https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2022/01/06/joe-biden-speech-jan-6-u-s-capitol-insurrection/9118130002/
Well, it finally happened.
Now, if they can only make some progress on killing or outflanking the anti-civil rights monstrosity know as the filibuster.
This has been too long in coming. Personally, I wish that Biden and Harris and at least twenty or thirty Democratic party politicians had started doing this just after Biden was elected. Biden’s effort to be conciliatory and to “reach out” to members of the Republican party has been a waste of time. And any further efforts will be a waste of time as well.
The Republicans, with too few exceptions, are not interested in working with the Democrats. They are not interested in bipartisanship on infrastructure deals. They are not interested in presenting a united front to stop Vladimir Putin in Ukraine or the Chinese in the South Asian Sea.
The Republicans are interested in only one thing: how to cheat their way to electoral victory so that they can become a permanent minority dictatorship.
Cheating, of course, is not the only thing that Republicans will do to win. They are perfectly happy to lie to do it. Reactionary conservative Republicans have built a very large media infrastructure of traditional publications, radio stations, websites and, most of all, TV broadcasting companies like Fox (Fake and Phony) News. And they use all of these apparatuses relentlessly - both to enrage their angry, aggrieved, bitterly frustrated core supporters (own the libs! Make the liberals cry!) and to keep them entertained by trolling, insulting, and smugly condescending to anybody who is not a conservative white Republican.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/some-republicans-are-rewriting-history-about-january-6-n1267194
They are also not above using violence. If nothing else the insurrection of January 6th, and the treason of dozens or hundreds of reactionary conservatives proved that. When huge mobs, wearing tact gear, carrying non-lethal but dangerous weapons (bear spray) storm the offices of the congress in an effort to stop or disrupt the certification of a legitimately elected official - that’s violence, that’s treason and those people are traitors. And in case anyone is stupid enough to believe that those people were just tourists, ask them what they think that makeshift gallows and the noose were for (lynching Mike Pence?)
Lying and violence, the current stock and trade of the Reactionary Conservative Republicans, are not the most dangerous things they are currently doing to become the permanent minority dictatorship. Cheating is!
The Republicans really, really do think that they can win control of the government, and enough of the states, to marginalize the Democrats and permanently lock us out of power. And there is reason for them to believe that this will work.
The ways that Reactionary Conservative Republicans cheat are well know: gerrymandering, voter suppression, vote theft, intimidation, manipulation of voting populations and status of voting, etc. This has given them control of various states which allows them to control state legislatures to force an end to abortion, use “religious liberty” to trample on people they don’t like and, above all, bottle up civil rights legislation in the Senate by means of the filibuster.
In order to stop this grab for permanent minority dictatorial power it is very important to understand the primary, primal driving motivation of the Republican party. There really is a clear, simple reason why the Reactionary Conservative Republicans are so vicious, unlawful, dirty, brutal and vicious (did I say that already?) in grabbing electoral power:
The Republican party is a dying party, and there is nothing that they can do to change that.
It is not so surprising that the Republicans got killed in the 2018 midterms and then the general election of 2020. In the face of this and numerous indications of trouble isn’t it unconvincing for the Republicans to claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
But it gets worse. The strongest, most reliable Republican voters, the ones that they most depend upon to turn out for elections (especially the local and statewide elections where participation is usually thin) is an older man or woman. And these are disappearing from from the face of the earth.
Note the words, “most reliably.”
The older people that the Republican party has been relying on are not only rapidly aging, but the younger ones are not interested in being conservative Republicans. And this trend is not just worrying, it is down right terrifying for the GOP.
But Wait!!! It gets even worse for the GOP.
Age is one problem for the GOP but just as significantly, or more so, is the dwindling number of white people in America. This one I think, terrifies them more than anything else.
The GOP has always been, primarily, a party of white people. Even when they are able to pick up minority voters - black, Hispanic, Asians - it has never been in any great number or for any real duration. In fact, most of the pickups in nonwhite voting is on the fringe, with very little progress ever made among the majority of any ethnic or religious group. To put it bluntly, it is the party of white people, by white people and for white people.
But America is changing: it is becoming much more multiethnic and multicultural - and in America white people will no longer be the majority.
Due to to the strong trends in births, deaths and immigration, the article states the future for the Republican Party pretty starkly: “The aging white population, alongside a more youthful minority population, especially in the case of Latinos, will result in the U.S. becoming a majority-minority country in around 2044.”
The Republican party of the Reactionary Conservatives (there are no more liberal or moderate conservatives) is literally, literally dying. Its registration advantage, if it ever really had one, is dying as more people are registering to be Democrats. And the older white people, the reliable core block of supporters, is dying off and will never be the majority of people in America again.
All of the elements of its support are dying off, and the Republican party as an institution is dying as well. The Republicans know it, and they feel it and above all, they fear it. Any surprise that they cheat??
But Wait!!! It gets even worse!!!
The Republican party, being a minority party, has long had the advantage over Democrats in terms of voter turnout. Motivating a small, homogeneous group of people, many of whom will always be retired and have more time to be politically active and get out to the polls, is not that hard. Far harder is motivating and involving a large number of diverse and, mostly busy working people, to get to the polls on a regular basis - and especially so in the small state and local elections.
In 2020 the Republicans went into the elections feeling confident: they had beaten the odds in a shocking, upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump was a sitting president, wildly popular among almost all Republicans, their base was fired up and their opponent was sleepy, tired, old Joe Biden who stayed in his basement and hid behind a stupid mask. And then …
They lost. And they didn’t just lose, they got creamed, they got pounded, they got HUMILIATED!!
The Republicans were shocked! They were horrified! They were in a state of total disbelief. They refused to believe that, with their historically huge turn out, anyone could beat Trump.
The numbers for Trump in the 2020 election were indeed very, very impressive. Republicans will cite, as evidence that Biden couldn’t have won, the following: didn’t Trump bring in millions of blue collar voters who normally swing Democratic? And didn’t he unexpectedly pick up millions of Latino voters? (He did, in fact get more of these two blocks of voters). And didn’t he in fact win more votes than Barack Obama? And didn’t he win more votes than any other sitting president? (True on both counts).
It didn’t matter - at all. Trump put up huge and historically unprecedented numbers. And even though the Republicans had been gerrymandering and practicing voter suppression for years before the election, Biden’s turn out was overwhelming - he won the electoral college by 74 votes (which is huge) and got about 7 million more popular votes than Trump. Trump got more votes than any other politician. But it did not matter all: Biden and the aroused Democratic voters turned out in huge numbers and just destroyed him nonetheless. The Republicans gave it their best effort, but even with massive turn out and lots of cheating, it was hopeless.
This is why the Republicans just keep on whining and crying and vainly trying to convince people that Trump won. The more thoughtful and astute, I believe, understand the grim reality of their party’s fate: a massive Democratic turnout will always destroy them. The others are just too weak or too stupid to cope with reality.
If they are going to have a future as a party, what is there to do? They can’t simply manufacture older, angry, viciously aggrieved white people who will live forever? And good luck bringing in huge numbers of minorities who will vote like the reliable old white people.
Their solution? Cheat, cheat more, and cheat better. Find new ways to block minorities from getting to the ballot box, find new voter ID laws that will exclude blacks, elderly people, students studying away from home, find ways to simply throw out ballots they don’t want to count.
This is the modern Republican Party and the Reactionary Conservatives who run it.
Cheat or die! That is what we have to face, and that is what we have to defeat.
in the next blog I will delve into some of the new tactics that the Reactionary Republicans have implemented to deny Democrats the right to vote and have their votes count. You will find it both enraging and disgusting. But, being progressive Democrats we can actually handle reality - even if it is disgusting.
Vote Democratic! Vote for progressives. Give money to Democrats who work hard to make our votes count. Vote to stop the lying, cheating power grabbing Republicans so that they never become the permanent minority dictatorship that they need to survive!
Reasons: 1) core supporters are dying off and there is no one to replace them. Don’t/haven’t/can’t court minorities because they have cut them all off. Not enough of them. America a white minority in 25 years.
2) Can’t depend on turn out, no matter how enthusiastic and committed and enraged base is. 2020 election was a shock. Still couldn’t win - only thing is to cheat and maintain dictatorial control. Also, only way to force abortion, queer bashing, trans bashing and other forms of fascist policies on America
Fighting the efforts of the Republican must be our top priority.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2022/01/06/joe-biden-speech-jan-6-u-s-capitol-insurrection/9118130002/