The Insurrection Was Put Down. The GOP Plan for Minority Rule Marches On.
Mother Jones
This isnt about which party wins elections, but whether democracy itself survives. Some anti-democratic measures were deliberately built into a system that was designed to benefit rich white men: The Senate was created to boost small conservative states and serve as a check on the more democratic House of Representatives, while the Electoral College prevented the direct election of the president and enhanced the power of slave states through the three-fifths clause. But these features have metastasized to a degree the Founding Fathers could have never anticipated, and in ways that threaten the very notion of representative government.
In the past decade, the GOP has dropped any pretense of trying to appeal to a majority of Americans. Instead, recognizing that the structure of Americas political institutions diminishes the influence of urban areas, young Americans, and voters of color, it caters to a conservative white minority that is drastically overrepresented in the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandered legislative districts. This strategy of white grievance reached a fever pitch when domestic terrorists emboldened by the president occupied the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Bidens Electoral College victory. But that unprecedented attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the election results is a mere prelude to a new era of minority rule, which not only will attempt to block the agenda of a president elected by an overwhelming majority but threatens the long-term health of American democracy. The will of the people, wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1801, is the only legitimate foundation of any government. And now that foundation is crumbling.
No one has benefited more from minority ruleand done more to ensure itthan Mitch McConnell. For six years, he presided over a Senate majority representing fewer people than the minority party, the longest such stretch in US history, until the January Georgia runoffs gave Democrats a razor-thin majority. Now hell do everything he can to obstruct Bidens popular mandate. Two days after the presidential election, sources close to McConnell told Axios that he would block Bidens Cabinet appointees if he considered them radical progressives. McConnell didnt even acknowledge Bidens victory until 42 days after the election, when the Electoral College finalized it.