Liberals/Democrats/Progressives/Whatever passes for "the left" in America (and guess what, we don't have a "left" at all in America by global standards) have one very bad blind spot, a giant weak point that allows Republicans to do things like this with near impunity. What's worse is that Republicans are well-aware of this, and worse still, we're aware that they're aware, and we don't fix it.
We don't admit to ourselves as a matter of national strategy and party policy that yes, yes indeed these people really are as bad as we imagine, and probably worse, and we don't guard against any and all things they might do. We don't even admit there are examples of prior bad faith to prove this! We exist in a state of "honorable opponents" and "respectful disagreement", and that's an era that ended decades ago.
We don't even try to address what allows these kinds of things to occur in the first place (like last-minute closures of polling locations or the many many many many past instances of "printing errors" for election dates in predominantly minority voter areas), let alone try to hold accountable those who do such things illegally. It all just keeps happening because "it's legal" or "there's nothing we can do" or "we'll have to wait until we're in control to change the law".
There are options that don't involve courts, but that's playing dirty and we don't play dirty.
Fuck all of that attitude. Fuck it to death. Bury its corpse head-down in an unmarked grave and sow the surrounding ground with salt so it can't resurrect. There are effective responses. Use them.
For example, a judge saying that it's too late to anything about polling place closures because it would interfere with the election is not making a nonpartisan decision and a push should be made to remove them from the bench. The petition before the court is to address that very thing... unless the judge wants to attempt to claim that closing a polling location is not "interference", nosiree.
What we should do in such a case is not simply agree and say "aw shucks, oh well, guess there's nothing we can do". We should comb through their record on the bench once we know who will hear arguments in the case and look for any and all decisions with even a faint whiff of impropriety. If the judge makes noises that "it's too late", we should inflate the whiff into a stench-ridden scandal to force them to retire or be removed... or at least punish them in the court of public opinion.
Yes. I know that's dirty. It's underhanded, it's probably ethically wrong, if not immoral. Politics is amoral and politicians generally have no sense of ethics in politics, nor should they; politics is war because Republicans have waged it as such. Fighting a rearguard action won't win that war. Taking the fight to them by any means fair or foul at every point they're vulnerable might.
Basically, we never ever play hardball as the Republicans do. I haven't ever seen that from Democrats in all my life. It's not in the "progressive/liberal makeup" to be mean about it and use dirty tricks because "that's what Republicans would do" and "we have to be better than them" and "we can't stoop to their level" Nobody asks why we have to be better than them. Nobody asks if there's anything useful to learn from their tactics or their strategy. We just do. Because. Something something "deserve to win". This has been the case for all my life.
We need to get over that forty years ago. The biggest example I can think of that illustrates why and what the consequences of failing to do so might be occurred in the 1980s, when we folded like wet blankets after Reagan (may that senile sonofabitch be an eternally restless ghost) fired the air traffic controllers after they went on strike. Our response at that time should have been to organize a strike of the stewardesses (which we now know beyond doubt is the appropriate response and would have had staying power; they are not federal employees and Reagan's hands would have been completely tied). Their one demand could have been "hire them back and get your ass to the table to negotiate or no plane will fly" and it would have had to have worked.
What would America look like today if that had happened? We can't know, but the ATC strike and the following terminations were if nothing else a demonstration of Reagan's strength as an executive, and he damned well knew that if the strike were successful it would jeopardize his administration and his legacy. On the other hand, successfully terminating them would put a stake through the heart of unions coast-to-coast (something dear to the heart of Reagan and his.... minions).
We could have had a demonstration of why unions are powerful and why we need them. We could have strengthened unions at that time by demonstrating how different unions from different "crafts" (to use a USPS postal union term) can work together when appropriate. It could have sent a message to all unions coast to coast that they need to start fighting harder and coordinating with each other. We didn't, and I suppose that's forgivable. We were so demoralized at the time that it probably didn't even occur to anybody that the apparently-indestructible crystalline structure and power of Reagan and his 1980s Republicans was actually very fragile in any number of ways, and that history had given us a hammer.
Instead, we did nothing but lament as the Overton Window of Political Discourse steadily and incrementally shifted rightward. America failed to notice because that's how that thing works. From that time to this, we have not even tried to move it our way. The entire Obama administration kept that window from moving further at best, and whether that's actually the case at all is arguable.
I digress. It was a hammer we didn't swing, and as I said that's forgivable in context, but we didn't learn a thing from it. Being nice, playing above-board, and slinging no shit-infused mud will make us electoral losers. Refusing introspection and refusing to point the finger of responsibility at the mirror when it's appropriate will keep us electoral losers. Voters don't want "nice". Voters want strength, refusal to apologize, and certainty we are correct. They don't want compromise; that's been clear since before Trump was elected. Voters don't want milquetoast and voters don't want ambiguity. Voters want their beliefs about government and America to be validated and agreed with, whatever those beliefs may be at the time and however those beliefs may shift in the wind, because we live in an era where facts are arguable as opinions and as easily dismissed.
Trump saw that and capitalized upon it and won the election. Whether we've learned anything at all is yet to be seen, but I don't know if we have or not, and that is concerning because it should be obvious.
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