Zaxxon wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:21 am
hepcat wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 7:58 am
Let’s hope the fact that a majority of citizens would be opposed to it results in a backlash. Although majority means little in our system.
A majority of citizens has been opposed to virtually everything the GOP has done for many years.
Yep and I'll continue to argue a lots of folks are delusional and overlook the structural problems that got us here. This is turning into something of a schism in the Democratic party. It has led to a self-defeating myth being born. It is essentially a belief in what I'm now calling the 'institutionalist' wing of the Democratic party that believes that 'Voting Harder' is the only solution.
In this belief they've accepted a framing that Republicans 'always' vote and Democrats don't show up consistently. There is a little truth there but it's misleading. That's not the problem. Democratic Presidential candidates have had more votes in the last 7 out of the last 8 Presidential elections. Two of three of the last GOP Presidential terms came from a minority share of the vote. They sat 5 of the 6 Conservative justices. The Senate has become dramatically non-representative. This isn't a new argument - it is all the usual narrative that explains the break down of the system.
Vote harder isn't going to fix structural issues like this without massive majorities which are impossible to achieve. We've started seeing a message from a faction I'll call the 'realists' that is selling a 'just 2 more Senators' strategy over the last couple of days. I think this is fairly sound. The idea is that the 2 Senators are there to break the filibuster. The major problem is it is too unfocused at present. Which races are going to be competitive? We need some focus to make this idea actionable. Ideally it'd get ordinary folks to focus their donations on those races instead of spreading $15 to every jabroni in the system. Get the dollars where they are needed. Sheesh.
Anyway - that was a major side track. The bottom line is that 'vote harder' faces massive hurdles. This is especially true when we are seeing active measures to make the system even more un-representative and make elections less competitive first and potentially less free and open as an option if voting harder happens.
IMO this is forming into a full schism that is both poorly timed and unfortunately existential for our democracy. I'm arguing it is between my so-called 'institutionalists' and 'realists'. And this has been discussed recently but I think it mostly skews generationally rather than ideologically. It is unfortunately framed by the negligent media as between centrists and progressives. Which is damaging and unhelpful but that is the MSM. They'll walk us into autocracy if they continue to act the way they are.
In any case, the institutionalists are in power and if they continue to prevail I don't see any other outcome that doesn't have the United States fall into a christofascist aligned autocracy. Very high odds. The institutionalists have no plan to deal with all the mounting issues we've seen and they haven't reacted...ever...to the mounting threat. I argue if the realists can drive effective action there might be some hope. In any case, evidence this is happening would be nice, right? I think we are seeing this playing out in the primaries we have seen this month. Also, in the outcry over the extremely inadequate responses from Biden and the leadership to Dobbs. We've been seeing 'realists' winning primaries in several races. It remains to be seen if enough critical mass is achieved to start moving Biden off the path.
And unfortunately this schism also imposes all sorts of risks. Progressives are easy to tar by the old standard GOP smear book as socialists. I think we'd be best served if they could back off the more left-wing ideas policy wise and instead pivot to talking truth to the existential crisis. I unfortunately don't think that'll happen. However, if they could it'd involve being able to talk about solutions for the crisis without playing into the propaganda that these folks will be enrolling folks into the brotherhood of Soviets. It is a really tricky balance that I'm not seeing even being a glimmer in anyone's eye. Worse the people in power are a bad combination of useless and clueless.
That why I'm personally handicapping the odds of autocracy at well over 50% right now. Mid-terms might bring us closer to certain. But we shall see.
