I think there are WAY to many people who truly underestimate the serious trouble our democracy is in. So many people had so many Bull Shit excuses for not voting; they're all the same, I don't like all the negativity, I'm too busy, I'm too good to vote AGAINST evil I only want to vote for the perfect...
The Grand Oligarch Party is one move away from checkmate! They're pretty hesitant about making the last move of the game, but I'm not sure why. Do they think the Tea Party will actually rise up and protect the principles of the constitution? Or maybe they think the 1% who cheered Mitt Romney when he warned the 47% are trying to take their home in the Hamptoms and car elevators away, will stop signing the checks that fund the massive propaganda machine? Or maybe they think the 2/3 of Americans who think voting is uncool, or it takes too much time away from Facebook or think there's nobody I found interesting enough by watching the TV ads to get off the couch and actually vote for, might actually turn out and vote.
They might yet decide that they now have the mandate to make the final move, but let's hope we get one more move in the game.
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As National Review's Jim Geraghty explains, they could take advantage of the fact that the US Constitution grants state legislatures broad discretion in how they allocate their electoral votes to rig the system.
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But Maine and Nebraska do it differently. They give two votes to the statewide winner, then one vote to the winner of each congressional district in the state. In practice, this makes very little difference. But as Geraghty points out it would make a huge difference if states like Ohio, Nevada, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin did it. Democrats count on securing the electoral votes — all the electoral votes — of four or five of those states in order to win presidential elections.
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Split them up, and it's basically impossible for Democrats to win a presidential election. Especially because district boundaries give Republicans an advantage in these states — it's often the case that Republicans win congressional districts well in excess of their share of the popular vote.
The only thing we need to ask is, will they do it? After shutting down the government and taking the worlds economy to the edge of a massive depression by nearly defaulting on our debt, after throwing 10's of thousands of voters off the voting rolls and making it nearly impossible for hundreds of thousands more to vote, after the economies of the states they controlled plunged with some near bankruptcy in the midst of a broad expansion, after massive tax cuts for the wealthiest at the expense of the middle class, after risking the deaths of thousands by denying millions medical care, and going on to a massive victory because 2/3 of the public still refused to vote, do you really think they are going to hesitate much longer to make the final move?
I often wonder if the founding fathers of the first modern democracy actually believed that the people would cherish democracy so much they would give their lives to protect it? Did they even consider that the great democracy they created wouldn't have to be taken away, but that a distracted people would sleepily give it away?
I can finally find common ground with the Tea Party. When they fear that our democracy is being taken away, they are absolutely right. Of course not for the paranoid delusional reasons that have been implanted into their primitive primordial brains by the rhythmical chanting of lies from Fox News. But as we know, the real danger to democracy is coming from the Tea Party's Oligarch chess masters who command their pawns to scream and shout, while they're other pieces stealthily change the rules of the game so they can never lose again.
If we're lucky, we may have about a year or two to figure out how to get the non-voters who are giving our democracy away, engaged enough to save our democracy. We Democrats want to believe that if we can repeat our positive populist message enough to be heard over the hundreds of millions of dollars of Koch lies, that the people we think have never heard our message before, will rise up and put a stop to the Oligarch takeover. But is it enough? Are we bringing a bicycle to a formula 1 race? We may very well need to inform the same non-voters about what the Republicans have done to us, as well as what we will do for them.
The 2016 race has begun. We will repeat the same types of mistakes with the same types of candidates, for what may be a last time? Or will we fight and act like this might be our last chance to win a national election? The decision is ours.