liberal voting laws helped republicans bring low propensity conservative voters to the polls and likely kept november from being a total wipeout, but rather than build on that, they just want to keep as many people from the polls as possible
“maybe we should try to win popular majorities” is apparently a bridge too far
anyway i’ll trade a single national voting day for automatic and same-day registration, a national voting holiday, free and universal voter ID, uniform eligibility rules for voting, and a formula specifying the exact number of polling places and machines per precinct.
also a voting rights act with a very wide net for pre-clearence
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even if this is a play to avoid having to deal with a challenge should Pence and the Cabinet invoke the 25th, the Congress still has a responsibility to deal with the fact that the president incited a riot against it.
i’m not one for “this is unprecedented” hyperbole, but it is actually unprecedented for the president of the united states to openly encourage an insurrection against the nation’s elected representatives for the sake of overturning the results of an election.
we often talk about the overthrow of reconstruction as a singular organized effort, but it should be understood as something more disparate and fractured, with success tied less to martial superiority than the indifference of authorities to intimidation and violence.
a group of guys — maybe the owner of the general store, and the sheriff and some farmers who fought in the war — gets together to gripe and complain and plot a little mischief. they put on masks and grab guns and go beat up a black sharecropper or local clerk or whatever...
shadi, i haven’t said anything about today being a coup. i just think it’s funny that you wrote a piece claiming that the most serious question was whether democrats would accept a trump victory, and within that piece, claimed that republicans would accept a trump loss.
and as i’ve been saying for four years, i think the proper analogies and antecedents here are found in the history of the american south, where, incidentally, coups have taken place
The Georgia results, not unlike Alabama 2017, show that there is synergy between behind the scenes electoral organizing — building the machinery to maximize turnout for your side — and confident, aggressive campaigning.
One of the things that stands out about Warnock and Ossoff is that they did not campaign as if they were afraid of backlash. And I think that refusal to take a defensive crouch was an important part of neutralizing Republican attacks.
If there are lessons for Democrats in other red states, I think these are the places to start. Constant, year-round organizing of the kind spearheaded by Abrams and begun years ago, candidates that fit the coalition, clear policies and, again, aggressive and confident messaging.