The beginning of the end of U.S. Democracy happened in the year 2000, with a Republican-weighted Supreme Court voting down a case that would have allowed Florida to recount the disputed results in one particular county that would have surely swung the entire election to Al Gore instead of George W. Bush. I remember at the time saying to my wife just that: This is the beginning of the end of Democracy and this country as we know it.
It has taken twenty two years, but here we are at the precipice of the end. With Trump and his blood-thirsty minions clawing at the gates of our political infrastructures, our tried and true institutions are teetering. Voting rights, civil rights, the Bill of Rights, along with liberty and justice for all, and applied equally to all.
Al Gore, though he disagreed strongly with the decision, graciously conceded defeat to spare the country from a constitutional crisis that might have hurt any possibility of unifying the country and moving on with the new president. On the other hand, Donald Trump just issued a statement two years after he lost the 2020 election decisively, saying he was the “rightful winner” and at a minimum, someone should “declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately!” And just as in 2000, a radical right wing Supreme Court licks its chops for a red-meat case to be thrown their way to enable Trump to complete the job of the destruction of Democracy that was started by their comrades in judicial arms.
Far from gracious, far from unifying, far from sane, what his demonic intransigence has done is given a green light to 19 Red-controlled states to enact legislation limiting the voting rights of minorities and, increasingly the right of women–and the men who stand with them–to choose the management of their own bodies. And take heed: contraception and marriage equality are next on the chopping block. What’s more, after the last primary elections, Trump-endorsed directors of elections in key battleground states are chomping at the bit to defeat their Democratic opponents and ready the palace for Trump’s coronation in 2024. This is the American political version of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The American violent version was January 6, and the coming “riots in the streets,” as Lindsey Graham blurted on Fox “News.”
All this has woken the fighting spirit of our president Joe Biden. Without a glitch or a gaffe, he has delivered strong and clear speeches, not from a “Sleepy Joe” as Trump so derisively calls him, but from a G.I. Joe, slamming MAGA, and yes, Fascist-like, Republicans against the ropes. Thank you. Joe. I knew you had it in you.
Now it’s up to you and I to deliver the knock out punch and send the MAGA Republicans in both Houses to the back-benches where they belong and the Trump-endorsed election officials back to obscurity where they belong. That translates as a landslide Democratic victory in 2022, up and down the ballot!
If we can make that happen, we will send a message to the white supremacist/nationalists here and abroad that American democracy is fully intact and is standing by the principles for which we originally declared.
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