OK, I admit it. I was scared of America losing its democracy. Really scared!
It started about a year ago when states with Republican legislatures passed a countless number of voter suppression laws aimed at making voting more difficult for minorities (who normally vote Democratic). All this was under the pretense of fighting election fraud which has never been proven to exist at levels that would affect any of the elections. As a reminder, it was Trump's own lackey Attorney General, Bill Barr who said that there was no significant amount of fraud in any of the states that would have affected the 2020 presidential election.
Then there was the extreme gerrymandering in many of the Republican state legislatures (Democrats are guilty of this too but to a lesser degree). For example, Wisconsin had a 61 to 38 Republican majority in the State Assembly and a 21 to 12 majority in the State Senate. All of this with the number of Wisconsin Democrat and Republican voters split down the middle!
But Wisconsin voters selected a Democrat in Tony Evers with veto power to keep some control over the legislature. But all too many Republicans want to rule without any restraint or accountability. So their desire was to increase their advantage to a supermajority which would make the governor powerless to veto anything the Republicans wanted to do, no matter how crazy it was.
Even worse, the Wisconsin Republican candidate for governor along with his secretary of state candidate (who validates the state's elections) promised that if he were elected, Republicans would never lose another election! This is no less than a totalitarian power grab!
Even more scary is that the candidate Republican combinations of governors and secretaries of state were planning to do this same totalitarian power grab in a number of other swing states - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada. This means that if Donald Trump or any other Republican runs for president and loses in 2024, these people would have the power to flip the results. No more free elections means no more democracy! These were candidates who were endorsed by Trump in exchange for them spreading the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
The American voters had so many other concerns on their minds like the rising costs of gas and food. In addition, if these Republican governors were to prevail, more abortion rights may well have been taken away with the permission of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade.
These were undoubtedly serious concerns. But President Biden along with Democratic strategists correctly realized that if we lost our democracy, we would no longer have any control over who is leading us. So he loudly proclaimed in urgently delivered addresses that Democracy Is On The Ballot! His many critics accused him of crying wolf. But that figurative wolf waiting to destroy our democracy was real!!!
But would enough people listen? Americans have mostly had a detached attitude towards elections and politics in general. Our turnout rates for elections have been among the lowest in the world. Sure, the political junkies like me understand the situation but would the average voter get the urgent message that our democracy may be effectively hijacked if enough election deniers won? The thought of America losing its democracy made me depressed and sick at the stomach.
Although some liberals like Michael Moore said we would be just fine, I watched Real Time with Bill Maher the Friday before the election. He normally ends each show with a funny bit as part of what he calls New Rules. But this time, Maher was dead serious and feeling fatalistic about the fate of our democracy after the upcoming election. For those who didn't quite understand the gravity of it all, he eloquently summed it up in this video titled Democracy's Deathbed that I urge the reader to watch. I was convinced that it was all hopeless.
I tried to occupy my mind on that Election Day and even had dinner with a group of friends before going home to tune in to the expected bad news. But to my shock and many others, the news was unexpectedly bright. The election denying candidates for governors and secretaries of state who ran to hijack the swing states to make them captive to Republican partisan election officials all got defeated...one after another after another. And the attempt for the above mentioned supermajority in Wisconsin was also defeated. Enough American voters cared after all - even the younger voters who have been notoriously fickle about turning out to vote!
There were Republican victories by election deniers in stronghold states like Ohio, Florida and Texas. But those are less of a worry because they would likely win those states anyway without resorting to any underhanded tactics.
I am convinced that saving our democracy was a crucial reason the so-called Red Wave expected to crush the Democrats never happened. But the outrage over the loss of abortion rights by the Supreme Court along with the plainly batshit crazy candidates that were nominated with the help of Donald Trump certainly contributed.
Although many Republicans are mad as hell at Trump for causing them to lose so many election races, it is unclear whether the party will continue to move on without him. But Trump isn't going anywhere and has now announced his candidacy for president in 2024, all while the threat of multiple criminal indictments of him are in the air. Will running for president again protect him from being indicted? He likely thinks so but most legal observers say no. We shall see...
There are more crazy times to come but we (and the rest of the free world) can at least breathe easier having saved our precious democracy...at least for now!
