By now oceans of pixels have been spilled about the nationwide Republican efforts to suppress Democratic-leaning votes. The most recent legislation in Georgia, restricting voting in myriad discriminatory ways and signed in the shadow of a painting of a slave plantation, is only the beginning. The broad reasons for this hardly need restating for engaged readers of the Monthly: Republicans are facing a demographic doom spiral. Despite Trump’s modest gains among non-whites, people of color remain firmly in the Democratic column and represent a fast-growing portion of the population. Suburban dwellers and people in cities have shifted blue, and the compensating red-shift among rural whites is not enough to maintain a majority coalition. The younger the generation, the more they despise Republicans–nor is there any indication that Millennials are shifting more conservative as they hit their 30s and 40s. And so on.
The result is that Republicans must increasingly hold power through minority rule–both by consolidating unjust structural advantages in the gerrymandered House and the malapportioned Senate and Electoral College, and by suppressing the votes of the majority liberal-left coalition. The Republican Party had a choice to try to moderate its behavior and appeal to disenchanted voters, or to double down on unpopular white supremacy, patriarchy, religious extremism and voter suppression, on a path toward open apartheid and authoritarianism. It chose the latter. This is all open knowledge, though the mainstream press sometimes has difficulty calling it like it is.
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