(05-15-2021, 12:50 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: "Of course we have the possibility of electoral shenanigans in 2024 that could render strong approval numbers for the President moot in those states."
Remember my prediction. If the Democrats nominate Harris in 2024, she will lose no matter whom the Republicans pick.
She has a shrewd legal mind, and that will be good for challenging such electoral shenanigans before they go in place.
It will be better for Republicans in the long run that they lose the 2024 honorably than that they lose dishonorably (let us say, coming up short but using subterfuges to come close -- let us say, nullifying electoral results) or even winning corruptly. In the case of the latter they risk domestic tranquility and discredit themselves. Losses may involve incompetence, failure to connect, or mass contempt for gross misconduct (including corruption and efforts to impose despotism). Democracy depends upon political losses for the despicable, inept, foolish, and inattentive.
The question remains, though: does the GOP have any foresight? A key reality of democracy is that it depends not only on the idea that the better nominee must win, but also upon opposing sides being willing to lose. Communist-run states had elections and even the show of their politicians 'running' for election. The results were highly predictable. There would either be no opposition, or such opposition that existed would get representation but no power. In the former, a ridiculously high percentage of the potential electorate voted and it all voted for the Communist slate. Or, as in the People's Republic of China or the old German Democratic Republic, the Communist-dominated SED predictably won 70% of the parliamentary seats, the Party chairman was obviously 'elected' as the primary leader, and the minority parties got to speak only on issues that mattered little to the Commies.
The GOP is becoming more like a Party of Lenin than the old Party of Lincoln in practice even if still holding antithetical views on economics and social organization to those of Lenin. Marxism-Leninism may be dreadful, but the dictatorship that Marxism assumes is even worse.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.