It is one thing for everyone to “know” that the GOP has become the party of racial grievance, that’s been true ever since Ronald Reagan opened his run for president from Philadelphia Mississippi. Philadephia, Mississippi is known for one reason only, it is where the FBI unearthed the bodies of civil rights workers from a dam in the mid 60s …

People have known. Trump came down the escalator and made it that much clearer, even with his “And some, I assume, are good people.” People know.

But it is completely different to write it out on paper, indeed in the paper in Washington, and call it out for what it is, as Dana Millbank did on Friday:

“And I’m at a loss to understand their confusion. The Republican Party’s dalliance with authoritarianism can be explained in one word: race,

“Trump’s overt racism turned the GOP into, essentially, a white-nationalist party, in which racial animus is the main motivator of Republican votes. But in an increasingly multicultural America, such people don’t form a majority. The only route to power for a white-nationalist party, then, is to become anti-democratic: to keep non-White people from voting and to discredit elections themselves. In short, democracy is working against Republicans — and so Republicans are working against democracy,”

In statehouses across the country, Republican legislators are whispering about Stacey Abrahms and saying things such as “We’ll be damned if we let that happen again.” The role model, of course, is Florida, where some way, somehow, every poll prior to an election seems to show the Democrat at least tied or perhaps even ahead a few points, only to lose – always – by two to three points. Always. We aren’t saying they are cheating. But someone has to point us to when a statewide race was last won by a Democrat in a state that is very close to 50-50.

It must be this way, because not only is the country becoming more multicultural, not only are white Americans no longer a majority in many areas, a lot of white Americans don’t want a white nationalist party, either – and are voting Democratic. Tough elections indeed. So why have them?

“You don’t have to study demography to see that race is at the core of the GOP’s tilt toward the authoritarian. You need only look at what happened this week. On Monday, the Georgia state House passed a bill brazenly attempting to deter Black voters. The bill proposed to scale back Sunday voting — taking direct aim at the longtime ‘Souls to the Polls’ tradition in which Black voters cast their ballots after church on Sundays. The bill also would increase voter I.D. requirements — known to disenfranchise Black voters disproportionately — and even would make it illegal to serve food or drinks to voters waiting in long lines outside polling places; lines are typically longer at minority precincts.”

But don’t take Dana’s word for it, ask Trump, who rejected several bills passed by the House, bills that made it much easier to vote, while saying “it would make it impossible for a Republican to ever win again.”

“President Biden’s victory reveals the obvious political problem with the Republican move toward white nationalism: When voters turn out in large numbers, Democrats win. And the odds will only get worse for Republicans as racial minorities become the majority and the young, overwhelmingly progressive on race, replace the old. This is why Republicans aren’t really fighting Democrats. They’re fighting democracy.”

Yes. But it is not just the laws against voting. It is the assertion that any election that Republicans don’t win must be rigged. These assertions, that Trump used so brazenly (he told us beforehand), are the types of things that degrade democracy, perhaps irreparably, down the road. This is Trump’s legacy.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak