Vote. Just vote.

Tomorrow, November 8, is the big day when US voters who haven't voted early make their trek to the polls for the midterm elections. At stake is nothing less than the future of American democracy. I'm nervous to the point of losing sleep about that future, as, I suspect, are millions of other folks, not least among them former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who, in a November 6 opinion piece in The Guardian, wrote:

Today I’m not particularly worried about Republicans’ policy preferences. Today I’m worried about the survival of our democracy.

I’m worried that a majority of Republican candidates are telling voters, without any basis in fact, that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

I’m worried that if elected, many of these Republicans will make it harder to conduct elections in the future, allow or encourage endless audits of election results, and even refuse to sign off on them.

I’m worried that Republicans have been spending millions to recruit partisan poll workers and watchers in the upcoming election, who could disrupt the counting process or raise false claims about it. (Michigan Republican secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo rose to prominence as a Detroit poll watcher who made false claims about election fraud.)

I’m worried that thousands of Trump supporters have been calling their local election offices requesting all kinds of public records, often using suspiciously similar wording, leading officials to believe this is a coordinated effort to prevent them from holding an election.

I’m worried that violent thugs are on the prowl, and that Republican leaders – starting with Trump – have been quietly encouraging them.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that republican policies and platforms aren't concerning. To the contrary, there's plenty to worry about, including but certainly not limited to the republicans' determination to annihilate health care coverage, benefits, and protections for millions of Americans; the reckless and dangerous forced-birth movement that is pushing the country towards an all-out abortion ban; the party's stubborn climate change denialism; and a relentless culture-war mentality that threatens to reverse important and hard-gained civil rights.

But overshadowing all of these issues is the GQP's fundamental threat to democracy.

The new owner of Twitter, Moscow Musk, has a take on the midterms that, to put it mildly, differs from Dr. Reich's and mine. Despite a previous declaration that Twitter should be politically neutral (a tweet for which he was roundly and soundly trolled, mostly for his hypocrisy), today he tweeted that he wants all of you "independent-minded voters" out there to vote for a republican Congress. Why? Well, it's because, according to his expert political analysis, "shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties" -- and since "the Presidency is Democratic," rethuglicans will provide a much-needed balance.

As absurd as Musk's advice is in light of American politix in the age of Trump, it's hardly shocking, and it's certainly nothing new for him. Nikki McCann Ramirez wrote today in a piece for Rolling Stone:

Musk’s overtures to right-wingers are not a new development. He announced that he had voted Republican for the first time earlier this year, tweeting that he had “voted for Mayra Flores – first time I ever voted Republican,” and predicting a “Massive red wave in 2022.” Musk also recently moved from California to Texas, posturing the change as the “last straw” regarding California’s Covid restrictions.

Flores has aligned herself with the QAnon conspiracy theory, and scores of the Republican candidates Musk wants his followers to vote for on Tuesday have peddled lies about the 2020 election. His push to put the party in control of Congress seems to be at odds with his vision for the future of the platform he now owns. “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world,” he tweeted Sunday night. “That’s our mission.”

Even though Musk has felt compelled to 'splain on Twitter that he is an independent, mind you, and that until recently he always voted Democratic, you have to wonder what took him so long to find his new home, politically speaking. After all, it's the republicans who famously hate regulations and laws that rein in big businesses. It's the repubs whose primary mission is to help billionaires and big corporations avoid paying taxes (which is why Elon picked up his toys and moved to Texas). In addition, repubs overall seem to be pretty tolerant of grifters and scammers (professional courtesy, perhaps?), and they're the party of greed. No doubt about it: Elon and the Red Menace are a match made in purgatory.

Musk or no Musk, the rethuglican party is rapidly becoming the new American Fascist party, fueled by "The Big Lie" about the 2020 election. Here is voting rights expert Marc Elias, writing for the Democracy Docket site in October:

Republican election deniers, vote suppressors, “Big Lie” advocates and their political and legal enablers spread misinformation about elections because they believe that without public confidence, elections are easier to overturn and the results are easier to ignore. Denying the truth about the 2020 election does not just allow past grievances to fester. It lays the groundwork for Republicans to seize power in the future...

...The GOP no longer presents voter suppression and election subversion with a wink and a nod. It enthusiastically embraces these anti-democratic tactics. There are no dog whistles left in the GOP; they have been replaced by blaring sirens of authoritarianism.

No matter which party prevails tomorrow, we're in for a rough ride leading up to, and beyond, 2024. This November 4 piece in the Harvard Gazette -- in which three scholars of government and politics share their views about the future of American politics and democracy -- is worth a read. One of the interviewees, Professor of Government and Sociology Theda Skocpol, summed up what many of us are feeling:

We’re in a very serious crisis, in my opinion, the most serious since the coming of the Civil War. The reason for that is there are a lot of levers that, if pulled together and combined with violence and threats of violence, make it possible for minority authoritarians who feel threatened to change the regime — really change the system — in de facto and quasi-legal ways. I point to the fact that a minority of the country — particularly those living outside of metropolitan and more racially and ethnically diverse areas — do feel profoundly threatened by the changes that have occurred in American society. They can obstruct things or even control court appointments through the Senate with a third or less of the American population. Gerrymandering is now an art and, combined with the Republican sweeps of state legislatures in 2010, allows anti-majoritarianism there, and the federal courts have really bowed out of defending any kind of voting rights and access, and, probably worse than that, may be on the verge of strengthening the hand of minority authoritarians. Combine all that with the fact that people are now threatening violence at the local election workers that most Americans take for granted and that most Americans, I think, choose between two parties according to current economic conditions. They don’t perceive the threat, and they won’t perceive it until it’s too late.

That's exactly right. Candidates from both major political parties have been gabbing nonstop about "kitchen table issues," purported to be the matters that voters really care about. Generally these are the issues that affect them directly on a day to day basis, and, yes, they usually are economic issues. It would appear that in this election cycle, the republicans are scoring the most points by pounding their fists on that proverbial kitchen table as they scream about record-breaking inflation and high gas prices and soaring food prices and, for good measure, rising crime and shaky border security. It's all framed in a spurious blame-the-Dems narrative, of course, with inflation and high gas prices being the most popular bogus GQP talking points.

But you want to know what my husband Ron Kaye and I talk about the most at our actual kitchen table? Sure, we're concerned about higher costs, as is nearly everyone we know, but what we talk about the most at our table is the growing threat to democracy in America, courtesy of the GQP's love affair with right-wing authoritarianism (as demonstrated by, among other things, their yuuuge crush on Hungary's Viktor Orban). We're also worried about the global expansion of authoritarianism. And I seriously doubt that we are the only ones who are deeply concerned about these matters, and who feel that President Biden was spot-on in his warnings about MAGApublicans.

Ron and I voted last week -- not that our votes will do a lot of good in our deeply toxic red state of Texas, aka Gilead. Texas, unfortunately, has become a leader in the headlong race to an illiberal dystopia. But we continue to vote anyway, because we still have hopes for the future of our state and the country.

And if you're eligible (and registered), I hope you vote too.