The Atlantic: It’s Time For Democrats To Break The Glass
“Democracy is at stake this month, and that is not hyperbole.” – D21 President Fred Wertheimer in The Atlantic
“The next few weeks will likely answer the most crucial question that emerged from last year’s insurrection by supporters of Donald Trump: Can one political party defend American democracy on its own?” Ronald Brownstein, senior editor of The Atlantic, writes in a new Atlantic piece discussing the “make-or-break” action expected on voting rights legislation in the Senate this month.
Trump’s consolidation of control of the Republic Party, Brownstein writes, “means that arguably for the first time in American history, the dominant faction in one of the nation’s major political parties is displaying the willingness to rig the rules of electoral competition in a manner reminiscent of the authoritarian parties that have undermined democracy in countries such as Hungary, Poland, and Venezuela.”
With Republican filibusters blocking the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, Brownstein writes, “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is promising make-or-break votes toward the middle of this month that will determine whether Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona will agree to change the filibuster rules to pass the bills — or allow Republican opposition to kill them.”
“Democracy is at stake this month, and that is not hyperbole,” Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer tells Brownstein. “We face losing our democracy if we can’t counter the completely unjustified laws that have passed in state legislatures.”
Brownstein writes: “In the days after the January 6 attack, it appeared possible that many Republicans would join Democrats in a cross-party coalition to defend democracy against the autocratic threat. But instead, Trump has consolidated his control over the GOP, led a movement to purge Republican elected officials who resisted his unfounded claims of fraud, and solidified the belief among the party’s voters that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Rather than renouncing Trump’s discredited claims, his Republican allies have cited them to justify passing dozens of laws in multiple red states reducing access to the ballot and increasing partisan control over election administration and tabulation.”
He continues: “The refusal of almost all elected Republicans to take a stand against Trump’s assault has left Democrats in the precarious position of seeking to reinforce the basic pillars of democracy on their own. The next few weeks will mark a crucial test of whether they can muster the unity and determination to do so.”
Voting rights advocates, Brownstein writes, point to “the post–Civil War precedent, when the Lincoln-era congressional Republicans passed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as all the other civil-rights protections for freed slaves, on an entirely party-line basis, over the unified opposition of Democrats who were defending their partisan allies in the former Confederacy. The real choice for today’s congressional Democrats on voting rights and democracy protection is not whether to act alone or act with Republicans; it’s whether to act alone or not act at all.”
Brownstein notes that “the failure to pass new national standards this year could clear the path for years of escalating GOP restrictions.”
Brownstein also examines the action – or inaction – to hold accountable those whose efforts to overturn the 2020 election culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and the “growing frustration at the failure of state and federal law enforcement to prosecute the Trump supporters behind a rising tide of physical threats against state and local election officials.”
As Susan Stokes, director of the Chicago Center on Democracy at the University of Chicago, tells Brownstein: The big picture is that this is “a slow-motion palace coup.”
Read Brownstein’s piece in The Atlantic online.
