The last time the Republicans took a loss with anything approximating grace was 1976, two years after Watergate with a candidate who had never won anything bigger than his Congressional district in Michigan, and with the party in turmoil over which was was up. Since then, they have dismissed Bill Clinton as illegitimate because he didn’t win 50% (despite having the most votes), Barack Obama for being a secret Muslim and not a citizen (despite being Congregationalist and born to a US citizen in a Honolulu hospital), and Joe Biden for having the temerity to get more votes than Dear Leader Trump after four years of incompetence harnessed to Russian cuckoldry.
We are where we are because a plurality of Republicans would rather embrace Nazis than have to take the L.
The conservative takeover that took off like a rocket in 1980 was in many ways the product of the end of the postwar boom in the 1970s. Time was, everyone was swimming in money, and a top marginal tax rate of 70% was not so much of a big deal – especially if it means guns and butter and free in-state tuition and that one high school graduate could support a family and home ownership and even a pool all the way to his [sic] pension-fueled retirement. Then the economy turned south, other countries caught up to us, and we embarked on our long fifty-year experiment in using bigotry to protect wealth. And with every reversal in fortune, the wealthy and bigoted doubled down.
Because this really is an existential crisis for them. If you can’t accumulate all the money you want without having to do your bit for society, if you can’t shit on everyone who isn’t just like you, then what is the point of living? It was a lot more quiet in years gone by, but then, once forced to admit people of color were human, gay people were human, trans folk are human – well, the reason the arguments sound the same every time out are because they all boil down to “I shouldn’t have to acknowledge that there are other people if they aren’t just like me.”
There’s no easy way out. There are obvious moves that could be taken if there were enough votes for it – the Wyoming Rule to expand the House (and thus the Electoral College, and thus cripple the rural chokehold on politics), the expansion of a rigged Supreme Court to 13 (one Justice per circuit, as was the original aim), the admission of new states – we are currently in the longest stretch of our national history with no new Representatives, Supreme Court seats or states. But for this to work, something like two-thirds or more of the country would have to agree that no matter what, shoring up democracy and breaking the impact of an authoritarian minority is the most critical issue in American politics and everything else – nationalized health care, lower taxes, foreign policy, whatever – has to be subordinated to making sure that the person who the most people voted for is the one who wins. No more gerrymandering your way to control of state courts, no more electing the person with millions fewer votes because they had a football stadium lead in three specific states.
Because if it happens again – if more people vote for a Democrat but a Republican wins anyway, and is allowed to start doing what these current Republicans do – you have to consider what happens when the levee breaks. A system that doesn’t work any more is not worth saving, but you may not like what comes after – or survive it. And yet, no matter how ugly the prospect is of starting over, sometimes you don’t have a choice.
The reason why every election is the most important election of our lives is because all the Democrats can be right now is a finger in the dike. They need 218 in the House, a reliable 51 in the Senate (with votes to remove the filibuster), and a majority on the Supreme Court, or all the President can be is the last line of defense. People ask “well why come the Republicans can do things?” Because they don’t actually want to do anything. They want to leave the states alone to be as backward and bigoted as they please, they want to go on Fox News and own the libs, they want to raise infinite money and they want to appoint judges, but actual policy work of the sort that has to get through Congress? Nothing. They couldn’t even overturn Obamacare with no filibuster possible and a majority in both houses. Making something, fixing, something, requires more work than breaking it.
But we have to do the work. Not just in 2024, but beyond. The work will always be with us, and what is at stake this year is determining what that work will consist of.