Two disturbing developments
First, Trump is summoning lawmakers in a bid to subvert the election. This comes on the heels of the two racist Michigan Election officials trying to change their vote to certify Wayne County after a phone call from the President. We can assume they were either bribed or threatened (or both) into taking this action.
And second —
Republicans in Wisconsin, in a racist attempt to subvert the will of majority-Black county voters, and possibly to attempt to try and send a raft of faithless electors (or simply remove Wisconsin’s vote from the total by delaying certification), are now allowing a partial recount. The fact that PBS is referring to this as a “partisan battle” instead of “a brazen, racist attempt to attack Black voters” is reason enough for us to believe that the Media can’t handle this moment in our history.
As I scroll Democrats on twitter, none of them are speaking about this, with the possible exception of Rep. Jayapal. Not with the sort of fire-breathing force we need to shame timid Republicans trying to ride this out into taking direct action to stop this train before it leaves the station.
Furthermore, while we are absolutely dominating in court against the various frivolous legal challenges Republicans are putting up, we have not filed a single lawsuit trying to to force states to respect the will of the people. The President Elect and Vice President Elect are trying to show us they’re working on policy, but more and more it begins to look as if they’re living in an entirely different reality than the one in which Republicans are trying to subvert the will of the people and end American democracy.
It is tempting to say “they will not succeed, they cannot succeed”. But if we’re not actively, aggressively trying to stop them from succeeding in their effort to unmake the 2020 election, we will lose everything.
We need to fight. We need to use every power we have — every power — to stop this. We need to know Pelosi has a plan. We need to know that Senate Democrats are working the Republican Moderates to stop this if it gets to Congress. We need to know that there’s a legal strategy. We need to know that there will be prosecutions for Republicans if they try this and fail.
Right now, it looks like Democrats are just pretending that all of this is sound and fury. But Republicans are gaining ground in states where we were assured there would be no subversion of the vote. It has to stop, and it won’t stop unless we actually get in there and fight.