The GOP has not won the popular vote in a presidential election in 20 years. That makes them more dangerous than ever.

We need to steel ourselves for a very ugly year.

In the middle of the night migrants put on a bus in Texas were dropped into the deep freeze of a January snowstorm in Chicago. They wore T shirts and flip flops. A dangerous Republican governor did this.

It has been twenty years since a Republican has won the popular vote for President. Yet in those 20 years the GOP has captured the Supreme Court and several states. They have used those gains, despite lacking a majority, to impose their agenda on the rest of us. Now they are losing their grip, and they are desperate. We need to steel ourselves for a very ugly year.

Republicans are many things, but they are not stupid. They know that Americans widely rejected them in the last three elections. They see that every poll shows how unpopular their agenda is- from abortion bans to book bans, from unrestricted proliferation of firearms to tax breaks for the wealthiest among us. They see Americans getting organized and involved in political campaigns from school boards on up, and they are afraid. They know they can’t win anymore and that’s why they now champion efforts to rig the system- from voter suppression to gerrymandering to unlimited dark money in politics. 

And they know that to get away with it, they must undermine our faith in our democratic institutions. No one does that evil job better than Mr. Trump.  This week he mocked the judiciary by turning his appearance in court as a litigant into a campaign stunt. 

But before he could do that, the Judge’s home swatted. When reporters talk about this, they say a bomb threat was called in. But saying something was ‘called in’ is too passive. Let’s use language more carefully.  On the morning of final arguments in Trump’s case, someone threatened Judge Engoron and his family. Someone attempted to scare them and abused our system of protecting people to make sure dozens of police cars and the bomb squad rushed to his house sirens blaring. That day, Mr. Trump and his supporters found a way to use both the infrastructure of law enforcement and the courts to undermine our institutions and to threaten those will uphold them.

The do-nothing Congressional Republicans

Trump isn’t alone. Congressional Republicans began the new year by undermining the very idea of a national legislative body. The Republican majority in the U.S. House is too narrow to accomplish nothing on its own. But its rage-haunted members refuse to work with others unless their own grievances are answered by taking the country down a very dark path. Never mind that the majority of Americans do not want to walk that road. So instead of working on legislation, they organize hearings to undermine faith in government. The result is that people who don’t pay close attention to politics think everybody is to blame because no one will work together. That’s dangerous, and it’s wrong. The blame lies squarely on the destructive GOP.

Impactful Blue States

Accountability is coming. Fairly recently, Republicans controlled Michigan. But they could not govern. Their incompetence led to things like the poisoning of an entire city’s water supply. Now Democrats are in charge, and the state is thriving. Now, 16 fake electors, including members of the state’s GOP leadership, have been charged with multiple felonies. One has flipped and is cooperating with the prosecutors. This past week, in bombshell reporting, the Detroit News’ Craig Mauger uncovered new evidence that Mr. Trump was directly involved in the scheme. 

Over in Wisconsin, the nation’s most partisan gerrymander looks to be crumbling. That state’s Supreme Court has ordered new maps be drawn before the next election. Meanwhile, Democratic Governor Tony Evers has used his veto pen to block Republican laws aiming to restrict voting rights in the state. Like their counterparts across Lake Michigan, the Wisconsin GOP finds itself in a helpless rage. And across the country, the GOP is lashing out.

Destructive Red States

This week, for example, Pat Grassley, the Speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives (and grandson of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley) responded to a school shooting in a small Iowa town by saying the answer is “ridding our classrooms and school libraries of inappropriate material.”  

In Florida, because of the Ron DeSantis forever war against American culture, the dictionary has been banned and removed from a school district. That won’t protect anyone from gun violence.

But this week’s most awful and most dangerous behavior comes from Texas. And it’s even more dangerous than sending people without winter clothes into a snowstorm. 

Photo Credit: John Moore/ Getty Images. Eagle Pass, Texas.

This week, Governor Abbot sent the Texas National Guard to block federal agents from accessing the Rio Grande to perform border patrol functions. I wrote about that here.

Just as in 1861 at Fort Sumter, the government of the United States must now contend with a state that is using its military to interrupt and to confront the armed forces of the government. As of this moment, it is not clear what Texas intends to do in the zone they have declared off limits to the United States. This is the most serious challenge to federal authority launched by any state in memory. It is a military challenge. I doubt Governor Abbot has any intention of further escalating, but he is trying to see how far the Supreme Court will let him go.

Steel yourself for an ugly year

All these abuses, all this undermining of our institutions, all the attacks on our rights and on our votes will only accelerate and grow in seriousness throughout this election year. Don’t despair. We are so very close to creating the world’s first multiracial and multi-faith democracy, a democracy where power is really shared by all our people. That is the struggle that defines us, and it was never going to be easy. The backlash is harsh. It is going to be an ugly year. But that only makes the victory sweeter.