Stop The Steal

 Josh Marshall lays out the plans for those who intend to steal the 2024 election. Basically, it's a given among most Republicans right now that majority rule is illegitimate. Some of them crouch this in theoretical language about the US being a "republic not a democracy." Others rely on the Palin/Trump frame of "real Muricans" live in the country and all those urban hipsters don't count.

As an aside, I'm sick of "do something" Twitter that decries how Democrats don't practice brass knuckled politics like Republicans. Democrats have the support of the majority of the country. Period. Their policies are popular. People want Democrats to run things. But we are in thrall to a series of 18th century ideas about government, namely Montesquieu's ideas about divided government preventing tyranny and the overrepresentation of rural populations in the Senate and Electoral College. Those are structural and functionally impossible to change. Grow up. We live in the real world, not the imaginary world of you and your Twitter Feed.

Anyway, back to Republicans.

As Marshall notes, there were a few key figures who refused to go along with Trump's efforts to end American electoral democracy, notably Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger. However, if Trump had managed to steal Georgia's electoral votes, Biden still becomes president. Importantly, Georgia will elect a new Secretary of State in 2022. Raffensberger will lose the primary, but if a Democrat can be dragged over the finish line and become SoS, those are the sort of bulwarks that can be erected against efforts to steal the 2024 election.

This also goes for the House and Senate elections next fall. My optimism, such as it is, is that the GOP has gerrymandered as much as they possibly can and there are fewer options to automatically pick up seats, outside of Montana. Plus, Democrats ARE looking at doing their own gerrymandering, which might be lamentable in other contexts, but right now it's an emergency to preserve even a narrow House majority.

I'm also hopeful that much of the GOP assault on democracy backfires. We won't really know until next November, but hopefully the nature of January 6th, combined with the GOP Death Cult on Covid, combined with the continued nihilism of the GOP will lead the suburban voters (who vote reliably in midterms) to continue their migration to the Democratic party. I also think the voter suppression efforts will backfire and motivate minority voters to come to the polls.

All of this seems rather pollyannish, given the situation. And I don't mean to undercut the urgency of fighting GOP anti-democracy efforts. Just the opposite.

I do worry that the hair-on-fire nature of much of the discourse might depress Democrats. It's urgent, yes, but not quite dire.