The news this past week, that the Idaho legislature and passed and the governor had signed a bill forbidding interstate travel to obtain an abortion, followed by the decision of a rogue right wing lunatic Trump judge in Amarillo making overturning the FDA approval 20 years ago of Mifepristone, effectively attempting to end medication abortion nationwide,brings into sharp focus a process that has been going on for several years. This is approaching the point where, if Trump returns to office in 2024 with Republican control of the Senate (a strong possibility, given the Senate map and the fact Democrats are the majority of those up for re-election) andthe House, the plan can be brought to fruition.
You have put all of this together very well Tom. And it ought to scare the hell out of everyone. We all need to get active politically in whatever capacity you are capable of. The youth vote is going to be so important in the next elections. The red states are making it harder for them to vote just like they have the minorities. At least one of them won’t accept a student ID card but will accept a gun registration card. That a good example of who they want and don’t want to vote. It is going to take all of us to educate, motivate and help everyone to vote, and vote Democratic so we can take our declining freedoms back from the Republican fascists. They have tipped over the first domino and the the rest are going down fast unless we stop them.
A final thrust of the flying fickle finger of fate - the Democrats MUST find better leadership with a better grasp of strategic thinking. Howard Dean had a plan to elect Democrats in as many state governments as possible, and the "leadership" took that money and used it on the Obama national campaign - perhaps a good tactical decision, but strategically it was what led to what we have now.
Probably the greatest failure of the Obama Presidency was the entirely empty bench he left. Oh, and his not using the Intelligence data he surely had about the Russians to prevent Trump’s election.
Well, this is depressing, but a most necessary compiling of our possible future. The only hope we have is that the continued massive overreaching by the Republicans in Congress will scare enough people to convince them to vote and vote for the Democrats as the more sane of the political parties. If the Republicans get in unified national power, the experiment of the past 240+ years will be pretty much over as a practical matter - they will rig the system so the Democrats can never win any important elections or influence national legislation again. That is when the country truly comes apart..... The blue states are the major contributors to the nation's GDP and at some point may decide that supporting a national government that is actively working against them is counterproductive. If they withhold taxes they should send to the federales, the wheels will come off the wagon soon enough.....
There is another area in which coordinated action would be a huge lever, although a potentially dangerous one. The Military. Minorities are represented in the military way above their percentages in the general population. Almost all branches of the military are failing to meet recruitment quotas even though enlistment requirements have been vastly lowered in recent years and some generous enlistment bonuses have been offered to those with certain tech skill sets. If young liberals and enough minorities who are most affected by the GOP's bad policies and power grabs continue to avoid serving, military readiness is in the toilet, and should we be attacked, the gun-toters are going to have to figure out how to form themselves into a realistic fighting force. Not likely.
Of course, the GOP would be forced to bring back the draft, which would likely hobble them politically in all new ways. But I see the young as having more power than they realize beyond their votes. So far they've been using it more in the area of climate change and environmental protection than anything else. A few bright star youth leaders could move the needle, so we must support them in big ways, more air time for them and less for the MTGs and Kanye Wests.
I fear this is going to get a whole lot uglier before it gets better, however the vote goes. But yes, VOTE! And speak out - good trouble is a good thing.
The Republic was created in response to the perceived conquest of the British Empire. Thanks for this perception. We need to see the conquest. It’s still about empire. It’s still about keeping the Republic.
A fateful election described in artful animation and narrated by Tom Hanks. I like Substack, but I miss visual descriptions from photos, illustrations, and maps.
That lays it out perfectly, and it’s not exaggeration. As in 1860, the minority is dead set on dictating to the majority. And just like in 1860 a hide bound economic model is insistent on stopping progress. I hope we all make Tom’s points to every reasonable person we meet. The country has to start realizing that we are not facing a collection of disparate and distinct issues, but rather we are facing off against a dyspeptic world view.
The only quick fix for this is something Biden has said he will not do - expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices. The way you do that is write a Judiciary Act that specifies that the number of Supreme Court justices shall equal the number of US District Courts (currently 13). That way you can keep the Republicans from adding more without a reason if they get back in power. Only a more liberal SCOTUS can stop the hemorrhaging of our rights the way they are going.
Wow, just wow Tom, this is your best piece of writing on this subject by far. It’s a brilliant, cohesive, sober overview of forces threatening our nation, their roots, their methods and their intent. Bravo!! I plan to forward this piece far and wide.
One small request. There are 3 typos that should be corrected. This is too good to be marred by something so easy to fix. I’ll go back and find them for you, but, I had to say thanks first. Wonderful writing!
In all the (liberal) media I read, including blogs like this and a couple of national newspapers, the comments are filled with people agreeing, broadly, with this analysis. That’s quite a lot of people who recognize what’s going on and that something very serious needs to be done. And soon.
Is it really possible that NO ONE in the leadership of the Democratic Party understands this? And, if there is, what are they planning to do, and when, AND WHEN THE HELL ARE THEY GOING TO START TELLING THE COUNTRY! (Sorry for the all caps but it makes me VERY ANGRY!)
Sadly, absolutely true and a clear statement why lives really do depend on the next elections. Democrats and other liberal folks have been far to slow to wake up to this stealth (now way out in the open) on the basic principles of democracy. The next few years are going to control the destiny of this country and our individual destiny. And the GOP is more and more in the Driver's Seat (so to speak) in many ways...... As more cases reach the Supreme Court we will find out how disastrous the last three appointments are for all of us. I keep saying, the Democrats need to learn to message. It may be too late. Thanks for turning on the siren TC!!!
Here's a wild idea: young people strap a pistol to your belt and VOTE. Seriously, I hope and believe that intelligent and patriotic citizens vastly outnumber the rubes and morons ( including those who glide along as SCOTUS creeps) and will not allow these nazi racists to destroy this country.
Because there are a lot of people like Bruce Culver in Texas. And every other one of those states. There is an Other South, and if there was national support through protecting voting, through pushing national economic policy the way President Biden is doing so that economic prosperity was not just regional as it is now, that Other South would show up because it's there now. There is an Other Idaho, and every other red state. Those places are not monolithic any more than California is monolithically blue. Deciding to do something like a "national divorce" is to choose losing, the way the GOP is choosing losing now.
Yes, like the US as a whole, Texas is a carpet of very red counties encompassing liberal blue city-suburban enclaves as "points of light"..... Right now, the far-right controls the Texas legislature, but as the state brings in more people from other states (usually more liberal), it will shift from red to purple and eventually perhaps even blue..... When that happens, the Electoral College is toast - McConnell himself would push for a constitutional amendment to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote for President and VP.....
That is certainly true, but Texas has a large tech sector, and those companies tend to hire younger workers who won't move to Texas, especially if they are married. When they have trouble running their businesses because they can't get good workers, they will stop supporting the Republican Party politicians.....
That does seem to be what the red states are doing as we speak..... At some point, perhaps we devolve to the point that Andrew Jackson did in fighting a Court decision he did not like - "The justice has made his decision - let him enforce it....." I can see an economic divergence in which blue states simply refuse to fund a reactionary federal government, and keep the money for themselves to provide the services they want to provide. What the red states do not seem to understand is that the counties won by Hillary Clinton and Jo Biden in the past elections produce 65% of the US GDP, and the red counties produce only 35% of GDP. Guess which way actually works better in real life.....
It isn't that they don't understand the economics, they don't care. It is as inconceivable to them that the resources provided by the largely Democratic areas won't be available as it is that their notion of the right way to live is wrong.
I don't know how that would work for the blue states to withhold the money, unless the red states formally seceded. But I like that idea, despite the source of it. I've been saying for years that Lincoln should have let the South go (although there are good economic reasons, I'm told, why they did not). Now those good economic reasons seem to be gone.
David, we're going to have to agree to disagree. If you look at President Biden's economic policies in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Bill, they promote good economic growth in red states, which weans them off the economic rut they are stuck in, perhaps without the everyday folks even realizing it's happening as they go get actually-good jobs. Like it or not, the country can't be divided. Look at the map of blue and red states - the blue states do not have geographic congruity. You can't have a country that is here and there; not to mention what do you do with all the urban areas of the red states that are blue?
I'm not sure a lack of geographic continuity matters that much in the jet age. I'd be more worried about the blue urban areas of red states.
I do keep hoping Biden's policies are going to bring prosperity to the underclasses of both blue and red states, because poverty sucks, and we're all better off when there's less of it, and because I keep hoping people in the red states will realize it's Democrats who are helping them, and start voting in their own interests.
Yes, and that is the key to breaking the hold Trumpism has on the MAGA crowd - a full belly does not a revolutionary make. If the working classes at the heart of the far-right political support of Republicans see that electing Democrats makes their lives better, eventually that will penetrate even the most effective right-wing propaganda.....
Thank you, I’m one of those who never watches Fox and hates what Rupert and repubs have done to this great state. If I could move I would, but like many, I can’t relo…
I live in Florida my friend and I’m fighting like hell to restore her sanity. You can’t just walk away when a body part gets sick. You fix it or the entire body suffers.
You have put all of this together very well Tom. And it ought to scare the hell out of everyone. We all need to get active politically in whatever capacity you are capable of. The youth vote is going to be so important in the next elections. The red states are making it harder for them to vote just like they have the minorities. At least one of them won’t accept a student ID card but will accept a gun registration card. That a good example of who they want and don’t want to vote. It is going to take all of us to educate, motivate and help everyone to vote, and vote Democratic so we can take our declining freedoms back from the Republican fascists. They have tipped over the first domino and the the rest are going down fast unless we stop them.
Well said, Karen. I'm copying your comment, without attribution, as a comment when I share TC's post.
Thank you Mim
A final thrust of the flying fickle finger of fate - the Democrats MUST find better leadership with a better grasp of strategic thinking. Howard Dean had a plan to elect Democrats in as many state governments as possible, and the "leadership" took that money and used it on the Obama national campaign - perhaps a good tactical decision, but strategically it was what led to what we have now.
Thank you Rahm Emanuel.
If I could, I’d STILL take his stupid ass to the woodshed for a whuppin’.
Salud, TC.
🗽
That, and Karl Rove's REDMAP,, which worked painfully well.
That marks the formal beginning of the project.
As David Daley writes in his book, we've been "ratf**ked." It's rigging elections pure and simple.
Hooked in the Pharisees
Probably the greatest failure of the Obama Presidency was the entirely empty bench he left. Oh, and his not using the Intelligence data he surely had about the Russians to prevent Trump’s election.
Well, this is depressing, but a most necessary compiling of our possible future. The only hope we have is that the continued massive overreaching by the Republicans in Congress will scare enough people to convince them to vote and vote for the Democrats as the more sane of the political parties. If the Republicans get in unified national power, the experiment of the past 240+ years will be pretty much over as a practical matter - they will rig the system so the Democrats can never win any important elections or influence national legislation again. That is when the country truly comes apart..... The blue states are the major contributors to the nation's GDP and at some point may decide that supporting a national government that is actively working against them is counterproductive. If they withhold taxes they should send to the federales, the wheels will come off the wagon soon enough.....
There is another area in which coordinated action would be a huge lever, although a potentially dangerous one. The Military. Minorities are represented in the military way above their percentages in the general population. Almost all branches of the military are failing to meet recruitment quotas even though enlistment requirements have been vastly lowered in recent years and some generous enlistment bonuses have been offered to those with certain tech skill sets. If young liberals and enough minorities who are most affected by the GOP's bad policies and power grabs continue to avoid serving, military readiness is in the toilet, and should we be attacked, the gun-toters are going to have to figure out how to form themselves into a realistic fighting force. Not likely.
Of course, the GOP would be forced to bring back the draft, which would likely hobble them politically in all new ways. But I see the young as having more power than they realize beyond their votes. So far they've been using it more in the area of climate change and environmental protection than anything else. A few bright star youth leaders could move the needle, so we must support them in big ways, more air time for them and less for the MTGs and Kanye Wests.
I fear this is going to get a whole lot uglier before it gets better, however the vote goes. But yes, VOTE! And speak out - good trouble is a good thing.
Really well done TC. Thanks.
You are 100% correct on your assessment
This all makes me pray it scares the hell out of everyone VOTE like our lives depend
On saving our democracy ty, Marsha
Karen Rn .. respectfully always read
And appreciate your perspective Ty
Bless you Marsha
Ellen Massey you are ver kind to respond with thoughtful comment:)
Truly appreciate, Marsha
Bless you Ty you’re awesome:)
My Anam Cara 💕 Marsha
The Republic was created in response to the perceived conquest of the British Empire. Thanks for this perception. We need to see the conquest. It’s still about empire. It’s still about keeping the Republic.
Entirely right.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/03/tom-hanks-jeffery-robinson-1876-election-jim-crow/
A fateful election described in artful animation and narrated by Tom Hanks. I like Substack, but I miss visual descriptions from photos, illustrations, and maps.
That lays it out perfectly, and it’s not exaggeration. As in 1860, the minority is dead set on dictating to the majority. And just like in 1860 a hide bound economic model is insistent on stopping progress. I hope we all make Tom’s points to every reasonable person we meet. The country has to start realizing that we are not facing a collection of disparate and distinct issues, but rather we are facing off against a dyspeptic world view.
The only quick fix for this is something Biden has said he will not do - expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices. The way you do that is write a Judiciary Act that specifies that the number of Supreme Court justices shall equal the number of US District Courts (currently 13). That way you can keep the Republicans from adding more without a reason if they get back in power. Only a more liberal SCOTUS can stop the hemorrhaging of our rights the way they are going.
I like that one. The suggestion has symmetry behind it. 👍🏻
Wow, just wow Tom, this is your best piece of writing on this subject by far. It’s a brilliant, cohesive, sober overview of forces threatening our nation, their roots, their methods and their intent. Bravo!! I plan to forward this piece far and wide.
One small request. There are 3 typos that should be corrected. This is too good to be marred by something so easy to fix. I’ll go back and find them for you, but, I had to say thanks first. Wonderful writing!
Actually 4 typos: paragraph 14, company/country; diffrence/difference; paragraph 16, nnly/only; paragraph 18, ythe/the.
Found them. And corrected.
I can’t abide even one Republican anymore. It’s either ignorance, stupidity, and not giving a damn.
The ignorance and stupidity are just symptoms. The reason is always fear.
Salud, Jeri.
🗽
Jeri, you left out pure down hard meanness.
You never know what someone will do if they think they can get away with it.
In all the (liberal) media I read, including blogs like this and a couple of national newspapers, the comments are filled with people agreeing, broadly, with this analysis. That’s quite a lot of people who recognize what’s going on and that something very serious needs to be done. And soon.
Is it really possible that NO ONE in the leadership of the Democratic Party understands this? And, if there is, what are they planning to do, and when, AND WHEN THE HELL ARE THEY GOING TO START TELLING THE COUNTRY! (Sorry for the all caps but it makes me VERY ANGRY!)
And if there isn’t? I guess we’re done. 😡
There are Dem leaders who are pointing this out. Just not loud enough.
Sadly, absolutely true and a clear statement why lives really do depend on the next elections. Democrats and other liberal folks have been far to slow to wake up to this stealth (now way out in the open) on the basic principles of democracy. The next few years are going to control the destiny of this country and our individual destiny. And the GOP is more and more in the Driver's Seat (so to speak) in many ways...... As more cases reach the Supreme Court we will find out how disastrous the last three appointments are for all of us. I keep saying, the Democrats need to learn to message. It may be too late. Thanks for turning on the siren TC!!!
Here's a wild idea: young people strap a pistol to your belt and VOTE. Seriously, I hope and believe that intelligent and patriotic citizens vastly outnumber the rubes and morons ( including those who glide along as SCOTUS creeps) and will not allow these nazi racists to destroy this country.
Tell me why MTG's idea--for the red states to secede from the USA--is not a good one.
Because there are a lot of people like Bruce Culver in Texas. And every other one of those states. There is an Other South, and if there was national support through protecting voting, through pushing national economic policy the way President Biden is doing so that economic prosperity was not just regional as it is now, that Other South would show up because it's there now. There is an Other Idaho, and every other red state. Those places are not monolithic any more than California is monolithically blue. Deciding to do something like a "national divorce" is to choose losing, the way the GOP is choosing losing now.
Yes, like the US as a whole, Texas is a carpet of very red counties encompassing liberal blue city-suburban enclaves as "points of light"..... Right now, the far-right controls the Texas legislature, but as the state brings in more people from other states (usually more liberal), it will shift from red to purple and eventually perhaps even blue..... When that happens, the Electoral College is toast - McConnell himself would push for a constitutional amendment to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote for President and VP.....
Lots of idiots moving to Texas who are thrilled with the Texas trio of idiots.
That is certainly true, but Texas has a large tech sector, and those companies tend to hire younger workers who won't move to Texas, especially if they are married. When they have trouble running their businesses because they can't get good workers, they will stop supporting the Republican Party politicians.....
We are no longer so geographically divided. We are cellularly divided, family divisions worse than civil war times.
So true Jeri. I can attest to that with my own family.
That does seem to be what the red states are doing as we speak..... At some point, perhaps we devolve to the point that Andrew Jackson did in fighting a Court decision he did not like - "The justice has made his decision - let him enforce it....." I can see an economic divergence in which blue states simply refuse to fund a reactionary federal government, and keep the money for themselves to provide the services they want to provide. What the red states do not seem to understand is that the counties won by Hillary Clinton and Jo Biden in the past elections produce 65% of the US GDP, and the red counties produce only 35% of GDP. Guess which way actually works better in real life.....
It isn't that they don't understand the economics, they don't care. It is as inconceivable to them that the resources provided by the largely Democratic areas won't be available as it is that their notion of the right way to live is wrong.
I don't know how that would work for the blue states to withhold the money, unless the red states formally seceded. But I like that idea, despite the source of it. I've been saying for years that Lincoln should have let the South go (although there are good economic reasons, I'm told, why they did not). Now those good economic reasons seem to be gone.
David, we're going to have to agree to disagree. If you look at President Biden's economic policies in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Bill, they promote good economic growth in red states, which weans them off the economic rut they are stuck in, perhaps without the everyday folks even realizing it's happening as they go get actually-good jobs. Like it or not, the country can't be divided. Look at the map of blue and red states - the blue states do not have geographic congruity. You can't have a country that is here and there; not to mention what do you do with all the urban areas of the red states that are blue?
I'm not sure a lack of geographic continuity matters that much in the jet age. I'd be more worried about the blue urban areas of red states.
I do keep hoping Biden's policies are going to bring prosperity to the underclasses of both blue and red states, because poverty sucks, and we're all better off when there's less of it, and because I keep hoping people in the red states will realize it's Democrats who are helping them, and start voting in their own interests.
There re no shortcuts, no matter how much we wish there were.
The enemy is within, with the bull horn denigrating Joe and every breath he takes
Yes, and that is the key to breaking the hold Trumpism has on the MAGA crowd - a full belly does not a revolutionary make. If the working classes at the heart of the far-right political support of Republicans see that electing Democrats makes their lives better, eventually that will penetrate even the most effective right-wing propaganda.....
Not as long as Rupert rules the fools
Thank you, I’m one of those who never watches Fox and hates what Rupert and repubs have done to this great state. If I could move I would, but like many, I can’t relo…
I live in Florida my friend and I’m fighting like hell to restore her sanity. You can’t just walk away when a body part gets sick. You fix it or the entire body suffers.
I’m here with you, Diane! The body will heal after we rid it of DeToxin and others..
Glad to meet another resister. We’re in this together. ❤️
I live in a red state, David. I'm blue by choice as are many others here under Sanders repressive government. Please
don't include everyone in red
states as wanting to follow the
likes of MTG and her ilk.
But the inmates have taken over the asylum, and like Hitler, have changed laws so that nothing they do is illegal…