Coming from the left, I think my subsumed feeling is that if my side loses, then America is lost in a lot of ways out to at least the medium term; but if my side wins, then America gets to limp along to another election where the win/loss consequences are identical.
i mean this is absolutely core to it all imo
both sides are terrified that they're about to lose, permanently, even as they also sense themselves in the cusp of winning, permanently
it's not a situation made for calm!
This isn’t a knock on the left or anything. This feeling is a consequence of the right wanting to tear things down, the fact that they will if they retain power, and the fact that we lack power to vanquish them if we win.
But I can see how some look at this unbalance and say to themselves “the right is planning a permanent victory if they win, some sort of Solution that is Final; why can’t we do the same from the other side?”
Also fundamentally the right-wing in this country simply does not believe in our democratic system anymore. That's something that could take a generation to fix. When one side is just openly embracing fascism it's not an easy fix!
My position has been that capital D democrats alone cannot bind together American small d democracy. As others have said, house divided against itself cannot stand.
Agree. You need Republican leaders to eventually come back into the democracy fold. Or you need the Republican party in its current state to be burned to the ground and a new party to rise from its ashes that believes in democracy. But I don't see that happening...
And some of these tellings IMO mix up whether the people are being led by the party or the other way around (I think it’s both but I genuinely do not know in what proportion or what the institutional GOP collapsing would do to that cycle).
Yeah, I honestly am not optimistic about the coming back to the fold part either. Although even the burning to the ground is going to take a while and be very painful and chaotic along the way.
Are enough people subject to a 14th Amendment sanction to make a difference? Like, is this a really broad definition, or is this predicated on another round that implicates a LOT more people?
I'm expecting another round, or rather under the terms of a prediction, I think "Biden wins and Republicans try another coup" is more likely than "Republican leaders get back on side with democracy of their own accord"
I’ve seen people take the broadest definition here, where basically being a Republican defines you as having committed insurrection, but 1) 14AS3 doesn’t preclude insurrectionists who’ve never held office from seeking it (unless seeking it as a Republican qualifies as insurrection), and…
