Republicans are a shrinking minority party, but have growing political power. We have been sliding into Republican minority rule for decades, and are nearly at a point where Republicans can take all government power without majority support and hold it forever. But much of America is in denial that our political and legal systems are broken enough to enable that kind of minority rule, so we keep learning the wrong lessons from our political failures.
A great example is the 2016 race for President. When Donald Trump managed to get himself declared winner of the 2016 election, much of America missed the point and got mad at Hillary Clinton for losing. Now, you can make a case that Clinton could have done a better job or been a better candidate in that race, and I will accept that she could have done so and maybe even won. But Trump didn't win by being a better candidate or running a better campaign. He won by cheating.
Yes, it's hard to point at any one thing and say that tipped the scales in his favor and handed Trump his victory, but there sure were a lot of those things: FBI Director James Comey weighed in on Clinton's mishandling of classified material in her emails just days before the election, but exonerated Trump of Russian collusion. Putin pal, spoiler candidate Jill Stein. Interstate Cross-check disenfranchised more voters in swing states than the margin of victory. Voter suppression by reducing number of polling places. Voter ID laws. All the Russian disinformation on social media. And of course a multitude of Trump's own lies, some of which he is being prosecuted for at this very moment. And so much more. Maybe no one thing can be pinpointed as the way Trump cheated his way to victory, but all of them together add up to a lot of votes and a stolen election.
Yet after that electoral failure, America decided the lesson was that Trump won so he must have been right about everything. We were then subjected to endless interviews of Trump voters in rural diners to learn how to understand their stupid, self-absorbed bigotry like it was the new way. And while we were focused on misunderstanding the politics, Republicans did what they always do: They used their newly acquired legal power to change laws and personnel to shore up their political power and make it easier for them to cheat their way to victory and keep power forever once they have it, no matter what the people actually want.
This is what I think of as playing for keeps. When Republicans get some power, they use that power to make it easier for them to take and hold power, and harder for Democrats to win. One of the first things Trump did was fire the FBI Director and put his own guy in. And he got a freebie SCOTUS appointment that Mitch McConnell had snaked from Obama's pocket. Then later on he somehow got Justice Kennedy to resign so he could get another SCOTUS pick. And now SCOTUS is keeping Trump on the ballot when he obviously did an insurrection and should be disqualified, if not serving out a life sentence in prison. And there's a whole litany of legal and regulatory changes that happened on his watch that shifted political power that I can't even come close to listing, but all of that works to take power from democratic institutions and Democratic candidates.
Gerrymandering is the best example of all of this. Gerrymandering was at times a sin committed by both major parties, but today it's almost entirely Republicans using it to steal representation they did nothing to earn and do not deserve. They win enough seats to control apportionment in a state, then use that power to rejigger Congressional districts to elect more Republicans to the House, then a Republican House uses its power to try and replace the winner of the Electoral College with the loser. They start with some local races and work their way up to stealing the Presidency (and it nearly worked, too). Every bit of illegitimate power they acquire first goes toward shoring up their illegitimate power, because power is all they care about.
Democrats don't need to fight dirty. What we need to do is to start playing for keeps. When we win power, we must use that power to shore up our own power. It should be straightforward that when we have power, we must first use it to strengthen democratic institutions, and replace anti-democratic personnel and Trump toadies with new, pro-democratic blood. Why is Wray still running the FBI? Why is DeJoy still Postmaster General? Why haven't all those traitorous Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying Biden's victory been dealt with in any way at all?
There's a long list of structural and procedural problems with our elections that exist only to make it easier for Republicans to win when they don't deserve to. One way to claw back some of our political power is to fix gerrymandering and anti-democratic laws in the various states. Republican-controlled states are the biggest problems, but even California has room to improve (I myself would love to get rid of the state's "jungle" primaries and replace them with closed, party primaries and IRV in the general, but there's room to differ on that). Democrats tried to fix some of these problems with HR1 (the Freedom to Vote Act), but Republicans used the anti-democratic Senate filibuster to kill it. It is still vitally important to enact these changes, and we shouldn’t let up on it. Even if it means getting rid of the filibuster.
The best resource I know of for information on fixing voting laws and gerrymandering is Marc Elias' Democracy Docket. Keep up with issues of mail-in voting, early voting, drop boxes, voter ID laws, fair districting, and all the rest. He also does Democracy Watch, a regular video series on YouTube with Brian Tyler Cohen.
What other ways could Democrats play for keeps? How should we fight Republicans' constant efforts to steal power and manufacture illegitimate minority rule?