Op-Ed: Insurrection Could Succeed Next Time

 

A cautionary note from an op-ed by Michelle Goldberg:

"Today’s Republican Party has no political philosophy in the normal sense; it is, rather, organized around fealty to Trump and the stab-in-the-back myth that the election was stolen from him. Cheney had to go because she rejects that lie, recognizing it as inimical to democracy, which she continues to value. Her defenestration is one more indication that the party is preparing to do in the next election what it could not do in the last one.

Absent an overwhelming mobilization by Democrats, Republicans have a good chance of winning the House in 2022. Redistricting alone will probably give them several new seats. They could win the Senate as well. If Biden or another Democrat prevails in 2024, a House run by Kevin McCarthy, the craven minority leader who helped push Cheney out, seems likely to collaborate in right-wing schemes to change the result."  (our emphasis)

Look at the Big Lie and the January 6 right-wing insurrection as a dress rehearsal for future elections. Trumpists will never accept an election won by Democrats, and they will use whatever means at their disposal -- election fraud, intimidation and suppressing the vote, post-election disenfranchisement, etc. -- to overturn the majority's will (a majority that includes Independents and never-Trump Republicans).

As Dems and their allies strongly mobilized in 2018 and 2020 to defeat the Trump Party / Cult, we have to do the same in every future election until the anti-democratic, neo-fascist threat posed by that cult is consistently and overwhelmingly defeated. Even then, we have to maintain vigilance that it never gains power again.