There will be no more elections, or the elections will be falsified Russia-style.
We’re going to test this hypothesis soon enough. Two big gubernatorial races in Virginia and Pennsylvania this year. The “voting no longer matters” crowd is going to assert that these will be landslides for heavy MAGA conservatives, I’m presuming?
The “voting no longer matters” crowd is going to assert that these will be landslides for heavy MAGA conservatives, I’m presuming?
Or votes being thrown out due to “fraud” or the election being cancelled or certain voters being rounded up by cops so they can’t cast ballots or any other number of ways elections can be meddled with.
And don’t be too triumphalist just because the election goes off without any problems and Democrats win, this isn’t really The Big One. The House and Senate races in 2026 will tell us what the future of elections will be.
All common in US politics and heavily influential in shaping the outcomes of states like Ohio, Texas, and Florida. These are features baked into our election system and designed to shape the outcomes. They’ve been going on since the colonial era. This is not a bug of liberal democracy but a feature. To pretend Trump is changing the game, you need to ignore how its historically been played.
And don’t be too triumphalist just because the election goes off without any problems and Democrats win
Of course not. What could that possibly prove, except Democrats aren’t nearly as far removed from the Project 2025 goon squad as they like to advertise.
To pretend Trump is changing the game, you need to ignore how its historically been played.
Right, he’s just reviving older parts of the playbook. Very few of the things he’s done are actually new, they’re just things the US isn’t used to anymore or things that haven’t been done on a massive scale.
But it wasn’t voting that made those older practices fall out of favor, it was more direct actions: labor militancy, mass protests, and radical organizing. What your examples demonstrate is that Trump is defeatable even if he revives every authoritarian trick in the US playbook, but none of that proves voting specifically still matters.
I’ll be watching the 2026 elections to see if we can still vote our way out of this, or if we simply need to do something else.
We’re going to test this hypothesis soon enough. Two big gubernatorial races in Virginia and Pennsylvania this year. The “voting no longer matters” crowd is going to assert that these will be landslides for heavy MAGA conservatives, I’m presuming?
We’ve also got five out-of-cycle vacancy elections for House seats happening, two of which are scheduled for April 1st. FL-1 already had a primary for the GOP position, while the Dem candidate ran uncontested. FL-6 had primaries for both R and D candidates. Have these elections already been rigged? Is the outcome predetermined?
You wouldn’t be the first one to make this claim.
But it’s not a game and it’s never over.
Or votes being thrown out due to “fraud” or the election being cancelled or certain voters being rounded up by cops so they can’t cast ballots or any other number of ways elections can be meddled with.
And don’t be too triumphalist just because the election goes off without any problems and Democrats win, this isn’t really The Big One. The House and Senate races in 2026 will tell us what the future of elections will be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Eye_(United_States)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/texas-woman-sentenced-five-years-trying-vote-gets-new-appeal-n1262691
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/11/politics/hervis-rogers-texas-voting-charge/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_caging
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States#False_information
All common in US politics and heavily influential in shaping the outcomes of states like Ohio, Texas, and Florida. These are features baked into our election system and designed to shape the outcomes. They’ve been going on since the colonial era. This is not a bug of liberal democracy but a feature. To pretend Trump is changing the game, you need to ignore how its historically been played.
Of course not. What could that possibly prove, except Democrats aren’t nearly as far removed from the Project 2025 goon squad as they like to advertise.
Right, he’s just reviving older parts of the playbook. Very few of the things he’s done are actually new, they’re just things the US isn’t used to anymore or things that haven’t been done on a massive scale.
But it wasn’t voting that made those older practices fall out of favor, it was more direct actions: labor militancy, mass protests, and radical organizing. What your examples demonstrate is that Trump is defeatable even if he revives every authoritarian trick in the US playbook, but none of that proves voting specifically still matters.
I’ll be watching the 2026 elections to see if we can still vote our way out of this, or if we simply need to do something else.