QOTD -- Many Mini-Trumps

"Republicans are eroding American democracy day by day. It’s not a fully coordinated effort directed by former president Donald Trump or national party leaders. Instead, GOP officials, particularly at the state and local levels, are regularly taking actions that add up to an antidemocratic movement. They are reducing news media access, making it harder to vote, aggressively gerrymandering legislative districts and using government power to threaten their political enemies. We are not seeing democracy die in darkness but rather democratic decline in the light.  [snip]

"The biggest danger for American democracy is that Trump or a figure like him succeeds at something bold and extreme like Jan 6. But an almost equally important danger is that a bunch of mini-Trumps, some of whom you have never heard of, take several hundred actions, most of which you will never learn of, that gradually create either a national government or 25 to 30 state governments where elections are rigged by gerrymandering and voting restrictions, where news coverage and other forms of public accountability are nonexistent, and where people worry about retribution if they disagree with their political leaders.

"America stopped Trump on Jan. 6. But we are not yet stopping Trumpism." -- Perry Bacon, Jr., in the Washington Post today.  With Republican/ Seditionist Party voters in Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere selecting mini- Trump, mouth- foaming election deniers to run in state and national elections, Bacon's point comes closer to reality.  Democrats are fighting to protect your personal freedoms, the voting franchise, for a prosperous and inclusive economy, and to mitigate climate change, with the Republican/ Seditionist Party fighting them all the way.  Stopping "Trumpism" (a.k.a., the Republican ethos) means nothing short of voting Democratic at every election for every office.