A Vote Against Biden is a Vote For the End of Democracy

This is no time to fuck around.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – The Associated Press published an article this week that ought to be a terrifying wake-up call for any Democrats in purple states who plan to abandon their party to vote for a No Labels candidate or similar. We’ll get back to the AP article in a bit.

I’m relatively confident that in a head-to-head contest between President Biden and Donald Trump, Biden will easily win. However, if there’s a well-financed third party candidate in the mix, one who’s characterized in the press as a political moderate, I’m not nearly as confident. 

My lack of confidence in the outcome of such a matchup comes from my deep cynicism about a certain demographic of American voter who has zero sense of societal responsibility and, instead, makes voting decisions based their contrarian rejection of the two party system, ignoring larger concerns that affect our communities, our states, our republic of 331 million citizens, and beyond. 

These voters believe that monkeying with the two party system by casting ballots for spoiler candidates will make it more likely a multi-party system will emerge or, at the very least, mainstream Democrats will begin to adopt some of the third party’s platform planks. Maybe in normal times that is theoretically true. These aren’t “normal times.” There are wolves circling the cabin and these third party voters keep opening the doors.

Every non-Red Hat voter should have one single priority when it comes down to November 2024: making sure Donald Trump and his party is electorally humiliated in every contest on the ballot. There is nothing more important right now. (Reproductive rights, mitigating the climate crisis, gun control, and so forth will be well-served in this scenario – none of it can happen if Republicans keep winning.) The sole priority has to be winning every election. There’s nothing else. If we don’t win, it’ll mean the end of democracy and all of the madness that accompanies the rise of authoritarian, idiocratic fascism.

Now, back to the AP story. The headline: “Conservative groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision.”

Yeah. That’s horrifying.

The plan is called Project 2025 and it’s similar to Steve Bannon’s notion of “deconstructing the administrative state.”

Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s return — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024.

With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.

The project also includes eliminating the independence of the Justice Department while thwarting the efforts of the FBI to weed out misinformation, not to mention severe criminal penalties for anyone caught marketing in abortion pills. Additionally, the plan would force the military to abandon diversity programs.

The article emphasizes that the handbook is a “how-to manual for the next president.”

[The Project] suggests the new administration should “reexamine” the tradition of providing work space for the press corps and ensure the White House counsel is “deeply committed” to the president’s agenda.

To be clear: Republicans want to turn the White House press corps into a ministry of propaganda.

While the article doesn’t say, we should assume these are systems that will also be applied to state governments as well – and many states have a head start, targeting election officials, banning books, eliminating diversity programs, and making it more difficult for Democrats to vote. At the federal level, we should assume that Trump has his own plans for being the movement’s “retribution.” There’s no doubt in my mind that Trump will summarily arrest political opponents, perhaps even suspending habeas rights in the process under the false pretext of stopping a (fictitious) insurrection.

Anyone who votes against the Democratic Party in 2024 is voting in favor of this plan, whether it’s their intention to do so or not. It’s math. One less vote for President Biden in a contested state makes it one vote more likely Trump will win. That’s how democracy works. Denying a vote to Biden and giving it to another candidate, that’s one fewer vote for Biden. We shouldn’t have to explain this to chronological adults who should know better but don’t.

They say democracy is “the worst form of government except for all the others.” The fatal flaw in the system is that democracy can be exploited to end democracy. This is the plan on the Republican side: grab up as many elected posts as possible, including the presidency, then never leave because something-something-Trump-fever-dream. From there, Project 2025 swings into action.

This is no time to fuck around.

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