely to never lose it. A 5-point advantage today is as good as a 20-point advantage half a century ago.
Carter’s term was basically an interregnum and did little to advance liberal causes. Not because Carter was a secret conservative, but because he was an ineffective leader despite being a great person. When Bill Clinton won in 1992, the Democratic Party was still liberal, but no longer the party of big projects like the New Deal or Great Society. That party may re-emerge, possibly as soon as next year, but at the very least that would mean it took 52 years to make a return.
Regarding the Republican loss in 1964, what re-emerged in 1968 was a different party. I would argue that Eisenhower Republicanism did die in the 1960 election. Even if it does make a comeback, it would be 60+ years counting as of today. It seems extremely unlikely that kind of Republican Party will emerge any time soon.
ETA: If anything, the Democratic Party of Clinton and Obama was probably the closest we’ve come to Eisenhower style Republicanism.
“Eisenhower Republicanism” emerged as a response to the New Deal and was basically “less of the same”. Regardless of the outcome of the Carter presidency, my earlier comment was directed at its method of coming into being. If Carter had been more effective and managed to pull the hostage rescue and either reverse the Nixon/Ford recession or convince the electorate that he would in a second term, he could have pulled off a victory in '80.
My initial point is that parties, as institutions, hate to lose and will adapt into whatever they have to be to not lose. I hate to think what a Democratic adaptation to trumpism will be, but if he ekes out a victory (in yet a second election he was widely expected to lose), we’re going to see it. Some will argue, not in these exact words of course: “If sanity doesn’t work anymore, we’ll need to bring our own brand of crazy.”
And this will matter how? 2024 would be an election in name only.
Some people just love the drama of pretending to be a victim of a dictatorship. I am old enough to remember when Bush and Cheney were going to use the Iraq war as an excuse to cancel the 2004 election and form a dictatorship.
That’s why, when someone says that a leader is trying to be a dictator, you need to check out actual rhetoric. It is hard to destroy democracy without laying the groundwork, over a period of years, by letting your supporters in on the plan.
So I would look to see if they are ordering the jailing of politicians who run against them. Not just once (everyone is entitled to a few gaffes), but at rally after rally.
I would also ask how often they repudiated free media by referring to it as something similar to “the enemy of the people?” (Trump - 36 times).
I’d also look at their attitude when a foreign leader declares himself leader for life. Did they say it was good or bad?
If their idea of a good, repeated joke is to threaten to be president for life themself, that sounds to me another tell.
If someone who opposes a politician claims that something like the above is their plan, but the politician doesn’t say it, then it could well be the kind of pretend you are talking about.
Bush and Obama didn’t openly favor dictatorship, which tells me that, whatever their opponents said, they weren’t actually moving their nation to dictatorship.
Over 100K votes are about to be thrown out in Texas. There is a very real chance this could swing the state from Biden to Trump. And we’re being dramatic?
The evidence for dictatorship is people going through the legal system to decide a constitutional question? The worst case scenario for Democrats is that they are forced to vote on election day. In real dictatorships people are not mildly inconvenienced by a judge.
Plenty of authoritarian governments maintain the veneer of legitimacy by technically having legal processes for everything and even what look like democratic institutions giving seemingly limited powers to the people in charge.
That’s obviously not where the US is now, but pillars keep getting taken down that make it more and more likely.
Also to the ballot-tossing - when ballots that have already been cast get thrown out, its a near certainty that many of the people who cast those ballots will not know they need to vote again - which of course is why the GOP waited to challenge this after voting started.
The Texas Supreme Court already ruled on this, and allowed the drive through voting to proceed. What will happen is that Judge Hanen will overturn the decision. On appeal to SCOTUS the hyper-textual claim that only state legislatures and not state supreme courts can manage elections will be used as an excuse to uphold Judge Hanen’s ruling overturning the Texas Supreme Court. Kavanaugh already indicated in the Wisconsin ruling that this is the justification he will be using. This is what I’m predicting will occur.