An unprecedented majority now embraces ethnic diversity and racial equality, two essential pillars of multiracial democracy. Yet translating this new multiethnic majority into a governing majority has been difficult. Democracy is supposed to be a game of numbers: The party with the most votes wins. In our political system, however, the majority does not govern. Constitutional design and recent political geographic trends — where Democrats and Republicans live — have unintentionally conspired to produce what is effectively becoming minority rule.” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in the NYT: End Minority Rule.
+ And the excellent Dahlia Lithwick: This Is What It Feels Like to Live Under Minority Rule. “Like Barrett’s appointment, the project of Donald Trump’s entire presidency is to remind you that you don’t have a say in your governance. And because you don’t have a say, you don’t need any actual information from which to decide. This is what we learned again last week in an interview with CBS’s Lesley Stahl in which Trump announced that he won’t disclose his new long-promised health care plan to protect Americans dying from a pandemic until after the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act. It doesn’t matter what his new plan is, anyway, he implies. The very definition of flooding the zone with shit is that nothing matters, because you have no choices left to make.”
+ And about that big health plan book that White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany handed to Lesley Stahl after Trump stormed out of their interview … it didn’t contain any health plans. In this administration, the only disease more widespread than Covid is the lying.
“A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.” So said Mitch McConnell, as the Senate moved towards its final SCOTUS confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett.
+ It’s apt that McConnell would contrast his moves with an election, as this is all about creating obstacles between the will of the people and the will of those attempting to halt, for as long as possible, the nation’s demographic and opinion shifts. Ron Brownstein in The Atlantic: What the Rush to Confirm Amy Coney Barrett Is Really About.
