The Progressive Populist Today Blog: Editorial: Punish the Big Lie Party

Saturday, January 15, 2022

Editorial: Punish the Big Lie Party

Donald Trump warned for five years that he would never accept defeat, and that was one of the few true pledges the Big Liar made.

In 2016, when Hillary Clinton was leading him in polls, Trump accused Democrats of fixing the election, but the Electoral College surprised him with the win, 304-227, despite losing the popular vote by 2.8 million votes. The election hinged on 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, possibly helped by targeted disinformation by Russian internet agents on social media, but Trump insisted he scored a “massive landslide victory.”

In 2020, after Trump had spent four years in the White House without reaching 50% approval in the FiveThirtyEight average of polls, he was trailing again before the election as polls showed Biden leading in key states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Despite Trump’s attempts to limit the use of absentee ballots favored by Democrats during the pandemic and slowdowns in the delivery of mailed ballots, Biden blew out the Great Misleader by seven million votes and won 306-232 in the Electoral College, validating what polls had been saying for weeks. Trump’s baseless claims of “voter fraud” were thrown out of more than 60 courts.

In a last, desperate attempt to stay in office, Trump reportedly hoped to stop the certification of the Electoral College vote by Congress on Jan. 6. Trump’s disorganizers planned for right-wing “militias” to show up for “Stop the Steal” protests, hoping BLM and antifascists would violently confront the right-wing Trumpers, which would allow Trump to declare martial law and throw out the election results.

When BLM and antifa refused to take the bait, and the right-wing mob stormed the Capitol and violently attacked police, Trumpers accused the mob of actually being BLM and “antifa,” despite the rioters’ prominent display of Trump and MAGA paraphernalia, “Stop the Steal” chants and postings on social media.

Addressing the crowd on the Ellipse, Trump declared, “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide … We will stop the steal … We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen.”

He also said, “If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore,” and added, as an afterthought, “Peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard … We’re going to the Capitol.”

Of course, instead of going with the mob to the Capitol, Trump returned to the White House to watch the melee on TV for three hours while the Pentagon refused pleas of the Capitol Police to send the D.C. National Guard to reinforce them. Trump ignored pleas from Republican members of Congress, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who asked him to call off his crowd as they stormed the Capitol. Trump replied, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” according to lawmakers who were briefed on the call afterward by McCarthy.

McCarthy on Jan. 13, 2021, said Trump bore responsibility for the attack on Congress by “mob rioters” and suggested he should be censured. By April, he had absolved Trump of responsibility and refused to cooperate with Democrats on investigating the attack.

Clearly, Republicans have become addicted to gaslighting, and their contempt for the truth has endangered our democracy.

A national survey conducted by YouGov in December found 46% of respondents believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected, 12% said he was “probably” legitimately elected, 12% said he was “probably not legitimate,” 22% said he was “definitely not legitimate” and 9% said they were not sure.

The cynicism was weighted heavily by Republicans, of whom 46% said Biden was “definitely not legitimate” and 25% said he was “probably not legitimate.”

Mind you, there is no credible evidence of systematic voting irregularities — and most of the voting problems discovered since the election involved Trump supporters illegally casting votes for their cult leader. State and federal officials rejected claims that voting irregularities stole votes from Trump. A partisan “audit” of votes in Arizona actually found a net gain for Biden. But the lies still cast doubt among independent voters, with 25% saying Biden was “definitely not legitimate” and 6% saying he was “probably not legitimate.”

The conventional wisdom is that Republicans have the upper hand in regaining control of Congress after the midterm elections in November. Trump’s Gaslighters hope they can make cynicism work for the Big Lie Party by convincing Democrats and left-leaning independents there is no use in voting. But at least three congressional preference polls in early January show Democrats leading, albeit by slim margins, so there is cause for hope.

Voting rights activists are frustrated with the lack of movement of bills to roll back state voter suppression laws, particularly after the high turnout of Black voters in Georgia in 2020 helped Biden win Georgia’s electoral votes, and sent new senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to Congress. That put the Senate in a 50-50 tie, giving Democrats the majority with Vice President Kamala’s tie-breaking vote. But it also prompted the Republican Georgia legislature to enact voter suppression and nullification bills, along with 18 other Republican-dominated legislatures around the country, in a national Republican effort to make it more difficult for minorities and other likely Democats to vote, and easier for Republican lawmakers to nullify votes that go against them.

We share the frustration of voting rights activists, but at least 49 of 50 Republican senators oppose federal voting rights legislation, and are committed to blocking passage of the bills under the Senate filibuster rule (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican who voted to let the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act be debated Nov 3, 2021). At least two Democratic senators are resistant to changing the filibuster rule to let the bills proceed.

The Republican filibuster of voting rights bills completes the sad transformation for the GOP that helped President Lyndon B. Johnson pass the original Voting Rights Act in 1965 over the opposition of 20 Southern Democrats. As recently as 2006, Republicans joined Democrats in reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act 98-0 in the Senate, but Republican attitudes had changed by 2013, when Republicans on the Supreme Court, in its 5-4 Shelby County v. Holder ruling, rendered the act virtually unenforceable, allowing Republican states in the South to enact new voter suppression measures. Democrats have been trying to update the disputed coverage formula ever since.

This year, Senate Republicans are blocking the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would update the law, as well as the For the People Act, which would further protect the right to vote and have that vote counted.

We don’t see the wisdom in blaming Biden, who can’t do anything about Senate rules, or the 48 Democratic senators who support voting rights as well as the domestic spending initiatives in the Build Back Better bill, but are stymied by Joe Manchin and/or Kyrsten Sinema.

There’s nothing wrong with the Senate that a net gain of two or more progressive Democrats can’t fix.

This is not the year to sit out the election to punish Democrats for not passing everything you wanted. This is the year voters should punish Republicans who have turned the GOP into the Big Lie Party, led by Trump and his neofascist enablers. — JMC