The Coming End of US Democracy?

[Jimmy Higgins]

We had a gerrymandering thread which discussed how messed up the gerrymandering has become as both parties are seizing as many seats as they can after the GOP in Texas regerrymandered their gerrymandered maps. That is bad enough.

But the question to the ending of US Democracy was noted by me in another thread.

All three won by almost a 2:1 ratio. Even the D in VA who posted about shooting the state house speaker won. VA elected a Muslim Lt. Governor. If the economy continues to worsen, the only way Rs retain the House next year is if trump cancels the elections.

Not canceling the election, taking the elections to court, post election. The path forward would be contesting the entire delegation of California, saying it was unconstitutional (CA then US) to redistrict as they did. They wouldn't even need to win in court, merely proclaiming it would be enough for Speaker Johnson to mess things up. House Speaker can just ignore the result, because *reasons*. They are already doing a test run with the New Mexico representative who STILL hasn't been sworn in.

Well, it looks like post-election is waiting too long, and the GOP via the Justice Department is contesting a redistricted map in California.

“California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an emailed statement. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”

I know... um... there is little left that is surprising here. But there is more.

“Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Proposition 50 — the recent ballot initiative that junked California’s pre-existing electoral map in favor of a rush-job rejiggering of California’s congressional district lines,” the lawsuit says.

We might be one SCOTUS ruling away from elections officially not mattering or happening at all.

 

[Gospel]

What Jimmy’s describing actually lines up with how democracies historically decline. They don’t usually collapse because someone announces ‘no more elections’, they collapse when legal processes are used to invalidate, override, or selectively refuse electoral outcomes. That’s the pattern we saw in the late Roman Republic, in Weimar Germany, and in modern hybrid regimes where elections still exist on paper but no longer determine power. So the concern isn’t far-fetched: the danger is exactly what he’s pointing out, when procedural tools become a substitute for democratic consent.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Admittedly, this sounds crazy, but this is where we are as a nation. I find it near impossible to think the courts will allow the DoJ to meddle with one state's gerrymandering but not another. SCOTUS is partisan bench of Heritage Foundation employees, but even they, I would expect, couldn't rule that the gerrymander in CA is illegal while the ones in OH, TX, MS, NC aren't. However, the the reality is that they very well could... and the Trump Administration wants them to.

We've never been this close to a single party trying to take over permanent control.