"Whatever the label, the party that prioritized protecting white rights has always been more willing to destroy the country than accept a situation where people of color are equal and can participate in the democratic process.
"Donald Trump was not the first politician to refuse to accept the
results of a presidential contest. After Abraham Lincoln and the
anti-slavery Republican Party won the election of 1860, the Confederates
did not waste time filing lawsuits and trying to bully state election
officials into overturning their state’s election results. They simply
severed their ties with the United States of America, seceded from the
union with the defiant 1861 Cornerstone Speech
by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens declaring that “the
negro is not equal to the white man,” and quickly organized an army that
killed hundreds of thousands of their formerly fellow countrymen." --Steve Phillips in The Nation, on "The Party of White Grievance."
______________________
"So 2020 felt like a test run. The plot to overturn the 2020 election
never had a real chance of working without some external intervention
like a military coup or something like that, which I never thought was
particularly likely. But the institutional path that they pursued to
steal the election failed because they didn’t control Congress and they
didn’t control the right governorships in the right places. [snip]
"It was a test run for a way to overturn an election with the veneer of legality. You have to give Trump and Republicans some kind of dark credit for figuring out that this is really conceivable. I think they now know that, even though it would cause a court battle and possibly a civil war, that if they can’t win by suppressing the vote and the election is close enough, they can do this if they control enough state legislatures and the Congress.
"If Democrats don’t make some changes to our election laws and if they lose some races that they really need to win in 2022 and 2024, then we’re in real trouble." -- David Faris, Roosevelt University political scientist, in an interview with Sean Illing at Vox.
Democrats need to stay energized and focused -- and pass the "For the People Act" and the "John Lewis Voting Rights Act." With Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke in key positions at the Justice Department, that would be a strong antidote to Republican anti- democracy actions. They may not be able to always counter Republican white grievance politics, but they need to keep them from rigging elections, which they're doing in plain view right now.
Defending voting rights must be the number one priority for the Administration and Democrats.
