- 22 May 2022 18:07
#15228886
"Democracy is bleeding out, and for at least a year, it has been obvious that it is too late to save it. But seemingly every columnist and pundit from MSNBC to Fox to the major papers and even higher-brow magazines is committed to pretending otherwise.
Like the people I am critiquing here, I spend a lot of time writing about American elections, political strategies, and so on. I do not, however, have any personal or professional reasons to pretend that elections are fairly democratic when they are not. I will most likely continue to write post-mortems for American democracy for many years to come, because there is a lot to say about a country that has fallen into an authoritarian, post-democratic dystopia.
And so it will be here, with Republicans finding it useful to tantalize us with the idea that future elections might go either way, to keep everyone interested and invested in the system. But it will be a sham, because once they have seized power, Republicans will not relinquish it.
But even if that could have happened, why is that a problem? In the high school civics version of this, a party that -- no matter its selection process -- nominates a weirdo will lose in the general election when voters abandon that party. That that is not happening anymore is not because of nomination rules but because Republican voters will vote for their nominee no matter what. And weirdos like that will win general elections in many more places than they otherwise would, because of voter suppression and gerrymandering.
And so it will be here, with Republicans finding it useful to tantalize us with the idea that future elections might go either way, to keep everyone interested and invested in the system. But it will be a sham, because once they have seized power, Republicans will not relinquish it."
http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2022/05/the-el ... x-and.html
You never know, but this is what I think is our fate, followed by an across the board decline of the country.
Like the people I am critiquing here, I spend a lot of time writing about American elections, political strategies, and so on. I do not, however, have any personal or professional reasons to pretend that elections are fairly democratic when they are not. I will most likely continue to write post-mortems for American democracy for many years to come, because there is a lot to say about a country that has fallen into an authoritarian, post-democratic dystopia.
And so it will be here, with Republicans finding it useful to tantalize us with the idea that future elections might go either way, to keep everyone interested and invested in the system. But it will be a sham, because once they have seized power, Republicans will not relinquish it.
But even if that could have happened, why is that a problem? In the high school civics version of this, a party that -- no matter its selection process -- nominates a weirdo will lose in the general election when voters abandon that party. That that is not happening anymore is not because of nomination rules but because Republican voters will vote for their nominee no matter what. And weirdos like that will win general elections in many more places than they otherwise would, because of voter suppression and gerrymandering.
And so it will be here, with Republicans finding it useful to tantalize us with the idea that future elections might go either way, to keep everyone interested and invested in the system. But it will be a sham, because once they have seized power, Republicans will not relinquish it."
http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2022/05/the-el ... x-and.html
You never know, but this is what I think is our fate, followed by an across the board decline of the country.
Facts have a well known liberal bias