The fight to keep Congress starts here and now, we should all recite this hypothetical every day...

[ck4829]

"Speaker of the House Greene pushing legislation to freeze assets of school shootings survivors, saying they are crisis actors working for George Soros"

You want to see if it can become a reality?

Lose the House and find out.

[berni_mccoy]

1. We will lose the house in 2022 unless the Voting Rights Act passes

And that’s not likely with Sinema.

[jmbar2]

2. Please stop with the despair porn

[Hortensis]

3. Since you bring it up, some hard-core: they elect tRump speaker.

That's a fantasy going around the right that could actually become technically possible.

I think CK's right. Time to commit to increasng our majority in both houses. THE goal that overrides all others.

[Fiendish Thingy]

5. Gerrymandering is so bad in some districts that 100% Dem turnout won't matter.

Passing voting rights is the only effective way to block permanent minority rule.

[Hortensis]

6. Imo, there's no one thing our democracy hangs on, but one is

most important by far -- the people's will to turn out and vote. After that, to vote positively for what each person sees as betterment, whatever that is, rather than out of destructive negativism to tear things down. Gerrymandering is both dangerously advanced AND proof the vote is still sovereign -- if we can keep it.

Anti-democratic forces have invested far, far more in destroying both belief in the value of voting AND on encouraging anti-establishment populist movements to vote to destroy than on blocking the actual ability to vote. 100,000,000 people who could have voted in 2016 didn't. In 2020, it was 80,000,000 who could have voted but didn't.

And then there are the millions across the ideological spectrum who all voted to destroy "the establishment," only a tiny fraction at all understanding what that would do to them and all of them not caring at the moment.

Of course we agree entirely that protecting our sovereignty is absolutely crucial to keeping it. But I believe that still depends above all on what the people do in 2022 and hopefully 2024, regardless of what those we sent to congress are able to do in the meantime, important as it is.

[Fiendish Thingy]

7. I think your hypothesis is demonstrably incorrect.

Anti-democratic forces have invested far, far more in destroying belief in the value of voting -- and on encouraging anti-establishment populist movements to vote to destroy -- than on blocking the actual ability to vote.

If that were true, we wouldn’t be seeing the hundreds of laws being passed to do exactly what you suggest is merely a secondary concern- suppressing the vote either by blocking voters, or rejecting their votes after they have been cast, or ignoring/rejecting the results of legitimate elections.

If your hypothesis was true, then the “Big Lie” would be enough, and Republicans would not be moving at light speed to suppress the vote and give legislatures the power to ignore the will of the voters everywhere they can.

The only way to counter such an anti-democracy legislative onslaught is with a substantial pro-democracy legislative onslaught.

Court battles and traditional politics-as-usual paradigms such as GOTV will not be effective enough in this new anti-democracy environment.

[Hortensis]

8. The hundreds of destructive laws are made possible BY the success

of what came before: the horrible successes of their division and degradation of the electorate.

Another thread reminded me that that included elimination of "civics" education from many schools, btw.

I agree of course that while half the electorate is reduced to flinging their feces at passersby and institutions alike the rest of us need all those battling from within the institutions we established in better times can do for us.

[Fiendish Thingy]

4. Without passing voting rights, the US is poised for minority rule for the foreseeable future

That’s a simple fact.

Gerrymandering alone will cost the Dems 5 seats in FL.