Put that way, “revolution” is the word that immediately comes to mind, but I doubt a majority of Americans, liberals in particular, are anywhere near the point where that is a viable option.
There’s a good graphic on this that I saw here. It’s astonishing how many Democrats are packed into districts where Republicans don’t even bother to run.
The whole thing is amazingly corrosive. You simply can’t have a democracy where one side has to win huge majorities multiple cycles in a row to even get any of their agenda completed, and the other can enact all their agenda with a minority of the vote because they had one big win in 2010. I’m not sure what you call it, but when elections are just vestigial formalities you’re in very dangerous territory.
There isn’t really an answer to that in the offing, though. “We are a republic, not a democracy” is a line used by people solely to stress “not a democracy.” “Are a republic” isn’t the part being thought about except, in some cases, to selectively defend a particular part of the Constitution.
That is exactly the plot that RTFirefly linked to earlier that I was referring to, and you can really see the sparseness I mentioned by looking at it.
The narrowest Dem victory was D + 0.4%. That’s the blue circle on the 50/50 line.
The second narrowest Dem victory was D +12 in district 74 at about the 3/4 line if you divide the graph horizontally into quarters.
All other Dem wins were by 20 points or more.
Those two seats are essentially what is up for grabs in any assembly election in the realistically achievable range of ±8.5.
Excellent point. And if most of them did think about the “republic” part they’d probably reject that, too.
What they really want is a good, wise King–one who will protect them from Those People.
This is a coup, pure and simple. The fact that it’s being executed via the trappings of democracy doesn’t change that fact.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that David Frum is right:
I was thinking of that exact quote - Republican leader Vos more or less said as much in his statements to the press by saying that they don’t trust Evers not to change the things they’ve accomplished over the past eight years.
You simply can’t have a stable democracy when one group wins when they win and the other side has to play Calvinball when they win until they end up actually losing. I guess the “best” outcome from the GOP perspective is that the Democrats get demoralized and give up, but I fear there’s a corollary to that Frum quote, which is that if it is impossible to achieve your goals through any peaceful democratic means, you don’t change your goals, you change your methods.
How many times are people going to post that opinioncentric quote on this thread?
That quote is a perfect summary of what Republicans in Wisconsin are up to.
I find it funny that you criticize the quote as opinion, and also perfectly embody exactly what he’s talking about.
Three times. The thread is not that long. It’s been posted three times.
You’re welcome.
And it passed. 16-15, with one republican splitting with his party to support the dems. They’re about as shy about their antidemocratic goals here as pkbites was in his defense of them.
Without putting too fine a point on it, Scott Fitzgerald is an authoritarian scumbag who deserves to be strung up by his nipples. “If you were on our side we wouldn’t need to strip you of the power vested in you by Wisconsin voters.” Anyone who believes in governance by consent of the governed should be shaken by his statements.
This measure would or could be undone anytime there is a Democratic legislature + Democratic governor, or Republican legislature + Republican governor in the future, right?
Of course, barring a court order ending the extreme gerrymandering in Wisconsin, Democratic control of the legislature may never happen. And from the Republican POV, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Oftentimes a cause is so dear to people that it can’t be ditched just because the democratic method won’t get it through.
Suppose America became a theocracy that banned abortion, LGBT rights, minority rights, etc. and allowed for no “peaceful democratic” means of getting those things back. Are their supporters supposed to ditch those causes just because they can’t get them at the ballot box?
Sure. So what? The state legislature will remain in its current composition within an approximately 16-point margin due to an aggressive gerrymander, and the republican majority exists despite the democrats winning far more votes. An antidemocratically elected legislation pushed to strip the winners of races they couldn’t gerrymander of significant amounts of political power. The fact that a future legislature could undo this does nothing to change how gross this is. And even then, one of the proposals passed restricts early voting - the goal here being to make it harder to vote, which generally favors Republicans. If you care about democracy, you should be incensed by this. And if you don’t care about democracy… Well, go ahead and join most of the rest of the republican party in the “power at all costs” corner.
Typically, people in those situations turn towards revolutions, and, honestly, we might be heading towards something like that with these GOP coups.
The maneuvers aren’t going to cause the Democrats to give up; they’re going to turn the Democrats into a more radical anti-system party that may seek revolutionary means to achieve its goals.
There’s a pretty fucking big difference between “we lost an election because our views are unpopular” and “the will of the people is fundamentally unachievable”. Indeed, given that what’s going on here is a full-on assault on democracy, your example is pretty ironic. Also, ywanna compare basic human rights to (to name one of the many power grabs they just passed) control over a public corporation? Really?
My apologies to all for doing that (but not for the sentiments expressed). Blame it on multiple message boards and an increasingly poor memory.