Politics

This is How Democracy Dies

As Democrats flail, Republicans ready an authoritarian nightmare

No, infrastructure spending alone was never going to save Democrats from themselves, nor spare our crumbling democracy. Rather, rebuilding America’s pockmarked roads and wobbly bridges was the bare minimum for Democrats to prove they were at all competent to govern this vast and fractured country.

Now, it’s clear this won’t be nearly enough. Rising inflation, the ravages of an endless pandemic, intolerable Democratic dithering, and the corrupting influence of money in our politics all point to a nightmarish scenario unfolding in 2024 wherein unreformed MAGA seditionists entirely uninterested in democracy retake the reins of state power, perhaps for good.

As Democrats watch their beloved social spending legislation languish and wither away in a broken senate, and as Joe Biden’s flagging poll numbers continue to crater even as he tries to project confidence by announcing his intention to run again in 2024, Republicans are sharpening their political knives in anticipation of the kill. They sense blood in the water.

Republicans are eager for midterms that appear likely to deliver their party power in one or both chambers of Congress, and will effectively kill the Biden administration’s domestic agenda, clearing the path forward for Donald Trump in 2024.

It’s the same old story of American wealth poisoning American politics that has Joe Biden’s big social spending plan in tatters, as Senate Democrats whittle it away to nothing to pacify self-anointed ‘moderates’ Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who are themselves in thrall to streams of cash from ‘special interest’ corporate donors who are aggressively trying to prevent any rise in taxes on billionaires and big business, despite these being popular initiatives with the electorate at large.

This corruption festering within the Democrats’ own ranks is enough to make your head spin, as Wall Street buys off senators for pennies on the dollar at the expense of the national interest. It’s a foul thing to behold, and it’s the reason a populist demagogue like Donald Trump was able to run and win in this country. Americans know they’re being duped.

Indeed, raising taxes on the super wealthy and massive trillion dollar corporations alike is extremely popular, just like having Medicare negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower America’s exorbitant drug prices (according to some analysts it’s the most popular policy they’ve ever polled).

Plumbers, schoolteachers, and doctors all desperately want Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to pay proper taxes, because they do it themselves. America detests big pharma, and wants cheaper medication. Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google should all be made to pay their fair share of taxes. Theoretically, at least, these are all popular with the voting public.

However, it seems that the Washington swamp scene has come alive with lobbyists and other powerful political creatures eager to protect the massive and accumulating wealth of America’s billionaires. They’re hobbling Biden’s agenda and assisting in our return to fascism-lite in order to reap the friendly regressive tax regimes of the Republican Party.

This is the battle between entrenched Big Money interests that can always afford to buy and rent our politicians, and the health and wellbeing of our American republic.

Tragically, billionaires and plutocrats are winning the day. America’s billionaire-class seems to want to purchase themselves a government that exists only to serve them, though perhaps they’ve already got what they want.

Simmering authoritarian ambitions

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s shadow-campaign just finished conducting internal swing state polling showing him miles ahead of Joe Biden in a theoretical 2024 match up. They found that Trump beat Biden by 8 points in Arizona, 10 points in Wisconsin, 12 points in Michigan, 6 points in Pennsylvania and 3 points in Georgia.

Add Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers into the equation, and you have something truly ominous brewing in American politics.

Held today, the national election would be a bloodbath for Democrats, and Donald Trump would likely return himself to the presidency with a congressional majority, perhaps once again without winning the popular vote.

But even if Democrats manage to somehow get themselves together by 2024 to win a national contest, Republicans are poised to steal the election outright if they lose. They’re taking control of election boards in key states like Wisconsin and Arizona, and they’re brazenly celebrating political violence and armed vigilantism.

Of course, Democrats have been unable to come anywhere near passing anything that might protect hard-won voting rights in this country due to the filibuster, Mitch McConnell’s antiquated yet powerful weapon of segregationists past that Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are so keen on protecting for him.

Republicans are saying: “If we can’t steal the election then we will take it by force.” Incredibly, the Republican Party has grown only more radicalized since the failed insurrection, and shows every sign of growing still more deranged.

Kyle Rittenhouse has emerged as the newest right-wing idol, visiting Mar-a-Lago after he was acquitted of murder in his Wisconsin trial for shooting three people with his AR-15 at a Black Lives Matter protest, killing two of them. He is the living embodiment of the Republican Party’s dark embrace of political violence and racism, as the same far-right House Republicans that assisted Trump’s coup gleefully offer him internships on twitter.

A recent column by Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times catalogued the glut of misery and political despair we’re all feeling right now, as billionaires purchase senators in our malfunctioning Congress and Republicans celebrate a teenage killer. Inflation, rank political dysfunction and corruption, deep anxiety about the state of the economy, and this endless godforsaken pandemic are all contributing to a malaise that’s difficult to shake.

Apathy and cynicism have taken over for many, as political observers watch America being given to Donald Trump by a few corrupt Democrats operating within a thoroughly rotten system.

As if that wasn’t enough to make you moody this thanksgiving, extraordinarily aggressive Republican gerrymandering is obliterating any chance of a representative Congress, as Republicans apply artificial intelligence to big data in order to draw insane electoral state maps that literally can’t lose.

This is what it looks like when a democracy dies, as state institutions prove they’re incapable of reforming themselves amid systemic corruption. America is being held at gunpoint by billionaires and Republicans who have zero interest in the public good, and the social contract binding us all together has become dangerously and perhaps irreversibly frayed as a result.

For the first time, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance added the United States to its list of nations suffering from “democratic backsliding.” It’s a stunning move, as America continues down the path of authoritarianism and political violence even with Trump out of office.

Gloom and doom

Thus far, every single effort to investigate Donald Trump and pursue those that enabled his insurrection has come to nothing. The toothless January 6 congressional committee has merely underscored its own fatal weakness by spewing endless subpoenas into the ether to be publicly ignored.

After a long three weeks of open contempt, Steve Bannon was finally indicted by Biden’s DOJ, though that felt a day late and a dollar short. Mark Meadows, Trump’s Chief of Staff on 1/6, also ignored congressional subpoenas with seeming impunity.

There has been little to no movement on the various Trump investigations in New York and Georgia, and of course there is no known active federal probe into his many misdeeds, per the directions of Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The last notable occurrence was the indictment of Trump’s corporate consigliere Allen Weisselberg for felony tax fraud for hiding income from the IRS. He was arrested and quickly released on bail, and he is reportedly not cooperating with the investigation into his longtime boss.

There’s been a bit of noise recently from New York prosecutors in the Southern District looking hard at Trump’s wildly fluctuating real estate valuations, though legal experts all agree that would be an exceedingly difficult case to make without an insider eyewitness that could testify to criminal intent.

In any case, Donald Trump seems quite safe from prosecution, and he appears to be readying himself to run for president in 2024, largely unchallenged by other Republicans. Chris Christie recently made the mistake of telling the GOP that it needed to stop talking about the 2020 election and move on, emphasizing that Trump lost while denying there was electoral fraud in a series of interviews.

Yet he saw his polling evaporate with a Republican base that has created a powerful cult of personality around Donald Trump and has elevated his Big Lie to gospel truth. The lesson within the GOP is that to question or confront Trump’s Big Lie is to commit political suicide.

For now, at least, Democrats and democrats alike have the luxury of a little time, but not much else. One must try to find something positive about American democracy to give thanks for, as we enter what may be a very dark winter.

Subscribe here for free to see my latest work

Want to read more of my writing? Sign up for a Medium membership for $5/month to receive unlimited access to all my new writing along with all the other talented writers publishing on Medium. I’ll receive a small referral fee with no increase to your cost if you sign up using the above link.