We begin today’s roundup with Charles Blow and his piece in The New York Times on the Republican attacks on democracy:
Altering the structure of power in a state to limit the influence of an incoming executive of an opposing party wasn’t something I thought I’d ever see in America, but unfortunately this isn’t even the first time we’ve seen it. This is not the first time Republicans have done it. [...] Republican anti-democratic tendencies aren’t limited to the transfer of power. They extend to areas like the widespread efforts to enact voter suppression, from voter ID laws to voter roll purges to shortening early-voting windows to gerrymandering.
The editors at USA Today call out Republicans in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina for failing to respect the will of voters:
These blatant power grabs show a palpable contempt for voters. For decades, even as the political debate has grown more caustic, lawmakers of both parties have shown an admirable reverence for popular sovereignty, democratic elections and graceful transitions of power. Now, that is very much in doubt.
Lame-duck sessions should be used to tie up loose ends or enact legislation with broad bipartisan support, not to ram through partisan measures that do not reflect the will of the voters.
Making matters worse, the majorities in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina, as well as numerous other states, are built on grotesque gerrymandering inflicted like a cancer on the body politic after the 2010 election.
More from John Nichols at The Nation:
Today’s Republican Party—in Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states where lame-duck legislative sessions have been used to undermine the authority of duly elected Democratic governors, attorneys general, and secretaries of state—is coming to embody what the first Republicans opposed in a national platform that decried “the spurious and pretended legislative, judicial, and executive officers” who in the 1850s “usurped authority” and enacted “tyrannical and unconstitutional laws.” [...]
The Republican Party has become the party that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower feared.
Speaking a century after the Grand Old Party waged its first presidential campaign, the president who sought to forge a modern Republican Party in the mid-20th century, celebrated “a certain kind of principle, or doctrine, or belief to fall back on” and warned that “If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast focuses on what looks to be stolen election in North Carolina:
If North Carolina’s congressional election were an episode of House of Cards, it would be laughed off the air. Unbelievable, you’d say. Preposterous.
And yet, in that state’s Ninth District, which runs along the border with South Carolina, truth is indeed stranger than fiction: ballot “harvesting” by a shady operator with years of suspicious activities, a fire-breathing pastor who hired said operator but now claims to have had no idea what that operator was up to, and, to top it all off, a state Republican party that is working furiously to solve a voter-fraud crisis that doesn’t exist while trying to shut down an investigation into one that does.
Meanwhile, Ed Kilgore at New York magazine explains why the new rumored attorney general nominee is just as bad as the old one. William Barr is already on record as thinking the Mueller investigation is out of line:
That’s not the only pertinent topic on which the AG front-runner appears to be pretty close to the Trumpian party line. He has also urged the Department of Justice to investigate the Uranium One allegations, a complicated bribery scheme involving the Clinton Foundation, a Russian company and the Obama administration, which is a favorite right-wing conspiracy theory. He’s also on record questioning the legitimacy of independent counsels, though to be fair they were operating under much broader legal mandates when he was dealing with them.
On a final note, don’t miss Doreen St. Félix’s profile of Michelle Obama at The New Yorker:
The quote of Obama’s that I think of most is a statement that was unimaginable before her reign: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.” We were attracted to Obama’s patriotism because of its roots in world-weariness. Inside the Barclays Center, the lines that were emblazoned on tees, jean jackets, and onesies were the slogans of empowerment: “Work to Create the World as It Should Be”; “When They Go Low We Go High.” Around eight o’clock, as the arena’s tens of thousands of seats filled, an introductory video showed people, young and old, declaring who they were becoming (“a doctor,” “an influencer”). On the speaker system were songs from Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, and the “Hamilton” soundtrack. Impeccably dressed women consumed chicken fingers and red wine. The evening’s host, the poet Elizabeth Alexander, a longtime confidante of the Obamas, came onstage, riling up the audience for their star. “You may remember me from a very, very cold day in January, 2009, when I read my poem ‘Praise Song for the Day’ to enormous crowds on the Washington Mall as the nation inaugurated President Barack Obama,” she said. A folksy video collage of Obama’s life played on the Jumbotron while, in the darkness, crew members finally arranged the two blue chairs onstage.