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midterm elections
The GOP Is Already Planning to Win the Midterms... by Suppressing Your Vote!
The party is taking no chances on the upcoming plebiscite and has hatched a plan to rig all future federal elections with the goal of transforming the United States into a one-party state.
May 10, 2025
If you’re counting on the 2026 midterm elections to wrest control of U.S. Congress from the GOP, be forewarned.
The party is taking no chances on the upcoming plebiscite and has hatched a plan to rig all future federal elections with the goal of transforming the United States into a one-party state.
At the center of the plan is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, passed on April 10 by the House and pending before the Senate, and an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on March 25 with the Orwellian title of “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” And looming in the background, with the final word on either measure’s constitutionality, is the Supreme Court, packed with three Trump appointees and holding a long and sorry record of hostility to voting rights.
All of this is happening step by step, setting the stage for what could turn out to be the final chapter for American democracy.
The SAVE Act would require all Americans to provide a birth certificate, passport, or some other documentary proof of citizenship in person every time they register or re-register to vote; require each state to take affirmative steps on an ongoing basis to ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote; and remove noncitizens from their official voter lists. It would also create a private right of action, after the fashion of the Texas anti-abortion law, to allow disgruntled individuals to sue election officials who register voters without obtaining proof of citizenship and establish criminal penalties of up to five years in prison for election officials who violate the act.
Trump’s executive order is no less extreme. Among its directives is a mandate for the Election Assistance Commission, an independent nonpartisan agency created by Congress, to require voters to submit documentary proof of their citizenship when using national voter registration forms. It would also stop states from counting mailed-in ballots votes that are sent in by Election Day but are delivered afterward, require recertification of all state voting systems to meet new security standards set by the EAC, and halt election assistance funding to states that do not comply with the terms of the order within 180 days. Perhaps most alarming, the order would allow the Department of Government Efficiency and the Department of Homeland Security to subpoena state records and use federal databases to review state voter registration lists.
There is some good news amid the darkness. On April 24, federal district court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee who sits in Washington, D.C., issued a 120-page opinion and preliminary injunction, blocking the EAC from adding documentary proof of citizenship to the national voter registration form. “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states—not the president—with the authority to regulate federal elections,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote, holding that Trump’s order violated the separation of powers and referring to Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which states:
The Times, Places, and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [original text] Senators.
But while voting-rights groups have praised Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion, the judge left the rest of the executive order in place. More concerning, the ruling did nothing to derail the SAVE Act. As the judge noted, “Consistent with [the separation of powers doctrine], Congress is currently debating legislation that would effect many of the changes the president purports to order.”
The dangers posed by the SAVE Act cannot be understated. According to a survey conducted by the Brennan Center and affiliated organizations, more than 9% of American voting-age citizens, or 21.3 million people, don’t have a passport, birth certificate, naturalization papers, or other proof of citizenship readily available. “Voters of color, voters who change their names (most notably, married women), and younger voters would be most significantly affected,” the Brennan Center has warned.
In an article posted after the House approved the act, Democracy Docket, the digital election news platform founded by attorney Marc Elias, featured the views of a group of distinguished historians and voting experts on the act.
“There’s never been an attack on voting rights out of Congress like this,” Alexander Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, told the Docket. “It’s always been the federal government trying to keep states in check on voting rights, for the most part.”
“Congress has never passed a voter-suppression law like this before,” Sean Morales-Doyle, the director of the Brennan Center’s voting-rights program, said. “When it has exercised its power to regulate federal elections, Congress has usually done so to protect the freedom to vote. If this becomes law, it will be a new low for Congress.”
Princeton professor Sean Wilentz also weighed in with a dire assessment. “It’s the most extraordinary attack on voting rights in American history,” Wilentz said, characterizing the act as “the latest attempt to gut voting-rights advances that were made in the 1960s,” one more dangerous than the Jim Crow-era laws used in the South, because it is national in scope. “This is an attempt to destroy American democracy as we know it.”
All eyes now turn to the Senate, where Democrats have the power to filibuster the SAVE Act to prevent its passage unless 60 members vote to invoke cloture. Thus far, the Democrats seem to be holding the line, even in the face of persistent propaganda spewed by Trump, Elon Musk, and other Republicans that election fraud is rampant and that Democrats are “importing [undocumented] voters” to swing elections. In truth, of course, election fraud in the U.S. is miniscule, with some long-range state-by-state studies finding it occurs at rates between 0.0003% and 0.0025% of total votes cast.
Should any part of the SAVE Act pass and be signed into law, it will likely come before the Supreme Court, where its fate may turn on Chief Justice John Roberts, who along with Amy Coney Barrett, sometimes aligns with the panel’s liberals in big cases.
Roberts, however, has a long history of undermining voting rights that stretches back to his stint as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration and his role as a behind-the-scenes GOP consultant, lawsuit editor and prep coach for oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the run-up to Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 presidential election.
In 2013, as chief justice, he composed the disastrous majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act. In 2019, he continued his anti-voting-rights crusade, writing the majority opinion Rucho v. Common Cause, which removed the issue of political gerrymandering (the practice of designing voting maps to benefit the party in power) from the jurisdiction of federal courts. And in 2021, he joined a 5-to-4 majority ruling penned by Justice Samuel Alito that upheld Arizona laws prohibiting out-of-precinct voting and criminalizing the collection of mail-in ballots by third parties.
In the meantime, hundreds of lawyers have resigned from the Justice Department, repelled by Trump’s reactionary policies. As The New York Times has reported, the exodus has been especially felt hard at the department’s civil rights division, whose mission Trump has transformed from one of opposing voter suppression to stamping out phony claims of rampant election fraud.
All of this is happening step by step, setting the stage for what could turn out to be the final chapter for American democracy. Not only is it not too early to start thinking about the midterms, it may already be too late.
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What Democrats Can Learn From the 2022 Midterms to Beat the GOP in 2024
An honest self-appraisal from 2022 and the ethic that offense-beats-defense can improve the odds for Democrats in 2024, if not crush Trump's party.
Dec 24, 2022
"Of all the talents bestowed upon me, none is so precious as the gift of oratory…a power more durable than a great King." —Winston Churchill
The post-mortems have been nearly unanimous: Republicans "underperformed" in the midterms due to the taint of Trump, dismay over January 6th, backlash to the Dobbs decision, and realization that President Joe Biden, as was said of Wagner's music, "is better than it sounds."
Democrats cannot depend on this White House—helmed by two likable, lower-voltage moderates—to prosecute the negative case against a GOP playbook drafted over decades by such gunslingers as McCarthy, Nixon, Gingrich, and Trump.
Ok…Democrats beat expectations. But where's any after-report explaining how Democrats also allowed the most lawless, lying, reactionary party in American history to narrowly control one Chamber of Congress? Campaigns, however, aren't horseshoes. According to the zero-sum math that matters—the GOP won the House by a margin of three percentage points and Jim Jordan will chair the Judiciary Committee hearings starting in January.
Good enough wasn't quite good enough.
The 2022 midterms can't predict the next presidential election (anymore than the 1982, 1994 or 2010 ones did). Still, what lessons might the Democratic party have learned to prevail in two years? To wit:
–how could they have failed for nearly all of two years to craft memorable messages and slogans to galvanize swing voters ("Build Back Better" not being it)?
–why didn't they make Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert the angry face of the GOP as they shouted at Biden during his State of the Union?
–why haven't they aggressively exploited their vanishing majority in these post-election two months to conduct hearings that set the table for the 118th Congress, say on student debt and a Censure Resolution against Greene for remarks endorsing political violence? (One exception—a House Judiciary hearing into possible misconduct at SCOTUS.)
–and why did prominent Democrats flinch at relentlessly portraying Trump's party as untruthful, unlawful, violent, even fascist?
If a review of Democratic performance last November merely concludes with a big "whew!," they'll more likely lose the next one as well. For they will soon face the amplification of both a vengeful House leadership and weaponized Twitter.
While it's obviously hard to predict what issues will dominate the next cycle, lessons from the midterms should inspire Democrats to start playing offense as soon as early 2023. Fall, 2024 is too late.
Step one means tattooing a very unpopular Trump on nearly all Republicans. Whether he runs seriously or not for reelection (since being a criminal defendant in several courtrooms during a campaign is not a plus—Trump has the potential to destroy them as a political majority for a generation. Hoover was a pinata for some 50 years. Carter for 20. Trump should be radioactive no less than they were. Notwithstanding the current hard polarization, the goal should be realignment, not merely narrow majorities.
Some Democratic pooh-bahs, however, have counseled candidates "not to look back," which is as foolish as ignoring the disgraced Nixon in l974 since he was no longer "on the ballot." Republican officeholders who have been either complicit or silent during Trump's carnage need to be held politically accountable for shredding the truth and the law.
When it comes to "accentuating the positive," the Biden White House will certainly keep touting real gains from its first term on jobs, drug prices, climate, gun safety, gay rights, Covid, Ukraine, plus what's to come in a possible second see (WinningAmerica.net, organized by Ralph Nader and the author, for a possible future agenda).
But Democrats cannot depend on this White House—helmed by two likable, lower-voltage moderates—to prosecute the negative case against a GOP playbook drafted over decades by such gunslingers as McCarthy, Nixon, Gingrich and Trump. (And given the inevitable race-to-the-bottom among 2024 presidential candidates—plus likely indictments of Trump and his clan from six grand juries—the negative side of the ledger will only grow.)
Effective counter-attacks are more likely to emerge from outside public advocacy groups, a handful of aggressive Members, and new wordsmiths at the DNC ideally with the polemical skills of a Samuel Adams (or at least a Frank Luntz). Think of how Elizabeth Warren (man)handled Michael Bloomberg in the second Democratic presidential debate. It took her ferocity to break through the billion dollar bubble protecting the ex-mayor.
Instead, Beltway consultants this past Fall failed to respond at all to GOP fear-mongering that called Democrats "Marxists, Communists, baby-killers" and, in Donald Trump's thoughtful formulation, "scum." In today's Age of Rage, there should be little space for "when they go low, we go high."
Nor did Democrats even attempt to neutralize such fatuous "culture war" slogans as CRT, groomers, vaccines, defund, woke—that is, DeSantism. All of which are variations of George Wallace, whose North Star, in his own phrase, was never to allow a political opponent "to out-n****r me." If unrebutted, to many these manufactured crises will appear undeniable.
Recently a federal court asked a lawyer for the State of Florida to define "woke" and was told it was the "belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to redress them"...as if Martin Luther King, Jr. was just some "woke" clergyman.
Hitting back will require more than disclosing additional outrages that largely serve to worsen scandal fatigue among weary voters and a cynical media. More urgent are convincing metaphors and narratives since by now the whole-is-greater- than- the- sum-of-its-parts when it comes to Trumpism and DeSantism.
As Churchill understood, galvanizing oratory matters. See how history still resonates with TR's "a chicken in every pot," Lenin's "land, bread, peace," Reagan's 'Morning in America." Recall how Newt Gingrich cleverly renamed "the estate tax" as the more alarming "Death Tax", Frank Luntz got even Democrats to talk about not "global warming" but the more anodyne "climate change", and some reactionary genius got people referring not to "Social Security" but a free lunch-sounding "Entitlement". Eisenhower's mention of a "Domino Effect'' in Southeast Asia and Reagan's concocted "welfare queen" dominated policy for decades.
Hard to think of a Democrat in memory who's said anything as enduring. Words matter and it's a mystery why Republicans—infinitely worse at policies to help families—are better at messaging which hurts them.
Last, it's corny but true that "good policies make good politics," in the estimate of Senators Schumer and Warren. As less inflation, more jobs, cleaner air and lower drug prices presumably take effect by the next election, some swing voters will take notice.
Among others, the new House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, Jamie Raskin and Eric Swalwell have shown real talent for oratory that can keep the opposing party on the ropes.
The possibilities seem endless: "Progress is America…One Party Delivers, the Other Divides…Getting stuff done beats dangerous extremism…Let's party like it's l789…It's up to you America—Freedom or Fascism?"
An honest self-appraisal from 2022 and the ethic that offense- beats-defense can improve the odds for Democrats in 2024, if not crush Trump's party. Otherwise, Greene and Musk will be happy to flood the political zone with their QAnon conspiracies and stochastic terrorism in an effort to make January 6 a trial run.
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Democrats' Fantasies About Midterms Could Cost Party Big in 2024
It isn't as if citizen advocates and civic organizations have neglected to advise, warn and urge the Democratic Party to win by standing for the people with authentic policies, messages, strategies, tactics, rebuttals and pithy slogans.
Dec 20, 2022
The Democratic Party can't cease congratulating itself about the mid-term elections results defying the pundit's predictions of a red wave. (Newt Gingrich even predicted that Herschel Walker would win the Georgia senate race without a runoff.) This is a self-serving, self-destructive standard by which Democratic operatives measure their performance. They need to unfailingly look into the mirror and list their losses.
The pernicious influence of corporate PACs leads to capitulation by the Dems, such as giving the Pentagon tens of billions of dollars more for the military budget than the White House requested.
First, they lost the House of Representatives to the worst Republican Party in history. The GOP is corrupt, lying, and violence-prone. It opposes policies supporting labor, consumers, patients, and children. It favors the greed of its corporate paymasters over vital community protections and necessities. A GOP House means the end of any Biden-proposed legislation for the next two years.
The narrow margin (GOP 222 Dems 213) between the House Democrats and the House Republicans was provided by two debacles - the election of two GOP candidates who were part of the partisan crowd rushing Congress on January 6, 2021, and the boomeranging of the New York State Democratic Party's redistricting plan.
Instead of netting four or five more seats in the House from New York, the Democratically controlled legislature overreached in its re-districting exuberance, leading to a 4 to 3 court overturn and the appointment of a special master to redraw the map. The new map produced a net GOP gain of 4 House seats.
Those two failures made the difference in the House of Representatives, turning all the committees and control of the House floor agendas over to probable Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and his cronies, bent on political revenge, not protecting people's interests.
Early causes weakening the Democratic Party were in 1979 when it started taking corporate PAC money big time and in 2011 when it cut an unwritten deal with the GOP that was beyond the pale in its legislative cowardliness. The deal, to secure GOP support, was that every dollar added for the social safety net had to be matched by a similar increase in the bloated military budget.
The pernicious influence of corporate PACs leads to capitulation by the Dems, such as giving the Pentagon tens of billions of dollars more for the military budget than the White House requested. By a House vote of 350-80 Democrats and Republicans expanded the current bloated military budget by another $45 billion, more than even the Generals requested. Moreover, the Democrats joined with the GOP in this deficit spending without even trying to pay for this $45 billion by restoring any of Trump's 2017 tax cuts for big business. The Congress has yet to provide adequate funding for public health necessities and Covid-19 responses in the U.S.
If the Party has to beg the GOP for aid to needy children, for instance, it is not likely to go into the districts of Republican leaders, such as former Speaker John Boehner's backyard in Ohio. It reached a point in 2014 when the Democrats did not even field an opponent to Boehner, thus freeing him to help his GOP buddies with his unused campaign money.
There is little indication the Democrats have turned up the heat in low-income Bakersfield, California, the hometown of Kevin McCarthy. Compare this with junior member Rep. Newt Gingrich, who built, from scratch, a revolt that toppled two Democratic House Speakers, Jim Wright (by resignation) and Tom Foley (electoral defeat by Gingrich's hand-picked opponent) before Gingrich took over the speakership in January 1995.
Another causal blunder is the ceding of huge territory in the U.S. over the decades to the GOP - now dubbed the red states. In an Electoral College system of presidential elections that has led to the ceding of the White House even to GOP losers in the popular vote (e.g., G.W. Bush and Trump).
By abandoning the mountain states and North & South Dakota, a virtually uncontested GOP started out with 8 to 10 surefire Senate seats in states which used to have Democratic senators when the Party was more of a true national Party.
Other self-inflicted wounds include refusals by the Democrats, when they do win, to roll back bad Republican passed laws as well as health, safety and economic regulations or de-regulations benefiting big business over all the people. Stripping down the IRS enforcement budget that could catch the plutocracy's evasions, undermining the Postal Service, still run by Trumpster Louis DeJoy, not getting out of the Bush/Cheney illegal wars of aggression, and Bush/Cheney shielding Wall Street crooks from proper regulation of the financial industry, which led to its collapse, were some of the Democratic Party's self-defeating permissions for these GOP disasters. (Note when Obama became president, his administration failed to prosecute the Wall Street looters.)
The Dems invariably decline to roll back outlandish subsidies, giveaways and bailouts initiated by the GOP and often expand them. Nor do they hold hearings on the corporate crime wave, corporate welfare binges and other critical "let the people know" events to build support for corporate law and order actions.
It isn't as if citizen advocates and civic organizations have neglected to advise, warn and urge the Democratic Party to win by standing for the people with authentic policies, messages, strategies, tactics, rebuttals and pithy slogans. (See winningamerica.net).
The Democratic Party won't even come up with memorable slogans and is constantly outnumbered by fabricated GOP accusations that put the Party on the defensive against the likes of Trump and Trumpster Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). The Dems are so unorganized and leaderless that Taylor Greene could say with impunity about the January 6th assault at a Republican gala in New York City last week, "I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would've been armed." Where are the Democrats that are needed to move to censure this violent inciter against our national legislators?
Heading into a perilous 2024 election on a cascade of self-anthems is not an auspicious forward path. The Party is facing a disaster in the Senate. Twenty-three Democrats (including two independents who caucus with the Democrats) are up for re-election with only 10 Republican senators mostly all from safe states. If the Dems could barely keep the Senate in 2022 when these odds were reversed in their favor, what do you think their chances are, with the same old, tired campaigns, for keeping the Senate in 2024?
These are the same campaign consultant regulars who have brought the Party to ruin in winnable election after election. Still, they get retained and place a cocoon around their candidates. These consultants make sure their regular corporate clients are not upset.
Again, the National Democratic Party has to set aside the champagne and rigorously face its disastrous failures--they should be landsliding the GOP. They can start with the two dozen civic leaders who volunteered to provide the path to victory in a July Zoom conference. They were largely ignored by the Party's corporate-conflicted political media consultants (losers who are expecting to be retained for 2024). (Again, see winningamerica.net).
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