The NYT published an excellent, must-watch video on the real threat to democracy in 2024 from the ground up. No, not voter suppression, not Jim Crow 2.0, but the far less attention-getting rewiring of the election process from the local voting precincts, to the networks of grassroots MAGA activists who will create paper trails of "perceived voter fraud" in real-time, to the networks of lawyers sympathetic to MAGA helping to train these "soldiers" to use existing election complaint laws to cast doubt on millions of votes, to the MAGA district officials, to MAGA Secretaries of State, State Legislatures and Governors, all the way up the food chain to appeals courts with potentially sympathetic judges (just think Judge Cannon multiplied many times over). If the 2020 coup attempt was a last minute top down attempt that failed because of the decency of election workers, governors and secretaries of state, and a complete lack of paper trail evidence for alleged fraud-- all these loopholes have been potentially closed depending on how many MAGA officials win in the rather unglamorous general elections down-ballot this November. I commend the Times for this long overdue expose of a plan that has been unfolding in real time for quite a while now.
While it's not on yoututbe, and may have a paywall, I am providing a link to the NYT and to a Twitter thread started by legal scholar Lawrence Tribe about the documentary (it also contains the link to the doc). For those who can access it, the first 10 minutes focus on the comparatively unimportant voter suppression issue in order to set up the nature of the much more daunting threat I briefly described above. So, for those short on time, I recommend starting the 27 minute doc at about the 10 minute mark where the truly important material begins.
Finally, I have some less friendly observations to make about the doc and the NYT and media generally.
For starters, there is absolutely no mention of the dangerous game Democrats have played by supporting several of these MAGA candidates in local and state races in the primaries this year. They are betting that some of the MAGA candidates are "too extreme to win in the general election in November," and as a result spending millions on boosting some of them. Renowned election lawyer, Richard Hasen had this to say about the gambit in a recent Guardian article:
“It is immoral and dangerous,” said Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. He said the risk of miscalculation was great, particularly at a moment when the January 6 committee is attempting to show just how destructive Trump’s stolen election myth has been for American democracy.
“It’s hard for Democrats to take the high road when they’re cynically boosting some of these candidates in order to try to gain an advantage in the general election...” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/07/democrats-boosted-extremists-republican-primaries-was-that-wise
To be fair, NYT has featured articles on the topic here and there, (e.g. this article from June. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/us/politics/democrats-midterms-trump-gop.html But to say, as the narrator does, that we should be "terrified" by the prospect of any such victories without adding that Democrats have supported them in a reckless and immoral gambit, is truly unprincipled. Michelle Cottle, who is on the NYT Editorial Board is the main speaker in the doc, and during her ominous warnings says not one word about this appalling fact. The Dems (and this is a pattern) have decided that some far right election-deniers are just "too far out" for the more "moderate" voters. This is exactly what they said in the 2016 Primaries when Trump defeated Rubio, Cruz and the others in primary after primary. It was supposed to be a cake-walk for HRC, right? This is no time for gambling. Yet here is Democratic Congressional Chair Committee Chairman, Sean Maloney defending the strategy when questioned about it on Morning Joe earlier this year https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/07/26/dccc_chair_sean_patrick_maloney_you_might_see_us_boost_radical_right_candidates_to_sabotage_the_gop_in_2022.html In his own words:
We have a high bar for that. I think if you're going to do that, you need to really understand what you're doing. If you're talking about trying to pick your opponent, you might see us do that, sure. And I think sometimes it does make sense.
You need to "really understand what you're doing," he stipulates, as if there's a hard and fast science for accurately predicting winners and losers in battleground states! Anyway, I think the conspicuous absence of discussion on this topic haunts the documentary, especially since we're told to be so scared of some of the same people Dems actually supported in the primaries. Similarly, there's almost no discussion of the ethics and liabilities of this high-stakes Democratic Party gambling by Biden when he goes on national TV to warn all citizens that the MAGA GOP is an "existential threat to American Democracy." You'd think he might tell his troops to stop playing with fire by supporting the worst of the bunch on the supposition that they'll lose in November. But not a word, as David Brooks and others noted in response to his disappointing speech 2 weeks ago. The real goal of that speech, it seems, was to make the election a "referendum" on MAGA and Trumpism rather than Biden's job to date. Biden, like the documentary, failed to outline and encourage any solutions beyond the obvious appeal to go out and vote blue.
For example, like the aforementioned election lawyer, Richard Hasen, I've repeatedly warned here and elsewhere that if the Electoral Count Act is not reformed this year, the very mechanics of the legal coup the NYT warns about in their fine documentary will be much easier to implement. We're just ONE VOTE AWAY from passing it in the Senate (where it needs to pass to become law), yet where's Joe? It wasn't in the speech. It's not something he's calling Senators about, as far as I know. But this is all about preventing submitting slates of fake electors-- a major part of the plan the GOP has orchestrated to overturn the 2024 election. It's not a very "sexy" news item, and so it rarely if ever is featured in the 10 and 15 minute segments on MSNBC or the front pages of the NYT, and was featured in only 1 NYT op-ed I can recall-- by, once again, the tireless Richard Hasen. As it turns out, just today the House finally passed their version of this legislation. But the Senate version remains one vote short-- one Republican vote, and if the GOP controls the Senate next year, all bets are off. PBS covered the developments earlier today: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/house-passes-electoral-law-overhaul-in-response-to-jan-6 You would think the NYT documentary might have emphasized the importance of the struggle to pass this democracy-protecting legislation. It did not.
Finally, this might have been published months ago and included a serious discussion of counter-measures (including but not limited to the ECA reform bill/s I mentioned). As it is, more than a few comments on the NYT website complain that they are "terrified" now, but have no idea what on earth to do about the problem. That's because possible solutions simply don't come up. Here we are only 1 month before an election that will have much to do with the plausibility of the GOP plan which has been hiding in plain sight since early 2021. As with Biden's speech on MAGA, it's too little too late, though the information it contains is vitally important.
Despite these criticisms and caveats, I enthusiastically recommend this piece for the information it condenses and makes accessible regarding a very likely scenario in which US Democracy could be torpedoed by a well organized minority group of zealots and ideologues, many of whom are convinced they are doing "the right thing."
UPDATE: The vid is now up was behind a paywall 2 days ago, but is now available on youtube. Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YjY00Cd_MI
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