Every single look back on the disasterous election of November 2020 will start with the same line: “In retrospect, it was obvious...” https://twitter.com/fordm/status/1294093725598195713

In person voting damaged by a strategy of closing polling places and underallocating voting machines in certain precincts. This will combine with an acute withdrawal of the retiree volunteers we count on to run things in election days due to COVID concerns. Result: clusterfuck.

Vote-by-Mail damaged by a deliberate and openly stated (openly stated!!!) strategy of crashing the ability of the post office to process ballots. Result: total clusterfuck.

The election is in about 10 weeks. I see no indication anything is being done to prevent what’s coming.

There are things that can be done to mitigate/limit the damage. Make the post office scandal a major issue. Young people volunteer to work polls. Super vigilant voter mobilization to encourage early voting either by mail or in person. But a lot is past the event horozon for 2020.

The real long term answer is a deep, expansive, and robust new Voting Rights Act. Though I fail to see how the 21st century GOP will allow such a law, as they have pegged their political survival to embracing the opposite of everything such a Voting Rights Act would accomplish.

It’s entirely possible that the clusterfuck election of Nov 2020 will be sufficiently one-sided (in whichever direction) that the details of the clusterfuckery won’t be fatal to the perceived fundamental legitimacy of the Federal government. But...

If (when) the election is close, there will be howls of theft, manipulation, and rigging on all sides. And the perceived fundamental legitimacy of the federal government WILL be struck by a fatal blow. What then?

Then, like Sisyphus, we watch the boulder we’e been pushing for 250 years tumble back down the mountain into the primordial swamps of “what is the social contract” and “what are natural rights” and “who and what is truly sovereign?” And we start all over again.