Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.
Statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration, with Republican-controlled legislatures giving themselves the power to override electoral outcomes on unproven allegations should Democrats win more votes. They are seeking to restrict access to the ballot, the most basic principle underlying the right of all adult American citizens to participate in our democracy. They are also putting in place criminal sentences and fines meant to intimidate and scare away poll workers and nonpartisan administrators. State legislatures have advanced initiatives that curtail voting methods now preferred by Democratic-leaning constituencies, such as early voting and mail voting. Republican lawmakers have openly talked about ensuring the “purity” and “quality” of the vote, echoing arguments widely used across the Jim Crow South as reasons for restricting the Black vote.
In future elections, these laws politicizing the administration and certification of elections could enable some state legislatures or partisan election officials to do what they failed to do in 2020: reverse the outcome of a free and fair election. Further, these laws could entrench extended minority rule, violating the basic and longstanding democratic principle that parties that get the most votes should win elections.
[T]hese actions call into question whether the United States will remain a democracy.
Update (June 2): Amanda Marcotte notes that Democrats could choose to do a lot to preserve democracy if only the Senate would do away with the filibuster. Unfortunately, two members continue to want to believe in the fairy tale of bipartisanship.
[The] turn towards public shame is a sign of Democratic desperation, no doubt. The only real hope that it works lays in the fact that Manchin and Sinema have spent months getting attention for being the holdouts. This likely means they can no longer bask in the ego boost from having the president and others cajole and plead for them to do the right thing. They don't get to be the belles of the ball anymore, but the choice of whether to be hated villains of history is up to them.
Will it work?
Only time will tell. But it's a troubling sign that Democrats are at the end of the line, seemingly short on strategies to save American democracy. Everything now depends on two people, both who seem unbelievably pigheaded and egotistical, to grow up and start acting like they care about the people who got them elected.
Update (June 3): Senator Kyrsten Sinema explains her support of the filibuster.
It is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation. Rather than allowing our country to ricochet wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies, the idea of the filibuster was created by those who came before to create comity and to encourage bipartisanship and work together.
And so, we're fucked.
Update (June 4): Heather Digby Parton's comments make me think getting rid of the filibuster isn't really what matters--let's get rid of the whole fucking Senate.
Our federalist system that gives Wyoming the same number of senators
as California simply doesn't work in an age of partisan polarization, particularly when one of the parties is batshit insane and its party establishment is willing to win by any means necessary. Getting rid of the filibuster is absolutely necessary for the survival of our democracy. But it isn't a panacea and I don't see any way to fix the rest of it unless the Republicans come to their senses. What are the odds of that happening?
Update (June 14): Heather Digby Parton names the Republican tactic designed to truly undermine democracy.
Voter suppression is sadly familiar in American political life. Vote nullification, however, is not. And that's what all these new laws and regulations are designed to do. If the vote doesn't go their way, they are putting mechanisms in place to simply nullify the results through a complex set of "legal" maneuvers.
Update (June 16): In an interview with C.J. Polychroniou, Noam Chomsky sees an opposition where "[t]he party leadership is dedicated to the obstructionist strategy of sacrificing the interests of the country in order to regain power".
Your term "neoliberal proto-fascism" seems to me quite an accurate characterization of the current Republican organization — I’m hesitant to call them a "Party" because that might suggest that they have some interest in participating honestly in normal parliamentary politics. More fitting, I think, is the judgment of American Enterprise Institute political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein that the modern Republican Party has transformed to a "radical insurgency" with disdain for democratic participation.
Update (June 18): Senator Joe Manchin thinks he has a clever compromise for a voting rights bill, but Amanda Marcotte is willing to explain reality to him.
The strategy that Republicans are using to hoodwink Manchin is the same they have used for decades to hoodwink Democrats: Pretend to be interested in a "compromise," mire the Democrats in endless negotiations, and run out the clock until elections. Then Republicans will run on a platform of accusing Democrats of getting nothing done, while ignoring the fact that Republican bad faith is why Democrats got nothing done.
Update (June 23): It's not surprise that all 50 Republicans voted against cloture on voting rights legislation. Heather Digby Parton quotes Senator Rafael Warnock.
What could be more hypocritical and cynical than invoking minority rights in the Senate as a pretext for preventing debate about how to protect minority rights in the society?
Patrick Cockburn says the most dangerous threat to the world is the transformation of the party into a fascist movement.
It was only this year that the final building blocks have been put in place by Republicans as they replicate the structure of fascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.
Two strategies, though never entirely absent from Republican behaviour in the past, have become far more central to their approach. One is a greater willingness to use or tolerate violence against their opponents, something that became notorious during the invasion of the Capitol by pro-[Orange] rioters on 6 January.
The other change among Republicans is much less commented on, but is more sinister and significant. This is the systematic Republican takeover of the electoral machinery that oversees elections and makes sure that they are fair. Minor officials in charge of them have suddenly become vital to the future of American democracy. Remember that it was only the refusal of these functionaries to cave in to [Dear Leader's] threats and blandishments that stopped him from stealing the presidential election last November.
It is worth listing the chief characteristics of fascist movements in order to assess how far they are now shared by the Republicans. Exploitation of ethnic, religious and cultural hatreds is probably the most universal feature of fascism. Others include a demagogic leader with a cult of personality who makes messianic but vague promises to deliver a golden future; appeals to law-and-order but a practical contempt for legality; the use, manipulation and ultimate marginalisation of democratic procedures; a willingness to use physical force; demonising the educated elite – and the media in particular; shady relations with plutocrats seeking profit from regime change.
One by one these boxes have been ticked by the Republicans until the list is complete.
Update (June 29): Chauncey DeVega warns that the risk is real and the threats haven't gone away.
At the present moment, American democracy is like a tightrope walker attempting a crossing during a howling storm, and without a net. That democracy has thus far "survived" the Age of [Fuckface] and his regime's and allies' assaults — including an all-too-real attempted coup — is something like the luck enjoyed by fools and drunks. Joe Biden may now be president, but the perilous tightrope walk continues. Safety appears to be in sight, but that is a dangerous illusion: Most lethal falls during a tightrope walk happen during the last few feet when the performer believes they are safe.
Also, a great summary of how the Republicans do nothing except create distractions over non-existant problems as they subvert democracy and yet, somehow, the Democrats can do nothing about it.
Do proponents of the Big Lie or insurrection revisionism actually believe their own nonsense? That's beside the point. Truth simply has no value to these folks. All that matters is power — and one way to exert power is to force the official narrative into the shape of a lie, untouched by even well-documented facts.
In a sense, this is nothing new. The right has long had an interest in replacing facts with its own bellicose myth-making.
Update (August 2): Paul Rosenberg points to mainstream reporting for enabling the Republican assault on responsible government.
Bad faith has long since become pervasive throughout the GOP, and completely normalized by the press.
Bad faith can be found in Republican claims to be "the party of life" as they cheerfully spread COVID disinformation. Bad faith can be found in their claims to be "the party of law and order," while they heap contempt on the officers who defended the Capitol and want them to get to the bottom of that attack. Bad faith can be found in their claims to be the party of patriotism, as they defend Confederate monuments and defend the Jan. 6 insurrectionists from scrutiny or consequences, paving the way for the next attempted overthrow of government.
When journalists cannot honestly report what is happening, when they normalize the ongoing destruction of democracy, they become complicit in it. When their posture of balance makes the world more illegible, so that democratic self-governance becomes all but impossible, they're no longer journalists. They have become propagandists.
Update (August 4): Chauncey DeVega agrees the mainstream press doesn't present a clear picture of the threat we face.
Reporting on [Dear Leader's] crimes and putting them in full context as part of a larger attempt to protect democracy is not a high priority in the 24/7 news cycle. Instead, too many of the leading media outlets thrive on false equivalencies between Republicans and Democrats through the obsolete habit of "both sides" journalism. Even faced with one party (and its associated political movement) that poses an existential threat to American democracy, the mainstream media is still, for the most part, afraid to state that plain truth for fear of being labeled as "liberal" and "biased".
It's become far too easy to deny the implications of what Fuckface told the Department of Justice in December.
Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.
Update (August 6): Heather Digby Parton recounts revelations about the thwarted coup.
It's easy to say now that "the system worked" but it was a very close thing, entirely dependent on the good-faith actions of certain members of the government. ... It's clear they were serious about [overturning the election results in six states], and it's even clearer that this inane notion of state legislators rejecting the will of the voters has seriously gained currency on the right. This is not the last we will hear of it.
Update (August 11): Lucian Truscott says reckless, desperate actions prevented the coup from succeeding. It's still a question whether anyone will be held accountable.
Practically every move [Orange Turd] made in December and January in advance of Jan. 6 was a crime. Pressuring Jeffrey Rosen to misuse the Department of Justice to support his private lawsuits was a crime. Conspiring with Jeffrey Clark to fire Rosen so Clark could send the letter to the Georgia legislature was a crime. Calling Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp and pressuring them to "find" votes and use the legislature to overturn the election was a crime. Meeting with his own White House staff and outside advisers to plan the rally on the Ellipse at which he would incite the assault on the Capitol was a crime.
[His] problem, to put it frankly, was that he didn't start committing crimes early enough. The crimes he committed in December and January were largely impulsive, not carefully planned or focused.
The evidence keeps piling up--Byung Pak, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, testified to the Senate Judicary Committtee that he resigned January 4 because he expected to be fired for refusing to support claims of massive voter fraud in the state. Ron Filipkowski reacts:
[The Department of Justice] has no choice now, they must open a criminal investigation on [von Clownstick].
Update (October 8): Heather Digby Parton comments on the Senate Judiciary report titled "Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election".
The report is damning. The president of the United States tried for weeks to get the Attorney General to overturn the election. That is the definition of an attempted coup.
Parton suggests Republican leaders believe
that if [Fuckface] gets back in power, it will be perfectly fine if he behaves exactly the same way as he did during those insane final weeks of his term. This is how pathetically corrupt and compromised the GOP's moral reasoning has become. According to one of the major political parties in the country, attempted coups are now normal politics in America.
Update (October 11): Ruth Ben-Ghiat takes the neofascist threat very seriously.
[T]he way that [Dear Leader] has already acted is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. And if we look at what he did between November and January, this was all a trial run. So, he tried to get a military intervention, but that didn't work because General Milley wouldn't go along. He tried to do what autocrats already do in Turkey and Hungary and Russia, which was to fix the election machinery.
We are in the middle of an onslaught, on a massive scale, to neutralize our entire election apparatus. Because today, you don't suspend elections except in maybe communist dictatorships. Today, you hold them, but you make sure the results are what you need them to be.
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