There are so many ways things can go wrong.
For starters, she has to have the most votes, both in the popular vote and the electoral college (there will be war if Trump wins the popular vote and loses in the EC, and all the arguments about Gore and HRC will be tossed). Then we have to avoid any legal shenanigans that would let the Supreme Court do what it was installed to do and protect a glide path for Trump, by choosing to invalidate or obstruct one vote or another, or just creating enough chaos that the House of Representatives has to decide on a one-state-one-vote basis. And if that can’t be managed, a Republican-controlled House only has to avoid picking a speaker for three days to put us clean through the looking glass, and if you don’t think that will be an opportunity for ratfuckery and extortion you’re too stupid to look at politics. The worst part will be the whole “Democrats could fix this by capitulating to Republicans” bleating from the press, because as always, Republicans are NPCs and Democrats are the only ones who can choose to act or not.
It shouldn’t be like this. The game is rigged and has been ever since the parties sorted by urban and rural, because now Alaska, Wyoming and the Dakotas – with the same population as the Bay Area – have quadruple the Senate representation that the Bay shares with the rest of California, and quadruple the vote the Bay will share with California if it does go to the House. The system does not fail safe – and every budget, every debt ceiling limit, every point of failure is a hostage negotiation with a bad faith opponent. Whatever American government used to be doesn’t work anymore, and arguably hasn’t for the better part of a quarter-century, because one party can hold a nation to ransom with an everlasting No.
And the worst part is that the enemy knows they can’t win fair and square, so they have to ratfuck their way in with spurious lawsuits and tame judges in safe circuits (the Fifth Circuit should be nuked from orbit and reorganized along with the rest of the judiciary, but anyway). And rather than call this out – rather than say what is happening in front of our faces – the catamites of the national press decline to endorse, drop the age issue as soon as Biden’s out, blame Harris for what Trump says about her, you name it. Everything is tied up tight to make it possible for Trump, again, to win without the most votes.
But say by some miracle we do come through this victorious and unscathed. What then? We now have a President who combines all the bullseyes. The GOP and its amen corner in the media will immediately go to war on Hillary Hussein Harris, the full measure of all the misogyny they never got to vent on a sitting woman President and all of the racism that is now just another side to be given equal consideration. If Democrats don’t have complete control of both houses of Congress, she will get nothing, and the last time that was the case…actually, I can’t think of the last time a new Democratic President didn’t have at least nominal control of Congress to go with it. Obviously the filibuster would have to go immediately, and we would as always be at the mercy of the most nervous and unreliable Senator.
But if she wins but the GOP controls the Senate…forget it. Cabinet nominations, ambassador appointments, new judges, anything requiring confirmation…they just simply won’t. And because only Democrats have agency, it will be painted as “why can’t Kamala deliver the bipartisanship she promised” and not “why are we letting actual factual fascists have veto control over American government”.
By all rights this race shouldn’t be close. Trump shouldn’t be able to see Harris with the Webb telescope. Any year before 2016, with both these candidates, should be at least a 66-33 lead for the lady from California, and 72-27 probably closer to where it ought to land. The Madison Square Garden rally ought to be the killing blow for the Trump campaign. Instead, in 2024, we have half of America and most of its political reporters desperately polishing this turd and trying to pick it up from the clean end and insist that somehow the former guy is a normal candidate with normal positions and that this is just what Real America Really Wants – to a point where the LA Times and Washington Post spiked endorsements altogether rather than concede what is obvious to everyone, including their own staffs.
Because the mask is off. What you saw at MSG is what we get. This time, they’re prepared, and they have vetted all the grown-ups and got them off the block. This will be pure racist id all the way down, the United States of Alabama 1961. Christian nationalism enforced by stochastic terrorism, blamed entirely on its victims. And they will get away with it, because the entire notion of accountability has now been declared inherently political. Couldn’t impeach Trump because the law can take care of it. Can’t prosecute Trump because he wasn’t impeached. Can’t put him on trial because it’s too close to an election, because a judge he appointed stalled for months. Can’t enforce the law because it might look partisan, so the lawbreakers have to be let to run wild. Can’t have consequences because we need to look forward and why you bringing up old shit.
We are on defense now. We will be on defense for the rest of our lives. Maybe in fifty years, if we stand and hold, demographics and culture will get us to a point where the children of segregation don’t number enough to shift things and our grandkids can break the systems that shield and sustain the enemy. But today we are on defense. It’s all we can do, because the time to fix this was 2021. And 2009. And 2000. Thirty years of cultural capitulation to religious fascism has dragged us to this point and we will be at least that long unwinding it and making things right.
The work lies before us. The only question is how much. The only answer is to learn to thank God for the work, and then do the work. No one will do it for us, and despite anything I previously posted, no one is going to save the world but us.
It starts now. It continues to the end of our days.
What are you prepared to do?