I observe with a sort of gallows humor the emails that fill my inbox everyday…emails from a wide range of Democratic and progressive sources exhorting recipients to contact legislators, Senators and members of Congress to stand up against Republican efforts to reshape the political landscape by attacking everything from voters’ rights to the climate change legislation, criminal justice reform, the shape of the courts, minimum wage, tax reform and racial injustice. While the warnings they provide are valid and justified, I am left to wonder whether it is too late to do anything about what is happening; indeed, whether there was ever an opportunity to do anything about what is happening as the outcome does seem to be a foregone conclusion.
Sure, Democrats control the Executive branch as well as the Senate and the House and have, with that control, been able to push through in short order several pieces of legislation that have fulfill portions of the agenda on which Democrats ran in the last election cycle and consequently had a significantly positive benefit for many Americans. Still, it all seems like the Republican party actually in control (case in point is the rejection of a commission to examine the January 6th attack on the Capitol) and is just lying in wait, patiently waiting for the next election cycle…the mid-term elections in 2022…to unleash the fruits of a strategy which has been successfully taking form for the past few years.
The strategy is no secret; it is, in fact, playing out in plain sight, manifested by, for example, the passage of countless pieces of legislation in at least half the states that is clearly intended to curtail voting by those who are likely to not cast their votes for those who have authored the very legislation that is intended to prevent a vote against those authors.
The strategy can be seen in the shift to the right in the courts of most of those same states that all but guarantees that any attempt to challenge through the courts any or all of these disenfranchising pieces of legislation are doomed to fail thus guaranteeing that many votes that would likely not be cast for Republican candidates, will never be cast.
It can be seen in the bizarre vote “audits” which started in Arizona and are spreading to many of states where Trump was expected to win but because of votes by those who are now being disenfranchised unexpectedly lost. While the mainstream media chases its tail, scoffing at the effort, the true purpose…to justify Republican legislators to require state election boards to drop Dominion voting machines in favor of Election Systems & Software which is more vulnerable to hacking and vote tally manipulation goes without examination.
These are but a few of the countless items on the GOP agenda that are taking shape for the sole purpose of insuring GOP control of the political process within the next few years. Make no mistake…these efforts are not of recent vintage, but, again, the product of seeds planted years ago, many by the Koch Brothers (who sought and still seek to guarantee passage of libertarian-based policies but, by their admission, got more than they bargained for in the process of seeking to put in place Republican majorities in every state).
With both the House and Senate held by Democrats by the slimmest of margins, these efforts are certain to result in a change in both houses of Congress in 2022 which, if true, will put an end to the Biden agenda. It does not matter that tens of millions of people, considered part of the “Trump base, have and will continue to benefit greatly from Biden’s agenda nor does it matter that most Republicans at every level of government…state, local and federal…favor policies that are not only not favored by most Americans but are particularly harmful to the very people they count as part of the Holy Grail of Politics, also known as “The Trump Base”. It is the legislators, often pursuing very radical agendas that do nothing for their constituents, who are calling the shots and with so much power vested in their hands, there is, again, little if anything anyone can do about it.
What that means for the future is difficult to say. Still, with the Republican Party…the party of Trump, Greene and the Koch-backed, Americans for Prosperity… poised to control every aspect of our lives, you can be sure that the future will be an ugly one that may make the Trump years look like a quiet day in the park.
