The optimistic case for Democrats in 2022 and 2024

The party is right to be alarmed. But despair is premature.

A donkey.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

These are dark days for American democracy. While it is a palpable relief for millions to know that Donald Trump is no longer president, the mass psychosis he unleashed on the Republican Party is getting worse. Republicans are pressing forward with draconian voting restrictions in states across the country, election truthers are running for governorships and secretary of state offices in tipping point states, and efforts to reinforce democracy's guardrails are stalled in the Senate thanks to a handful of delusional Democratic senators. The chances of Republicans successfully running Trump's 2020 post-election playbook in 2024 — Republican state legislatures appointing GOP electors no matter the outcome and/or Congress setting aside the results during the counting of the electoral votes — seem to be growing with each day.

That doesn't mean a constitutional crisis is inevitable, even if Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) prevents Democrats from passing any voting rights legislation whatsoever. The best way to avoid such a cataclysm would be for Democrats to do better than expected in the 2022 midterms and then for President Biden to blow the doors off in 2024, making the outcome so clear that state and national GOP officials cannot plausibly try to set the results aside. And while I remain deeply concerned about the Republican Party's descent into madness and believe that the chances of a post-election putsch in 2024 are unacceptably high, there are some signs that Democrats might be in a decent position to do just that.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.