Recommended Reading: Spoils of Culture War

NinaIllingworth November 10, 2022November 17, 2022 antifascism, blog, Civil Rights, Democracy, Democratic Party, democratic rights, FA1, fascism, gerrymandering, GOP, House of Representatives, Mark Stern, Media, MP6, Nina Illingworth, Politics, protect voting rights, racialized voter suppression, Rec Reads, Recommended Reading, Republican Party, rigged election, SCOTUS, SCOTUS coup, Slate, US Midterm Elections, voting rights, Voting Rights Act, VRA

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Although part of my work as a media analyst involves dissecting political commentary around Pig Empire elections, I honestly can’t say the experience is particularly fulfilling. I mention this of course because of the U.S. midterm elections held this past Tuesday across America. Faced with certain doom, the Democratic Party appears to have, umm, lost less badly than the underlying fundamentals would suggest? Having predicted (at times, far too gleefully) a fascist Red Wave election, the actual results of the 2022 US Midterm elections have left much of the corporate media establishment scrambling for an explanation.

Quite frankly, most of what they’ve come up with so far is straight up horse pucky in my opinion. This is because if you ask the wrong questions, you don’t have much hope of stumbling into the right answers. For the third election in a row, Americans narrowly voted against fascism; in spite of a lethargic Democratic Party and increasingly effective voter suppression from the right. At this point journalists should be asking “if fascism was rejected on the ballot, how is the GOP poised to retake the House?” To answer, let’s take a look at some genuinely insightful election analysis in mainstream liberal media; in the form of this November 9th, 2022 article written by Marc Stern over at Slate:

How the Supreme Court Likely Handed Control of the House to Republicans

What I love about this article is that Stern doesn’t beat around the bush. He notes that the Republican Party massively underperformed in an election they should have dominated, and then asks why the GOP is likely to claim the U.S. House of Representatives anyway. He doesn’t screw around when providing the answer either:

“Still, Republicans are currently forecast to win control of the House by a small margin, carrying the chamber by one to 10 seats. If that projection holds, it will be no overstatement to say that the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court took control of the House of Representatives for Republicans. The reason is simple: In February, by a 5–4 vote, SCOTUS suspended the Voting Rights Act’s ban on racial gerrymandering.”

What follows is a short, but thorough examination of how a pro-fascist Supreme Court turned election maps into Calvinball without a single word of explanation, in the lead up to the 2022 Midterms. Longtime readers of my writing will know that judicial fascism, and the legal dismantling of what passes for American democracy is a frequent discussion point in my work, and scenarios like this are precisely why. Using very reasonable back of the napkin math, Stern then demonstrates that this ruling almost certainly created the presumed GOP margin of victory out of thin air:

“Because voting remains racially polarized in these states, the elimination of districts with a large population of racial minorities means the elimination of Democratic districts. That’s why carving up Black, Hispanic, and Native communities is a time-honored strategy for diluting an opposing party’s support, a practice of Jim Crow–era Democrats that has since become a go-to move for Republicans. It’s impossible to know exactly how many seats Democrats would have won if the judiciary had actually enforced the VRA. But it’s possible to estimate, based on the courts’ analysis of the existing map and alternative models. Democrats lost one seat in Alabama and Louisiana, one to two seats in Georgia, and at least two seats in Florida and Texas. They also lost any real chance of competing in South Carolina’s first congressional district. Under a conservative estimate, then, the Supreme Court’s suspension of the VRA lost Democrats seven seats. However, given the party’s strong showing on Tuesday (except in Florida), eight to 10 seats is a more realistic estimate.

Given that Republicans’ margin of victory—in the likely event that they hold on—may well be seven or fewer seats, it appears that SCOTUS has handed the party control of the House.”

Quite frankly, Stern is absolutely correct; broadly speaking, American voters have now gone into three consecutive election cycles with Trumpism on the ballot, and rejected Americanized fascism each time. Furthermore, the rapidly accelerating and increasingly successful attempts by the reactionary establishment to literally rig elections for the fascists would appear to be the only reason the GOP is winning at all; even against a liberal establishment that has failed to oppose fascism, at pretty much every turn. It is simply impossible to interpret the data any other way, as our author notes in his conclusion:

“But these decisions only illustrate the broader point: Conservative courts, from SCOTUS to state judges, played a critical role in potentially dragging the GOP—an unpopular party that would clearly lose in fairly contested elections—over the finish line. They bolstered the party’s chances in a largely dismal night for Republicans, likely making the difference between a win and a loss in the House. The 2022 midterms confirmed a new reality about American congressional elections: Whoever controls the courts could well choose the winners.”

Look folks, I don’t know how many different ways I can keep making this vitally important point. Fascism isn’t wildly popular, people don’t usually vote away their own democratic rights. Pretty much everywhere that even trash fire liberal democracies have fallen to fascism, it’s because the democracy game is rigged by the ruling establishment, and against the common people. I know the Democratic Party doesn’t give a damn about regular people staring down annihilation under the fascist boot, but given that securing voting rights is also a question of political survival for rich liberals, they’d better start caring immediately. I don’t know how many more times the people can bail this faux democracy out; sooner or later, the dice will come up snake-eyes.