We really did dodge a bullet in 2020 (although it was likely only the first of many)

[EarlG]

42. I hear you

I guess I'm not necessarily trying to get everyone to imagine how bad it would have been, but to point out that the Republicans are going down a dangerous road.

It seems pretty baked in to the conventional wisdom that all this GOP voter suppression stuff is a sort of natural occurrence, a reflexive response to their defeat. But I'm suggesting that this was in the pipeline whether they won or not, and we dodged a bullet because their "vote fraud" propaganda is significantly less potent than it would have been if they'd won, because Trump would have retained his massive megaphone -- the power of the presidency, along with his social media presence.

So we need to stay vigilant, because it seems pretty clear that what the Republicans are doing now -- not just the voter suppression bills, but their national leadership rallying around the "Big Lie" and the internal purging of anyone who disagrees -- indicates that they are going all in on shredding democracy, and are heading into a future where they will fiercely -- with force if necessary -- object to the results of every single election that they lose.

Having Biden and the Democrats in power will help to mitigate it in the short term, but if this is the GOP's long-term destiny, we'd better start preparing for it now.