Some thoughts on the morning after….
The Democrats have long been accused of being the “party of special interests” (though I haven’t heard much of that lately), because of all the groups that gathered under its broad tent. In some ways, that was a good thing, since all those interests combined represented a majority of the country, and (to varying degrees) they all had to work together in order to get some of what they wanted. This is particularly true at the moment, with Manchin and Sinema being so much the exception that they stick out like very sore thumbs.
It used to be said of the Republicans that they were the party of one special interest: the plutocrats and big business. It’s still true that they are a major part of the party, but now other special interests have muscled in on the GOP. The most important ones are: White Supremacists, Christian fundamentalists, moral conservatives, gun rights advocates, and anti-government “libertarians.” There is considerable overlap among these groups, though they are not all the same. One of the common features that they do share is that they long been exploited by the leaders of the GOP who wanted their votes and money but who had no intention of giving them much real power.
That has changed. It’s easy — and largely correct — to blame Trump, but he only took advantage of an already developing situation. Now the GOP has become the victim of its own chicanery, and the inmates are running the asylum.
There are many consequences of this, none of them good for the country. I want to just mention two: First is that we are entering an age of repression, where the police power of the state will be used to impose a stifling morality that reeks of hypocrisy and that is anathema to most of the country. To paraphrase H. R. Mencken’s definition of a Puritan, the modern Christian fundamentalist and/or White Supremacist is someone with the nagging suspicion that someone else is somehow having fun.
Second, none of the special interests that now dominate the GOP play well together. Each of them wants it all. They also have lots of guns and an increasing inclination (thanks again, in large part, to the Former Guy) to violence for political purposes.
On top of all that, the GOP, which has long recognized that it can’t win elections by rational argument — the sine qua non of a functioning democracy — has figured out how to subvert elections so as to win in spite of that failing. Their methods include controlling the count, suppressing the votes, and outright falsification of reality.
Reality fights back hard against falsification; just ask any of the 700,000+ Covid victims and their families. Reality doesn’t care how many people get hurt in the battle.
In short, we’re in for a very rough time.