A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away
You know, there was a time when almost every qualified American citizen actually gave a shit about voting. Like in 1789. Most American men, the only ones with the privilege of voting, were serious about that shit. After all, many of them were declared enemies of the Crown, and many friends and family had fought, bled, and even dies in order to enshrine that precious right into our constitution.
And for a long time after that, most Americans who could register and vote remained basically engaged. Sometimes their engagements were senseless and stupid, like the Mugwump Party, or the Know Nothing Party, but at least they showed up!, which meant that politicians on all sides had to at least talk to them and deal with them. There was at least some potential accountability.
To my mind, that changed in the late 1960’s. The combination of the Vietnam war, the Pentagon papers, and the Watergate scandal turned off a large part of the electorate. They came to the sorry realization that all of politics was bullshit. They couldn’t even count on their own elected representatives to shoot straight with them. And so they tuned out. And when they did, they stayed tuned out. Which meant basically a pretty much evenly divided two parties, with solid bases that duked it out every election cycle. Nobody else gave a shit.
But, after decades of largely public indifference in politics, the sentiment suddenly changed. And it changed on January 20th, 2017. Nobody with 12 functioning brain cells gave a vaudeville baggy pants clown like Trump a prayer of winning. And since the Democrats nominated a flawed candidate from a list of two flawed candidates, just enough disgruntled Democrats stayed home to put Trump over the top.
The knee jerk response in the American electorate was immediate and forceful. Trump’s inauguration speech, a dark and violent vision of life in America alone was cause for wailing and gnashing of teeth. Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s nonsensical tantrum that Trump’s inauguration had been The most viewed inauguration in history, both in person and televised, was the largest audience in history. Period! told all of America that they had a an immoral, dishonest administration for the next four years.
The very next day, January 21st, 2017, the anti Trump pink pussy hat protests spread like wildfire to become the single greatest mass protest in global history. The election of Traitor Tot did something nothing else in American politics to that date could do. It awakened the sleeping giant of the American population, and got them to give a shit about politics again.
And the Democrats, who got the memo the same day, were there to welcome them, commiserate with them, and offer them a new home. They strategically fed their outrage, showed them how to effectively mobilize and organize, and promised them relief if they only let the Democrats take control of congress, and put a stopper to Trump and the GOP’s unlimited power.
From where I’m sitting the Great GOP Slaughter wasn’t due so much to anything the Democrats did, but instead what the people did. Normally, like a professional sports team, the political parties send out trained scous to recruit qualified talent to run. Not this time. This time, the state and local Democratic organizations had their doors being broken down by pissed off ordinary citizens wanting to run in opposition of Trump. And the Democrats gave them all of the training and support they could to be successful.
That was the miracle of 2018. The vast majority of the previously slumbering American population was pissed off, and up in arms. And the Democrats gave them exactly what they wanted. A nationwide slate of candidates that looked just like they did! The Democrats benched the normal, run-of-the-mill political kitty litter, and gave them the peoples candidates. All of whom promptly and publicly refused any corporate or big money donations, funding their campaigns through grassroots funding. And ended up outspending entrenched, big money GOP incumbents by three or four to one.
And the Democrats haven’t let up on the gas. They welcomed the millennials in by offering progressive agendas on voting rights, social rights, LGBTQ issues, and climate change. And they welcomed the Parkland kids in with progressive gun legislation. What’s the old saying? Once satisfied, never denied. The Democrats took the steps to make a durable base out of this wellspring of young, long term voters.
And in the meantime, what was the GOP doing? Not a goddamn thing. They had known since 2013 that they were the custodians of an aging, demographically monogamous, racist party, where the actuarial tables were taking their toll every year. They had a 2013 autopsy report to tell them so.
But the 2016 GOP didn’t get the memo. They were all in the thrall of the Trump Miracle! After all, His Lowness did nothing but to play to the worst, most racist part of the GOP base. And it worked!And in a master class in self delusion, the GOP saw Trumpism as the path to fortune and glory for at least the next generation.
But they failed to realize, in 2017, and up until today that Trumpism is nothing more than pure fools gold. After all, The Cheeto Prophet has never won a national popular vote. And under his moronic tutelage, he has cost them the House, the Senate, and the White House. They are ensnared in the halcyon visions of political Brigadoon, They are enchanted in the thought of a permanent minority majority. Which isn’t working so well.
The national GOP has never twigged to the fact that they awoke that sleeping giant, and turned a previously dormant voting population of Americans against them. And if they don’t get their collective shit together, dump Trump and Trumpism, and start talking to and appealing to the now awoken giant, then they are shortly headed to permanent Minority status. Here endeth the lesson.
Unfortunately, through gerrymandering and voter suppression, they have managed to make their minority status more powerful than the majority of voters.
True, it wasn’t that the repugs were doing nothing, they were busy beavers subverting and corrupting the process so they didn’t have to work so hard appealing to voters with actual ideas and policies. They could continue their morally bankrupt focus on exclusion, racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, all the other repugnant ideals they espouse, that the majority of Americans reject. They’ve gamed the system in the states and the Supreme Court enough so they can maintain their power even though they represent a minority of Americans.
I came of voting age in 1969 (just missing the pivotal 1968 election), and Viet Nam, Pentagon Papers and Watergate, as well as the assassinations of RFK and MLK, Kent State, Chicago riots, etc etc, which rather than depressing my civic engagement, fueled my determination to vote. And I have, in every election ever since. I haven’t missed one. Given how much is on the line, I can’t imagine not voting. Even when we’ve won the popular vote though (think Gore and Clinton), repugs have manipulated the system to take the power from us. Given how they are doubling down on corruption, repression, taking way freedom of speech and education, I don’t see that ending anytime soon. We can never rest in our fight against these purveyors of ignorance and hatred, these traitors to American ideals.
True. Let’s hope as the young get to voting age, they follow what’s in their best interest and vote accordingly.
Sadly, I don’t see the GOP-Nazi Party being “finished” in my lifetime. First they’ve taken majority control of the mass media newspaper conglomerates TV, cable and online networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. They use that as their propaganda arm to spoon feed the masses. Also they’ve politicized the ultra-religious churches and synagogues with their propaganda. And then there are all the think tanks, PACs and corporate donors and Peter Thiels who use dark money to pay for the propaganda, the lobbyists, the Leonard Leos and the GOP-politicians whom they own. And they also pay for groups like ALEC to spoon feed their pre-written laws to GOP-State run legislatures and to Congress. Plus lets not forget Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, Sinclair and a thousand lesser smaller on-line private media arenas ranging all the way into the dark web where propaganda originating from Putin, the Mercers, the Kochs, and other ultra rich GOP family fiefdoms is used with a large dose of hate and fear to rile up the hard corp base of true believers (cult-members) to create alternate realities to demonize everyone else who is not in lock step with their anti-American agenda. Then lets add in the gerrymandering of House Districts and GOP-bought off judges up the chain all the way to the Supreme Court to make sure the GOP always has the advantage. And add in Jim Crow vote suppression by more than 100 different ways – all of which used to be stopped occasionally by Consent Decrees against states – and have not been reinstated because the GOP owned State Courts and the Supreme Court changed the laws to make sure that would not happen again. Lets not forget to add in the GOP de-registering millions of voters without their knowledge & illegal large scale election fraud by the GOP, ranging from burning and destroying ballots before they can be counted stolen from drop boxen and from mail-in votes stolen from the US Mail. Finally, if all the above doesn’t work to swing the vote totals in the GOP favor, the GOP know they’ve installed ES&S and other GOP-corporation owned electronic voting machines which have hackable back doors so before the votes are tallied in key areas, they can delete D votes and/or change D votes to R votes to just above the threshold needed to not require an automatic recount.
In a nutshell, as long as the GOP-Nazi Party continues to have everything rigged in their favor, they will continue to win elections in many areas and wherever they win – consolidate their control over the people. The only thing that’s blocked them so far if what you correctly spoke about – massive D turnout in reaction to the illegal actions and injustices by the GOP-Nazis since 2018 and also taking actions to stay one step ahead of the constant shenanigans and rigging games by the Greed Over People Party. We can never afford to become complacent like too many were in the 80’s, 90’s 00’s and 10’s. Every single vote is needed every election and then some to counter the efforts of the GOOP to steal our votes, swing our elections and subvert and replace our democracy with a fascist kleptocracy.
All true.
Too late, they are too stupid to survive.
I agree with the sentiment of this article, unfortunately the gop is far from the dead husk they should be. That is largely due to the unparalleled ability of my fellow Americans to to let me down. Turns out there are plenty of asshats in this country who like the flavor of a shit sandwich which, as it happens, is exactly the flavor the gop is serving.
But there is an area where the gop simply makes dems look like rookies, and that would be the manipulation or playing of politics. On nearly every front they outplay dems, all the while behaving like heartless, hapless, idiots.
Who controls SCOTUS? Trump thinking wingers, that’s who! In fact there are enough of them that they can override what little sanity resides in the person of Chief Justice Roberts! I am absolutely certain that Dishonorable McConnell is the person who envisioned this court, then he made it a reality! No, they’re far from dead. But I’d sure like to be the one to put the coins over their eyes so they can pay their way on the boat ride into the afterlife!
WHOOT YES THANKS MURPH
ONLY ONE TYPO.