The Last Election
We can all scream at the Roberts Court for what it’s done to Roe v Wade but their war on Americans has been a long one.
Last year’s Brnovitch vs Democratic National Committee was a 6–3 decision saying that states could put up moderate barriers to voting such as Arizona enacting strict “ballot harvesting” laws that are aimed directly at Navajo voters, a bloc that tended to vote Democrat in 2020.
Shelby County v Holder was a huge blow to the Voting Rights Act. It gutted a provision that required areas with a history of discrimination to get clearance from the Department of Justice before enacting voter restrictions.
It’s not just the court though. We all remember watching Georgia’s Secretary of State, the official in charge of administering elections in the state, administer his own election in 2018 despite the gigantic conflict of interest.
It’s watching predominantly black people wait hours and hours outside their polling places because states keep reducing the number of polling places in large cities where Democratic voting blocs lie.
It’s the steadfast refusal of anyone to attempt to make Election Day a national holiday so people who work regular jobs don’t have to miss work waiting in line for an hour to vote.
In Pennsylvania the legislature is pushing through “Voting reform” that would allow poll watchers from any part of the state to travel to any other part of the state to watch people vote. It’s a big concession to the Big Lie that somehow big team D managed to bamboozle the country by slipping in ballots in Milwaukee, Philly, and Atlanta. That provision was not written so some Pittsburgh suburban liberals can travel to Warren County to make sure everything is on the up-and-up. It’s so some good ol boys strapped with their open carrys can drive from Bradford County to Harrisburg and intimidate the non-white voters.
It’s gerrymandering suddenly getting its time in the spotlight, with the largest percentage of Americans ever calling for gerrymandering reform and everyone punting on it.
In 2019 Roberts really pulled off his greatest victory, when the court ruled 5–4 that federal courts have no reason to entangle themselves with partisan gerrymandering. Despite the fact that it effectively steals millions of Americans rights to free and fair elections, gerrymandering could continue unababted.
AND IT DID. Texas actually showed real restraint in not torpedoing its growing Democratic population. Instead it essentially locked in 30 of its Congressional districts so there’s no chance of a different party winning. Meanwhile Dems continue to lose ground with Latino voters and look to lose the few swing districts left in the state. Ohio is doing a brilliant job gerrymandering an 11–4 Republican rout after 10 years of 12–4 representation in a state where 45% of residents voted for Joe Biden. They even broke their own constitutional amendment to do it.
All in all it looks like Dems will lose a net of 3 seats just to redistricting this year according to cook political report. Cook also determined that only about 30 House seats will even be competitive this cycle. That’s not democracy.
A lot of this could have been avoided by passing the For the People Act. The bill would have stopped partisan gerrymandering and made a host of election reforms. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema blew that up. The one bill that was built to give Dems a fighting chance against the Republicans mafia-like control of a majority of state legislatures. The one bill that would have made it more likely Democrats would be elected and two senators actively opposed it. And the Dems just gave up. As if they’ll ever get the chance again.
So we see what’s going on right? As Republican legislatures neuter their Democratic governors or straight up wrest control of elections away from secretarys of state in service to the Big Lie, the ground work for a 2020 redux is being built.
All the while I read the headlines and think, “Is no one else seeings this? Orange man’s coup failed in 2020 and so the GOP helpfully tore down several of the guide posts to make it easier next time.”
The GOP is poised to seize power and the Democrats are going to outflank them by just straight up conceding it to them.
Look where we are, the party had 2 months to plan for Roe v Wade’s overturn and they sang a song and read a poem about it.
They clearly never formulated any kind of plan. Biden doesn’t really seem to care about it, remember he was a pro-life senator at one point.
Biden will NEVER forgive any meaningful amount of student debt because he believes America is still the 70’s where you can bootstrap your way through college loans.
He’s old school anti-marijuana, if anyone here seriously believed he would do anything positive on that front I have a bridge to sell you.
In the heart of George Floyd protests he decided the best way to reform the police was to give them more money.
He has tons of slam dunk policy sitting right in front of him, the kind of policy that would unite his deteriorating party behind him without alienating the mythical “moderate independent swing voter” that 90% of Dems worship at the alter of. He refuses to even consider any of them.
When the Speaker of the House says the country “needs a strong republican party” who is that for? A weak republican party took away the right to an abortion, they’re attacking LGBTQ communities, passing laws allowing drivers to run over and kill protesters. A strong Florida GOP passed the Dont Say Gay Bill. A strong Texas GOP put a bounty on abortion. (silly them they should have just waited six months. I bet they feel foolish now) What would those politicians do when they take power?
Democrat leadership is living in some fantasy political environment that’s half The West Wing and half rose-colored nostalgia for an environment that frankly never existed.
If the party is going to try and tweet through it and just keep saying “We’ll get them next time” they’re going to lose and lose badly these midterms.
And with Biden fully powerless to a hostile congress he’ll have nothing but an infrastructure bill to run on in 2024. Kamala Harris will have even less if she replaces him on the ticket. Speaker of the House McCarthy will excise any anti-Trump dissent from his party, uniting it behind the fascist-light policies that will keep their ilk in power long after a vast majority of Americans turn against them.
President DeSantis will absolutely codify more anti-democratic laws with a united congress and supreme court. By the time 2026 rolls around I’m not even sure there will be a structure in place to allow Democrats to win the midterms even in an anti-Republican environment.
The other team is puncturing the Dems tires before the race even starts, while national dems are complaining to the judges and looking at clouds.
Get in the streets. Demand action on voting rights because this very well may be the last election that we’ll be able to participate in. Someone egg Manchin’s house.
