The demonstrations like this in states that have gone blue for decades, that Biden won by 15+ and were never in doubt, shows you to what extent the mainstream GOP position is now that “fraud” and “illegal” are just words to describe “opposes us” https://twitter.com/coreywelch/status/1324763375038058499

This is, in fact, very bad. Sure, the USA has never been a democracy, *but* most USians perceive it that way & the state very much premises its political legitimacy on “democracy”.

And when democracies no longer see opponents as politically legitimate actors, they tend to spiral

You can’t reconcile democratic principles—even the kabuki performance of them—with a polity that fundamentally sees the other side as not merely as wrong but *fundamentally unfit to participate in civil society*. That is a mutually exclusive position

This has been building on the side of the GOP for decades. And it builds on a centuries-long tradition.

For the entire history of the US, a (super-)majority of whites have positioned Black people as illegitimate political actors. This has been gradually beaten back, however

But it nonetheless remained true even well into the post-VRA years. However, throughout the second half of the 20th century, it was deemed acceptable to allow limited participation because nonwhite—particularly Black—voters were not numerous enough to decide elections.

It was an acceptable compromise to, say, allow Carter to narrowly win with only a 4 point deficit among the white vote, or Clinton with a 2 point deficit (both times). If whites are that divided then so be it.

Opposition was still fierce but when the white vote is that ambivalent, democratic legitimacy could be maintained in white voters’ minds even if the candidate who won was preferred by only a minority of white voters

You can see the cracks start to form in the Clinton era though, with impeachment in particular. Still, it wasn’t that Clinton cheated his way to victory, and he was quite popular by the end of his presidency.

The first *real* break is Gore/Bush

Gore lost the white vote by THIRTEEN points but won the election, both in popular vote and electoral votes. This was unacceptable and averted through a highly effective campaign of voter suppression in Florida that made the win narrow enough for a judicial coup to succeed

2000 was the first time in the modern VRA era that the white vote lost to the total vote—and the white vote still triumphed through a coup. This was the true beginning of the spiral into an openly anti-democratic tilt by the GOP—the party of whites

2004 was rigged, although I understand that’s not a consensus opinion. Either way, whether you see the outcome as fraudulent or not, the white vote and the overall popular & electoral votes (allegedly) agreed (through fraud or otherwise).

At minimum, the white vote’s preeminence in deciding elections was either maintained or preordained through planned fraud.

But next comes the most critical flashpoint. Obama.

Obama lost the white vote by 12 points. Just one less than Gore! But won by nearly 8 nationally!

And won the electoral college by Clinton margins!

Now the white vote (and correspondingly the Herrenvolk party in the GOP) has a serious problem. It’s been totally overruled despite a clear majority of white voters’ preferences. This is a disaster for them

This, much more than Obama’s individual Blackness, I would argue, was what laid the foundation for the Tea Party insanity and GOP obstructionism. More threatening than a Black President was a Black and brown *electorate*

It gets even worse in 2012: Obama loses the white vote by TWENTY points. The last time that happened was with Dukakis!

But unlike Dukakis getting wiped out in a popular and electoral landslide, Obama *wins* in 2012. Comfortably. With 59% of whites voting against him. Apocalyptic

The white vote is in full retreat. This is the end of the world for them. The walls are closing in, and demographic trajectories are only getting worse. “Take back our country!” becomes the mantra. Trump! Birtherism! These only grow as the mainstream GOP/white consensus

Clinton then loses the white vote by 15—not as severely as 2012, but in a pre-Obama world nonetheless the kind of result that would generate a landslide victory for the GOP. And still wins the popular vote, even with diminished nonwhite turnout

Saved by the electoral college, we now see an explosion in GOP rationalizations of subverting the popular will to triumph through structural advantages that privilege white vote—now twice in five elections.

“We live in a Republic, not a democracy!” And “California doesn’t really count!” And “We can’t let big cities override wins by land area just because that’s where all the people live!”

The growing non-white vote is lost and now not only are non-white voters illegitimate political actors in the eyes of the party of whites, but even white Democrats, as race traitors. Now entire states and cities are illegitimate. Even the *proximity* to non white voters is toxic

Only the racially pure voters, especially those in overwhelmingly white geographies, are legitimate to the GOP. This is the final bridge crossed. There is no coming back from this. Now *none* of the Democratic electorate is legitimate, not just a large minority of it.

Remember—even with her overall massive loss among white voters, 60% of Clinton voters were still white! Now the GOP can’t even accept *their* legitimacy as political actors. After all most are city elites, globohomo faggots, celebrities, pedophiles, or Satanists, right?

Even after *losing* the election, it’s “Lock her up!” It’s Q Anon fantasies of interning Democratic politicians and rescuing child slaves from Big City (i.e., politically illegitimate) Democrats. We are through the looking glass

Soros, Deep State interference, wiretapping the Trump campaign, Spirit Cooking, Jewish cabals, Black fraudsters, colleges brainwashing young whites—the delusions of Herrenvolk white *legitimate* political actors being persecuted pile ever higher. A putrefying heap of grievance

Seriously, take a moment and think about this. They *won*. They fucking won!

They won. And even that is no longer enough. Because the demographic trajectory is bleak and the electoral college alone can’t be counted on forever. Now even in *winning* opponents must be purged

Winning means they have to use every chance they have to wound the political viability of their opponents, white or not. An undisguised attack on voting, period, is embraced. The mainstream GOP consensus is now fully anti-democratic.

This is not reconcilable. This is not something you can reason with. Either this belief has to be abandoned by its proponents, suppressed by its opponents, or it trends inexorably towards violence. Because violence is now the last refuge by which to maintain political control

Outnumbered more and more by the day, the party of whites, from the grassroots, embraces an ideology that leads to a logical endpoint of intimidation and violence

This is the template. We’ve seen it all over the world, innumerable times. The reasons for considering the opposition illegitimate vary (communists, ethnic or religious subaltern groups, invading immigrants, etc) but the result is, if this ideology persists, always violence

We’ve seen it *in the US before*. The Civil War!

Read the writings of the advocates of the Slave Power in the lead up to war. Over the years from 1820-1860, they gradually embrace principles like nullification, and deem autocratic slavery better than democracy

Advocacy for slavery starts out in US history as somewhat ambivalent, “nevessary evil”, “it’ll go away someday” rhetoric, even among many enslavers like Jefferson. This is not to diminish their evil, but to point out that advocacy of slavery and democracy were seen as compatible

But as slave and free states come into conflict over the lands gained through genocidal conquest in the West, and as the white slave state population is ever-more eclipsed by Free State voters, the default position of the Slave Power changes

By the end, people like Calhoun and Fitzhugh are arguing *explicitly* that political legitimacy *stems from the system of chattel slavery,* as opposed to stemming from social contract or popular will. No longer by self governance, but only by most vicious white supremacy

Democracy, by 1860, is a sham to the Slave Power, inferior in every way to a society premised on racial enslavement. If democracy conflicts with slavery, then democracy shall be consigned to the ash heap. By violence if necessary.

And, indeed, violence ensues. The Slave Power secedes rather than remain tied to a democracy that no longer delivers every single item on their agenda. Only total domination of American political institutions will suffice. No compromise can be tolerated. Only absolute power

And they weren’t even under threat of any kind of immediate or forceful abolition! It was about *the future* of slavery. Like the GOP today, the Slave Power’s grip on democratic control had been waning for decades, but their anti-democratic control waxed by the SCOTUS and EC

And the Senate.

But the writing was on the wall. The North was growing faster. Its people demanded land in the West—land that had to be free of competition with slave labor. Democratic control in the US could only lead to slavery’s doom

Like the GOP today, their path to popular control was rapidly diminishing and the demographic trends were only becoming worse for the Slave Power.

And then Lincoln got elected without a single Slave State electoral vote. For the first time in history. Even Adams won two in LA

(And that was in a four-way race, and Louisiana’s congressional delegation voted for Adams when the election went to the House)

So, if democracy could no longer be relied upon to preserve the Slave Power’s control over all of America’s political institutions, then democracy would end. Secession, defended by terrible violence.

Let us emphasize this: it has happened here before. In America.

This whole process—the degeneration of a minority party, whose overriding purpose becomes the defense of white supremacy, to the point where it eschews the legitimacy of its opponents and even democracy itself

The use of the same institutions that plague us today—the Senate, the Electoral College, SCOTUS—were employed by the Slave Power to maintain an iron grip on political control even as their popular influence dwindled inexorably

And their purpose in doing so, like that of the GOP today, was to defend a vision of America rooted in white supremacy. To avert the prospect, however distant, the fearful prospect of multiracial democracy.

And in the end, though they lost the formal war, the Herrenvolk vision successfully reasserted itself with Jim Crow.

Which is to say: we never solved the fundamental problem. We never achieved the full triumph of multiracial democracy over white supremacy

We didn’t even get rid of the institutions that played such a critical role in bringing us to the brink of war—Senate, EC, SCOTUS.

Not only does the ideological divide remain *but even the same actual institutions*

And once again the part of whiteness has ever more blatantly and viciously manipulated these institutions to maintain power even in the face of popular democratic failure. And once again they are coming to overtly reject democracy if democracy means losing

Once again, they are advocating, ever more boldly, violence as a remedy for runaway democracy.

Is it exactly the same? No. Is it a historical continuity, rooted in an uninterrupted thread of Herrenvolk ideology *and* the material persistence of anti-democratic institutions? Yes

This is not simply historical coincidence. This isn’t a facile premise of “doomed to repeat it” or “history rhymes.” This is actual *continuity*, material and ideological. This is *a historical process that never ended*

But it must end, as a matter of what is right.

And this time, prolonging the status quo seems difficult. Where the Slave Power was up against the demographic expansion of competing white visions of America, now the demographic trajectory is a loss of white control altogether

Maybe the GOP will abandon its Herrenvolk vision, and admit defeat, and submit to democratic legitimacy. Reform itself, become multiracial, and both parties accept popular will as the foundation of political legitimacy

That would, of course, be the best outcome. Peaceful, rational acceptance of a more just, equitable order of things. But it sure doesn’t look like that’s about to fuckin happen

Maybe they will expand the definition of whiteness, incorporate Latino and Asian Americans into the coalition that is whiteness, and maintain Herrenvolk control with a new definition and a new coalition of white power

Unfortunately this does seem plausible, though hardly inevitable.

Maybe it ends in the opposition to the party of whites achieving a secure dominance and suppressing violent resistance to democratic legitimacy

Or maybe it ends in large scale political violence, in one form or another, until the issue is settled—permanently or temporarily. Either with democratic (small d) whites coming home to Herrenvolk consensus, once again kicking the can down the road, or by Herrenvolk defeat

Permanent defeat

At the moment, this seems most likely to me. But I am a doomer. So, grain of salt. But that’s what I anticipate.

I recommend that you hope it doesn’t come to that, work for a more peaceful resolution, but prepare for the worst.

Regardless of how this ends, a house divided cannot stand. Lincoln was right about that. Half white supremacist, half multiracial democratic—this is untenable in the long run. Hell, in the short run. It’s wildly unstable.

A democracy cannot function when the political legitimacy of democratic process is denied by 40% of the populace. And the Dems now too come to see the GOP as illegitimate political actors—because for the multiracial democratic coalition, legitimacy is justified by popular will

In a sense, they’re both right. They have incompatible, opposing visions of *how the state justifies its existence and exercise of power.*

If you accept either side’s premises, the other side *is indeed* politically illegitimate.

This is not irrational. This is the rational conclusion of such an irreconcilable divide, such an existential crisis of the nation’s self conception. Over time, both sides are likely to only increase in their belief that the other side is illegitimate.

I believe in a multiracial democracy. I would have it be a revolutionary, communist democracy of course, but at least the liberals share my belief in multiracial democracy. The reactionaries do not. They are politically illegitimate actors. I’ll say it.

Their ideology cannot be tolerated, and *especially* their material political control—via anti-democratic institutions like the Senate—cannot be tolerated. Their vision is illegitimate. By their commitment to anti-democratic measures, they are illegitimate actors.

I do not want the liberal-left coalition to see the party of whites as politically legitimate actors. I do not want people see anti-democratic advocates as legitimate participants in civil society.

The threat is intolerable because it cannot end unless they abandon their anti-democratic beliefs, or are defeated, or triumph in tyranny

And that’s where we are right now, as I see it. This is our historical moment. It is unstable, untenable, and currently on a trajectory that terminates in civil violence.

So, try to divert our society’s path away from that barbaric terminus, but brace yourselves too.