I’m continually astonished by how many Democrats I talk to who still aren’t aware that we are only about a month away from possibly losing American democracy forever.
If Democrats don’t remain in control of both the House and the Senate in the November elections, the American experiment in self-governance will be effectively finished. This is not an exaggeration.
Even a single vote majority for Republicans in the House will result in enough chaos to spiral government into an abyss. Republicans will launch a torrent of partisan investigations against any Democrat they choose. They have promised to impeach Joe Biden—for nothing. Not a single thing of substance will get done on the Federal level for the next two years. And in the meantime, Republicans in the states will be setting up for a “legal” steal of the 2024 election.
I’ve gone through a similar list before. Maybe one killer example will bring it home to those who still don’t get it.
The “conservative”-captured Supreme Court has taken up the outrageous case Moore v. Harper. It was dreamed up in red North Carolina and hinges on the Federalist Society legal BS called the “independent state legislatures theory.”
If you haven’t heard about this, you probably have a life. But just because you don’t see the train coming doesn’t mean it can’t pulverize you.
Federalist Society legal hacks came up with this “theory” because it could make minority Republican rule in America a permanent reality. The idea is that somehow the Constitution says state courts have no jurisdiction over any election-related decisions made by the legislatures in their own states.
Why does this matter? Because it means that red-state legislatures would never again have to worry about their own state courts stopping them from passing voter-suppression laws no matter how racist. They would never have to worry about their own state courts stopping them from sending fake slates of presidential electors to overrule the voters of their states—if they don’t vote Republican.
After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there can be no doubt that the current Republican Supreme court will give red-state legislatures this present. And then Republicans will effectively be able to “legally” enforce minority rule forever.
The only firewall against this is a Congress in which Democrats hold both houses. The only defense against this out-of-control anti-democratic Supreme Court is a Congress that will bite the bullet and expand the Supreme Court, pack it with decent and legitimate jurists, overturn the coming “independent state legislatures” decision, and write scathing decisions imploring Congress to overhaul election law so nothing like this can ever happen again.
And while they are at, they might as well overturn everything that this illegitimate court has decided, returning reproductive rights to women, voting rights to minorities, and legal rights to LGBTQ+ people.
So it astonishes me that so many Democrats still don’t get the crucial importance of next month’s elections. If we don’t get out there in droves and utterly demolish the “historical trends” that say the out-of-power party gains in the mid-terms, the Republicans will “legally” destroy Americans’ rights to elect their own governors.
If you don’t want Decent America to choke to death on the muck of Scum America, get out to the polls, get every decent person you know to do the same, and vote only for Democrats.
It’s our last chance, folks. Treat it like an existential threat.
Because for Decent America it is.
What the . . . ?
Hi Scott.
I am all with you in this. As I wrote to you already, I published a fiction book on Amazon, Mona, under the name Adam Flint, picturing what is likely to happen to people if we let a far-right religious dictatorship seize the country. A fiction book about reality, a story in our world, not a story made to escape it, is much more real than any non-fiction book about democracy and the loss of it. Because about us, our experience of life, our emotions. I was also very active in the last elections to help Democrats being elected locally. If we lose our democracy, we lose everything we care for, comprising our planet (there is not a world in which a Republican dictatorship will care about global warming, and there is no other world than this one).
Your urgency is well-placed, Scott.