Jason Kander: Authoritarians will keep trying, but American democracy is hard to kill

Democracy is supposed to be dead today.

The authoritarian forces in the Republican Party who brought us the Dobbs Supreme Court decision were well on their way to a red wave large enough to complete their long-pursued American Ragnarök. Poised to sweep state legislatures, secretary of state offices and even the U.S. Senate with wide margins, they’d be in a position to strike a series of fatal blows.

The rest of us would wake up on Nov. 9, 2022, with the same thousand-yard stare we’d worn on Nov. 9, 2016 — except this time it’d be worse, because it would be permanent.

First we’d ask, “What the hell happened?” And then we’d pivot to blaming this unceremonious end of the American experiment on “Democrats” and “bad messaging.” Meanwhile, budding fascists at Turning Point USA would delightfully post memes of us crying, and Mitch McConnell would say something vacuous and faux-inspiring about “freedom” to a thunderous crowd of suits who donated more than I paid for my house in exchange for the Senate majority leader’s cellphone number.

We’d have explanations about voter suppression and gerrymandering and stolen Supreme Court seats, but it wouldn’t matter, because democracy would be dead and buried, replaced by a new system of exponentially increasing single-party control referred to as “democracy,” but only out of tradition — the way North Korea calls itself “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

Republicans would swiftly blow the bridges that formed the path back to free and fair elections, making the actual elections in swing states more like easily ignored advice than the will of the people.

And why wouldn’t Republicans have expected all of this to come to fruition? Due in some part to his own missteps and in larger part to conditions beyond his control, President Joe Biden is unpopular.

Sure, women seemed pretty ticked off about Republicans trying to send local elected officials with them to the gynecologist, and voter suppression was becoming a household term instead of just something understood by voting rights organizers, but c’mon, gas is expensive!

Sure, young Americans skewed overwhelmingly progressive because they’re mostly “woke” — which used to mean they were “awoken” to the struggles of others but now means something vaguely bad and un-American simply because Tucker Carlson decided as much — but those lazy kids never vote!

Besides, Republicans perfectly executed their biennial strategy of making people — mostly white people, but not only white people — keenly aware of crime, so-called “replacement” of the majority, and disruptive change.

And if all that failed, Republicans could rely on all the work they’d put into state legislatures and the judiciary to draw lines and write laws that made it much harder for voters to make their voice heard.

And yet!

Yet we escaped most — not all, but most — of that reality, because the majority of Americans don’t believe the government should be able to force a woman to give birth. And because enough of us have been jolted into recognizing the impermanence and fragility of democracy.

The thing about trying to assassinate democracy is that failing has consequences. Once a people realize someone has tried to take away their right to self-determination, they awake from their doldrums and they get to work with the intensity of Michael B. Jordan in a training montage from the movie “Creed.“

Again, this wasn’t how they thought it would go. Authoritarian Republicans like Donald Trump and Steve Bannon and their pathetic acolytes like Sen. Josh Hawley and Rep. Lauren Boebert believed Tuesday was the endgame. “Tomorrow belongs to us,” they no doubt thought.

But — plot twist — American democracy is hard to kill.

We’ve spent the last few years fighting to keep democracy alive, and on Tuesday, it survived. If we work together, in two years, it can once again begin to thrive.

This story was originally published November 13, 2022 at 8:00 AM.