Thread by @SawyerSteve

Talked with an elected official tonight, one with decades of experience at the city, county & state level. We discussed the movement to introduce chaos into the state- and local-level election machinery. 1/14

He indicated that thus far much of the activity has been in major-party-controlled appointed positions - state and county boards of canvassers. 2/14

But I believe this can be expected to intensify both in efforts to create intimidation vacancies and to get extremists elected to fill them. And not just in positions directly involved with election administration. 3/14

The Congress and courts have shown how authoritarianism needs the legislature & judiciary to “run interference”, blocking, delaying, generally doing their part to “gum up the works” by weaponizing the due processes of a rule-of-law society. 4/14

This will be the GOP playbook in our cities, towns, villages, counties, at a local level…

*WHERE WE CAN FIGHT THEM*

5/14

Nationally we have to deal with Biden’s poll numbers, the (necessarily) slow DOJ, the click-bait dumb hot takes and eyeball-sucking false narratives of the press, the poisonous RW media machine, and the Big Money oligarchs-in-waiting. 6/14

These issues become all but irrelevant when the goal becomes scaring the bejeesus out of our neighbors. Helping them to really see what is happening right there, right in their own neighborhood. And what is going to happen if these assholes get elected. 7/14

We can’t make the DNC improve Democrats’ messaging. We can’t take Tucker Carlson off the air. We can’t convince the business sector & the press that they too have a stake in a democratic rule-of-law environment. 8/14

But we CAN look a neighbor straight in the eyes and describe the world they could experience if democracy ends, if “public good” and “public service” cease to be of any interest to the people running our government. 9/14

HERE is where we can take the fight. Here is where we MUST take the fight. As of this moment - with the leadership we have, the limitations of a liberal democracy, the media as it is - our nation as a whole is not on a good trajectory. 10/14

There are for us two reasonable hopes. One is that something miraculous happens and the cavalry rides to the rescue. The other is that we go down fighting, planting the seeds of a resurgent democracy in our home towns, our home states. 11/14

We create small bastions of democracy, bases of operations from which we can work to break the fever of fascism infecting us, and gradually take America back. 12/14

This all happens in our neighborhoods, our towns. It is accomplished by effectively communicating our fears to our family, neighbors, friends. 13/14

I know I’m as scared as I’ve ever been, and I will have NO problem finding ways to bring this home, in a very personal way, to anyone that can cast a vote against the GOP. /fin