Running Off a Cliff
The Democrats will not save us, they won't even save themselves.
Every step of Donald Trump’s The Republicans’ plans have been predicated on the assumption that the Democrats cannot or will not oppose him. And every time, they have been right.
I have made the point above again, and again, and again, and the evidence continues to mount. But today Elie Mystal also makes the point that this is not, repeat not new. As he argues:
As unconscionable as the ruling was, it seems to have finally delivered a long overdue memo to Democratic politicians: Republican-controlled courts will allow Republicans to gerrymander their way to victory but won’t allow Democrats to do the same thing.
It’s a memo Democrats should have received at least 26 years ago, after Bush v. Gore, when the Supreme Court installed George W. Bush as president without even bothering to count all of the ballots in the state of Florida. Republican-controlled courts are against the idea of Democrats and especially Black people holding political power, and they will do everything in their considerable power to prevent that from happening. Republican judges are not concerned with laws or precedents or facts or fairness. They are concerned with winning. There is no intellectual consistency to Republican court rulings beyond one maxim: Republicans Always Win.
Watching the Democrats attempt to internalize this reality over the past week has been like watching Wile E. Coyote suddenly realize he’s run off a cliff. There’s a lot of flapping and thrashing but nothing that amounts to a real plan.
Read the whole thing. The bottom line is that the Republicans have spent years working towards this. John Roberts argued for gutting the VRA when he worked for Regan and he was appointed to the court in 2005 by Bush Sr. Alito was appointed in 2006. Thomas was appointed in 2001 with the help of then Senator Joseph Biden. The Project Redmap was public in 2010 with aggressive attempts to gerrymander in states across the south.
And where were the Democrats?
Did the Democratic party develop aggressive state-level plans to counter this gerrymandering?
No.
Did they develop aggressive GOTV programs to overturn it?
No.
Did they fight tooth and nail against these appointees and pack the lower courts with people who supported voting rights?
No.
No, the Democratic party has spent its time focused on expensive and losing races at the national level and coddling aged incumbents who neither understand nor care about long-term needs. In 2016 the Clinton campaign ushed state parties to send funds to the national org through state “partnerships” that drained local races of funds so she could lose. The Biden and Harris campaigns did much the same thing sucking up all the financing for expensive national advertising and they still lost.
But it is the states that matter.
Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia did not come from the DNC. It came from Stacy Abrams and her push to register new voters outside of the party framework. Over in Wisconsin it was state-level organizing outside of the national party that brought about changes in the state court. Indeed during the 2024 campaign there was a constitutional amendment on the ballot that could have ended gerrymandering in Ohio. Did Harris mention it? Did she send funds to support it?
No.
No it lost by 400,000 votes while she spent $450,000 per day rending the Vegas dome and $8 million on concerts with Beyonce.
This problem even extends beyond elections to all support. The DNC is not coordinating support for protests in Minneapolis. They are not forming mutual aid groups for people who are being drug away in the night. They are just demanding that we pony up hard cash so they can go all-in on more out of touch incumbents and Septugenerian candidates whose primary qualification is that they know Chuck Schumer and have the support of Third Way. Never mind that voters don’t want these candidates, never mind that it is the state races that decide the future of our votes. Never mind that Republicans have packed state courts with culture warriors who think God wants them to rule.
While I agree with Elie Mystal that the Democrats have no plan, the problem is worse than that. The DNC is a net drain on our success. They are so obsessed with national fundraising and self-pleasure and self-perpetuation that they have actively halted real progress. All the real organizing is done despite the party not because of it. And when faced with a loss the one thing they will not do, is learn from their mistakes. Indeed their alliance to their big donors is so strong that they would rather seek bipartisanship with avowed racists and elevate abusers than endorse real economic change.
We stand at a crossroads, we live in a time of monsters, gleeful hate, and moronic decline. Our government is in the grip of madmen, pedophile-protectors, and aged incumbents who want to make it all happen. We will not get out of this by waiting for the Democrats to “have a plan”. Indeed whatever plan they come up with will only be worse.
All we can do, indeed must do, is organize separately and look out for ourselves. The blue wave, if it even comes, will not save us.