Archive for category: #thenewrepublic

By most metrics, the midterm elections were good for
Democrats and for American democracy in general. With the reelection of Senator
Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Democrats will retain
control of the Senate. They can also break the 50-50 deadlock there if Senator Raphael
Warnock wins his runoff against Herschel Walker, allowing Democrats to control
committees and end the need for discharge petitions. Democrats also avoided the
traditional huge midterm losses in the House. Republicans are projected to end up with about 219 seats,
giving them a narrow three-seat advantage.

At a state level, the news was also generally good. For the
first time since 1934, the party in the White House did not lose any state
legislative chambers during the midterms. Democrats made gains in the
Minnesota, Vermont, Maryland, and Massachusetts legislatures. They also flipped
three governors’ seats and lost one (Nevada).

But all this doesn’t change the fact that the situation continues to
deteriorate, albeit at a slower pace than might otherwise be the case. Behind
Democrats outperforming incredibly low expectations by preventing a red wave,
there’s another story: Our government remains dysfunctional, the Republican Party
is putting increasingly unqualified authoritarian candidates in office, and
more states have fallen into near permanent single-party autocratic rule. We
also see that those permanent single-party GOP states intend to make cruelty
and culture war the centerpiece of their policy decisions.

However you want to spin it, losing the House is still a
loss. Whether Republicans control the House by three votes or 50, it is
effectively the end of the Biden legislative agenda. It is also effectively the
end of any hope of securing voting rights, limiting gerrymandering, or
preventing electoral shenanigans before the 2024 election. The irony is that
gerrymandering made the GOP takeover possible. While Democrats in New York acceded to rulings by the state
Supreme Court striking down gerrymandered districts favoring Democrats,
Republicans in Ohio, North Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana went to the election with maps
struck down by state courts still in place.

The results of House elections will bring America’s
dysfunctional government into sharp focus over the next two years. For the GOP,
a three-seat majority is far too small to manage the fractious Freedom Caucus.
These Republican hard-liners aren’t interested in governance; they will insist
on making everything a life-or-death showdown with no room for compromise. This
includes funding the government and raising the debt ceiling. Whoever the speaker is will face
the same ugly choices that John Boehner and Paul Ryan did: Cater to the
radicals, or work with Democrats to pass needed legislation and be labeled a
Republican in Name Only. Former Republican insiders assure me that they will choose the former.

Instead of keeping the government running or servicing the
national debt, the GOP-led House will make investigations and potential
impeachment of President Biden the centerpiece of their reign.
Imagine the repetitive overkill of Benghazi with the conspiracy-laden nuttiness
of anti-vaccine diatribes against Anthony Fauci, and obsession with Hunter Biden’s laptop. 

While there is some debate whether Republicans in the House
will have the stomach for impeachment hearings, it seems likely that the
Freedom Caucus will be larger, louder, and more powerful than a tiny handful of
new representatives elected from tight districts. This is another side effect
of partisan gerrymandering, which causes less than 14 percent of congressional districts to be
competitive. Hesitant Republicans will also be pushed hard by Fox News and
other conservative media outlets to go along with aggressive investigations in
order to avoid the “RINO” label and a potential primary challenge.

The quality of Republicans going to Congress isn’t improving
either. It appears Lauren Boebert is going to squeak out a win in Colorado.
Soon-to-be Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, who embraced Donald Trump when he saw
him as a ticket to power, is both openly Christian nationalist and completely unqualified. While
prominent election deniers such as Mark Finchem in Arizona and Marchant in
Nevada lost their races, on the whole they did well nationally. The Washington Post notes that about 60 percent of
election-denying Republicans nominees on the November ballot won their races. On top of that, about 70 percent of Republicans in the
House are election deniers who will happily work to overturn the 2024 election
given the chance.

At the same time, voters in Ohio and North Carolina have decided they’ve had enough of
democracy, and put partisan supreme courts in place. These courts will allow
gerrymandered borders and voter suppression in those states to ensure that elections
there hold all the suspense and drama of finding out whether Putin’s United
Russia Party retains control of the Duma.

The consequences of this can be seen in Wisconsin, where
Republicans won control of the legislature in 2010, and promptly gerrymandered
democracy out of existence. Despite Democratic incumbent Tony Evers winning the
governor’s race in Wisconsin by 3.6 percent, voters in Wisconsin barely
prevented the GOP from having veto-proof supermajorities in the Wisconsin
House and Senate. There is no conceivable way for the people of Wisconsin to
put Democrats in charge of the legislature. As a consequence, there is no way
for them to repeal an 1849 law banning abortion, since there is no mechanism
for a statewide ballot initiative, despite strong voter support for it.

It is also highly concerning that the big winners in the
election were the red state politicians who have gerrymandered, suppressed, and
run their campaigns on culture-war issues such as abortion, race, and LGBTQ issues. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis won his reelection by a wide margin, and
Florida Republicans expanded their control of both houses of the legislature
despite running on poll taxes, “don’t say gay” laws, and a promise of a near-total ban on abortion.

Likewise in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton won handily after making culture war issues like abortion,
book bans, and transgender children their top legislative, legal, and policy
issues.* There is every reason to believe that Republicans, particularly in
red to deep-red states, will take away the message that there is no penalty to
be paid for targeting vulnerable people in the name of battling “wokeness.” Nor
was there any consequence in Texas for governing poorly in the wake of a
collapsing electrical grid or the botched handing of another mass school
shooting in Uvalde.

So while Tuesday’s election result were better than expected,
the slow decline into neofascism continues, just perhaps a bit less quickly.
The House is gone, now run by ideologues uninterested in governing. Two states
voted in supreme courts for themselves that cut off the last possible escape
from single-party Christian nationalist rule. Wisconsin demonstrated the
hopelessness of recovering from autocracy, as it does every two years. And in
supposedly “moderate” red-leaning states, voters have had a chance to experience
both the incompetence and hatred of neofascism and found that they like it.

Texas has had decades of Republican rule. Its electrical
grid is falling apart, and people died en masse during a cold snap two
years ago. Nothing has been done to fix it. The attorney general is under
indictment, and no one seems to care. Police stood around for an hour during
one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history, and the governor didn’t
bother with either funerals for the children or calls to do something to
prevent future mass murders. Instead of addressing real problems, the state’s
leaders focused on tax breaks for the wealthy, making guns more readily available, and calling three special sessions of the
legislature to ban mostly nonexistent transgender
student athletes
from competing in sports.

And Texans overwhelmingly rewarded them all with another four
years in power. Because the cruelty was always the point. Some election deniers
lost, and Donald Trump took a whipping, and that’s great. But
it didn’t reverse the overall democratic decline that has been happening since
the 2010 elections.

* This article originally misidentified Paxton’s office.

Given the numerous election deniers running right now—for the U.S. House and Senate, for governor and for secretary of state—the 2022 midterm elections’ consequences for the state of democracy are hard to overstate. But beyond the likes of Kari Lake or Doug Mastriano, who are garnering loads of national attention, there are hundreds of local officials whose races will shape the fate of future elections: county sheriffs. Just as a smaller-scale series of local acts of intimidation and violence led us to the violent attempt to overthrow the election on January 6, 2021, there’s a growing nationwide movement of self-proclaimed “constitutional sheriffs” who are preparing for their own slow-motion insurrection.

Adherents believe that county sheriffs are empowered to enforce the law in accordance with their personal interpretation of the Constitution, that their law enforcement authority supersedes that of states and the federal government. There is “no valid basis in the text or history of the U.S. Constitution” for this, as Georgetown University Law Center and the States United Democracy Center have outlined in depth. However, fueled by this political ideology, one rooted in white supremacism, these “constitutional sheriffs” and their supporters in far-right and paramilitary groups are gearing up for the first national election after the insurrection.

A new investigation by Jessica Pishko, published at Reveal, exposes the alliances and ties between far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers and a national network of sheriffs who have embraced election denial and have “appointed themselves election police.” Election deniers have also encouraged constitutional sheriffs to run in 2022. You can hear constitutional sheriff rhetoric in a number of incumbent candidates in states such as Washington, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts. Though constitutional sheriffs’ groups had been on the wane in recent years, Pishko reports, the pandemic and the “Stop the Steal” movement has given them new life, infusing them with new members and granting them a bigger platform with anti-vaxxers and election deniers.

More than half of Arizona’s current sheriffs, according to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, “are at least partially aligned” with the constitutional sheriff movement. Some have also joined the election denial effort, such as Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes, who spoke to the Yavapai County Preparedness Team in Arizona, an organization that has some association with the Oath Keepers, as it was planning surveillance of ballot drop boxes in Arizona—“Operation Drop Box.” As the head of the Preparedness Team said at its meeting ahead of the midterms, “Everybody is worried about civil war.” Richard Mack, a former board member of the Oath Keepers and founder of the influential Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, has also visited Arizona to speak to the group. Democrats are “getting away with murder,” he told a gathering of the Preparedness Team, and “all we are asking for is that every county sheriff look at what happened in his county and make sure that we don’t fall prey.”

Elsewhere in Arizona, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is working with True the Vote, who were behind the debunked election-denying 2000 Mules film and who have collaborated with QAnon influencers. Lamb is “promising to act as a liaison between them and law enforcement,” as Media Matters reported. In addition to supporting “Stop the Steal” and blaming the January 6 insurrection on Hillary Clinton, among others, Lamb led a “posse” in response to Black Lives Matter protests, recruiting civilians, though his county saw no protests.

The campaign Lamb has joined, called Protect America Now, encourages sheriffs to “be ready to enforce the law and protect our constituents from any form of illegal activity,” according to documents Pishko obtained. It also offers the sheriffs “much needed grant resources to help you secure the voting procedures in your county with equipment, personnel, and increased citizen communication.” Among its recommendations are increased “patrol” at ballot drop boxes and reporting any suspicious activity to a national hotline run by True the Vote. “When other areas of government breakdown,” their letter to sheriffs says, “our local Sheriffs step in to make sure the law is enforced.”

Through such outreach, invoking election “security,” other sheriffs have enlisted in their efforts, pledging to carry out “investigations” into alleged election fraud across the United States. In Johnson County, Kansas, Sheriff Calvin Hayden failed to identify any election fraud. His investigation, The Kansas City Star reported, “hasn’t led to any charges or arrests but has helped build his profile among election deniers.” As he told supporters at an August meeting, “We’ve got to find somebody” who can say definitively that fraud is happening. At the same meeting, Hayden also told supporters, “I’m so sick and tired of hearing, ‘You’re hurting our democracy. You’re hurting our democracy.’ We don’t have a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic,” a far-right trope.

Those behind “Operation Drop Box,” the ballot box surveillance effort, stood down after they faced legal action for their desire to monitor voting locations while carrying guns. But that was just one part of the larger effort pushed by True the Vote and others, who have been coordinating to monitor ballot boxes on a much larger scale, as Pishko uncovered. As of October 27, Jen Fifield at Votebeat reported, more than 4,500 people signed up with True the Vote to monitor ballot boxes nationwide. “Their list of volunteers is growing by dozens a day,” Fifield noted, “especially since the news of voter intimidation at the sites began to spread.” That is, as the media has tracked these groups, as voters have lodged complaints, their numbers are growing.

Before rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the consensus was that Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election amounted to a “clown coup”: fumbling, incompetent, and ultimately futile. This characterization made a certain sense at the time. Most of the lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies were a ridiculous mix of shoddy constitutional law and conspiracy theories, and they were laughed out of courtrooms around the country (of the 62 lawsuits they filed before January 6, 61 failed). None of the several states whose results Trump challenged—notably Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona—changed their votes. He also tried to pressure elected officials in some states to alter the results, but they rebuffed him. Joe Biden was sworn in as president on schedule. The system worked—more or less.

Subsequent revelations, particularly in the wake of the Capitol insurrection, have suggested that Trump came much closer to overturning the 2020 election than previously thought. Rioters nearly intercepted lawmakers in the building and could have easily prompted a constitutional crisis had they successfully delayed the certification of electoral votes. The January 6 committee has shown that Trump’s efforts to subvert the election were more involved than previously thought: Despite being told over and over again by allies and government officials that the election was legitimate, he nevertheless proceeded to try to undo the result, welcomed armed supporters into the rally that he held before the assault on the Capitol, and told allies that Vice President Mike Pence “deserved” to be hanged. It was a clown coup, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have succeeded.

Nor does it mean he won’t try it again—perhaps with a more catastrophic outcome. Though he is still deeply incompetent, Trump has learned where the levers of power are, both in government and the legal system. And he has turned the Republican Party into an army of election deniers, some of whom are running for the very offices that oversee elections. It is nearly certain that, should he win the Republican nomination in 2024 and lose the general election, he will attempt once again to overturn the results.

The latest evidence comes from Rolling Stone, which reported on Sunday that Trump plans on using Pennsylvania’s upcoming Senate election between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz. “In recent months, Trump has convened a series of in-person meetings and conference calls to discuss laying the groundwork to challenge the 2022 midterm election results,” wrote Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, later adding, “If the Republican does not win by a wide enough margin to trigger a speedy concession from Fetterman—or if the vote tally is close on or after Election Night in November—Trump and other Republicans are already preparing to wage a legal and activist crusade against the ‘election integrity’ of Democratic strongholds such as the Philly area.”

Trump is using Pennsylvania’s election as a kind of test case for 2024, to see whether he and his allies can successfully challenge a legitimate result. Fetterman has consistently polled ahead of Oz since the general election campaign, but the election is expected to be close: Republicans have regained momentum in recent weeks, and many suspect that the polls are once again overstating a Democratic advantage. If Fetterman wins outright or the election is close enough to prompt a recount, Trump will swoop in and declare it illegitimate, claiming widespread corruption in Philadelphia involving voting machines and mail-in ballots.

Trump only cares about how these midterm elections reflect on him. That’s why it’s likely he’ll challenge the legitimacy of any results that damage his status as the GOP’s preeminent kingmaker, which recently has been in doubt. Oz, whose nomination Trump helped secure earlier this year, has struggled throughout the campaign, as have several of Trump’s other hand-picked nominees, like Georgia’s Herschel Walker and Ohio’s J.D. Vance. (Walker is trailing and Vance is leading, per FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregate, but both are underperforming.) Challenging elections in which his candidates lose, on the grounds that the Democrat won thanks to voter fraud, allows him to pretend he still has the magic touch ahead of his own campaign for president next summer.

But it is, above all else, a way for Trump to lay the groundwork for challenging his own potential loss in 2024—and doing so in a way that learns the lessons of past mistakes. It is similar, in many ways, to his reported plans for a second presidential term, in which hundreds of long-standing government employees (or members of the “deep state”) in places like the Department of Justice, the State Department, and the Internal Revenue Service would be purged and replaced by loyalists. Trump’s last coup almost worked—and it was inept at almost every level. Many of the same vulnerabilities remain, and Trump is gearing up to exploit them.