Reports Of Democracy’s Death Were Greatly Exaggerated

One of the most important takeaways from the election is…the existence of the election itself.

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – There’s been such an endless geyser of shockingly soul-crushing nightmares throughout the last 12 months, it’s beyond glorious to have witnessed an undeniably successful election. Victory is made even sweeter by the fact that it was an incontrovertible repudiation of Donald Trump and MAGA politics.

There are, of course, the historic victories in New York, Virginia, and New Jersey. There’s the passage of Prop 50 in California, allowing the state to counterbalance Donald Trump’s desperate gerrymander in Texas. Democrats won state-wide in Georgia and they upended the Republican supermajority in the Mississippi House. Virginia Democrats now control 64 out of 100 seats in the commonwealth’s House of Delegates. And Mikie Sherrill, the next governor of New Jersey, outperformed the polling averages by 10 points – turning what pundits said was a close race into a blowout.

One of the most important takeaways from the election is…the existence of the election itself.

Turns out, democracy isn’t dead.

It’s surely endangered, but it’s far from over.

For the past year, every time I’ve posted something about the next election, my social media mentions are filled with people telling me there won’t be any more elections. It got to the point where I’d occasionally post a warning: telling me democracy is dead will get you blocked or muted.

I’m sure many of the posts were added out of genuine concern for democracy. I’ve been just as worried about Donald’s threats – the ongoing fear of the other shoe dropping – as anyone. But I also believe many prophets of doom have been motivated by the ego-driven desire to be the first who called it – for the “I told you!” bragging rights. I’ve since lost track of the original Bluesky post, so I can’t credit this person by name, but someone wrote that the prophets of doom want to feel as though they won the apocalypse, as if there’s social media clout and a cash prize for accurately forecasting such a thing.

The reality is there was zero effort by Donald Trump to stop people from voting. He didn’t deploy ICE agents or the National Guard to polling places in California to intimidate voters from weighing in on the proposed gerrymander. He didn’t declare martial law. He did invoke the Insurrection Act to somehow cancel the election. While there were some bomb threats – and we can safely assume which side of the culture war was responsible – there weren’t any widespread efforts to stop people from casting ballots.

Federalism held firm.

If Elon Musk, or the Russians, or China, or Stephen Miller were hell bent on making sure MAGA ruled supreme by hacking voting machines or tabulation computers, they did a super shitty job of it, especially knowing how Democrats exceeded expectations.

To be clear, I’m not whistling past the graveyard. This doesn’t mean there won’t be attempts to hijack democracy in the future. There absolutely will be. In fact, one of Donald’s big takeaways was that his puppets in Congress need to pass legislation making it more difficult to vote – the usual suppression tactics – voter ID, a ban on mail-in voting, and so on. All this on top of his attempts to manufacture more House seats through the aforementioned gerrymander in Texas, and the continued process of disenfranchising voters of color. (If you think all this makes him sound desperate and worried, you thought correctly.) He also repeated his demand to nuke the filibuster so Congress could do all that. And fast.

He doesn’t want his fanboys to notice that he himself has voted via mail. On more than one occasion, no less. He’s also too stupid to know that all but 14 states already have voter ID laws on the books in some form. And once again, he justified voter ID this week by saying that people have to present ID to buy groceries, which they don’t, proving he’s never stepped foot into a grocery store. Is he thinking of a strip club, maybe?

Nevertheless, one of the sure fire ways to drive down voter turnout, volunteerism, small dollar donations, and political activism in general is to keep circulating the “democracy is over” meme on social media. The more it’s repeated, the more voters will resign themselves to believing any sort of participation in the democratic process is futile. Why bother trying to get out the vote if there’s not going to be a vote – because some guy, a profit of doom bent on winning the apocalypse, kept saying it on X or Instagram. The message has the added toxicity of coming from our own side of the aisle. Not MAGA. Liberals. So they must be trustworthy, right?

It’s a fantastic way of letting Donald Trump and MAGA win – both of which, left unchecked and unchallenged, will absolutely end democracy with zero effort on their behalf. I mean, shhh – don’t tell him – but Donald doesn’t need gerrymandering or martial law, all he needs are thousands of liberal Eeyores insisting elections will never happen in order to keep Normals from voting.

Instead, how about we get motivated to do everything within our power to dominate elections at every level. There are more of us than them. Let’s use it. Let’s win so handily that we can do all the things – win with such significant margins that MAGA is permanently driven in the margins of the political debate. Make the Republican Party a permanent opposition party. Make sure future Donald copycats can’t revive the nightmare. And make sure what’s already transpired never happens again.

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