🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
There are a lot of reasons to dread a potential red wave election next month that delivers control of the House, Senate, and critical swing state governorships to a radicalized GOP, including the message that will be sent to gleeful Gilead Republicans hellbent on using Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization as a beachhead to expand their control of women's bodies. But perhaps the most insidious thing for people who would like to someday vote in another free and fair election, unmolested by MAGA goons and illegitimate courts, is that by the time the GOP's broad-daylight plot against democracy kicks into high gear, the electorate will be too numb from run-of-the-mill Republican chaos-making to do much of anything about it.
After all, the kind of "normal" Republican behavior we've become accustomed to over the past 20 years or so is bananas. To pluck just one example from an overloaded tree of indecencies and escalations, the GOP-led house conducted 37 absurd hearings about the Benghazi consulate attack between 2013 and 2016 despite knowing full well that there was no meaningful wrongdoing. Between 2011 and 2017, the House passed more than 50 bills to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act, none of which ever had even a 1 percent chance of becoming law while Barack Obama was president.
The constant use of the debt ceiling and government funding bills as cudgels to extract concessions from Democrats, Mitch McConnell's abuse of the filibuster rule in the Senate to grind all legislation to a halt under Democratic presidents, the Senate's avowed determination never to confirm another Supreme Court justice for a Democratic president, the holding open of dozens of judgeships under Obama so those seats could be filled by Trump—all of these things are now examples of routine Republican behavior.
And this time they will be much, much worse. The GOP majority will have an overwhelming Trump-sycophant majority, with hordes of newly elected extremists, Big Lie enthusiasts, and thirsty authoritarians ready to make President Biden's life a living hell. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has already promised to torch funding for Ukraine's fight against Russia and use the country's ridiculous debt ceiling to force massive social spending cuts, including to Medicare and Social Security. Despite McCarthy's tepid pre-election denials, a profoundly frivolous impeachment of Biden is more likely than not, because the radicals at the beating heart of his caucus will depose him if "leadership" doesn't get on board. Prepare for years of Hunter Biden laptop drivel.
Again, this is what is expected. This is what Republicans are promising the voters they will do with their power. And because a GOP Congress is likely to live down to its below-sea-level expectations, no one is going to be particularly alarmed or surprised by any of it. Biden's breathtaking refusal to endorse eliminating the debt ceiling while Democrats still hold power all but ensures two years of high-stakes brinkmanship. After all, hostage-taking is what Republicans do when they are in power.
Meanwhile, the plot against democracy will be unfolding quietly all along, as conspiracy theorists take control of election machinery at the local and state level in critical swing states like Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. A newly emboldened Republican Party would be unlikely to help reform the archaic, loophole-riddled Electoral Count Act in the lame duck session. That would leave the gaping vulnerabilities exposed by Trump and his cronies on Jan. 6, 2021, ready to be exploited again.
Next summer the Supreme Court will issue a ruling on a case involving the so-called Independent State Legislature theory, through which a deliberate, previously lunatic fringe misreading of the Constitution will be used as pretext to grant GOP state legislatures the right to draw district lines, pass voter suppression laws and appoint presidential electors without any interference from pesky state courts or governors. While even the most-MAGA state legislature is unlikely to abolish a direct vote for president, expect a flurry of laws designed to give the legislature the right to pick electors by fiat in the event of a dispute of the outcome. And we know there will be disputes because the new Republican position on elections is that they are only legitimate if they win them.
And that's when the whole mess will land in the laps of the electorate. In 2024, after two more years of a Republican-led circus in Washington, those voters will be in for a rude awakening. U.S. citizens may still have the right to vote, but there won't be any suspense about the winner.
And people know it. But for the empty promise that Republicans will magically make inflation go away, they're willing to mortgage everything an American patriot is expected to hold dear.
You'd be insane to knowingly bring this future into being. But you do have an opportunity to affect your future. It sounds like a cliché, but vote. This may be the last time your ballot means anything, so for the love of God please use it to preserve Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and build on them.
You can help to reverse the country's slide into authoritarianism, so do it!
David Faris is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
