How Close Are We To "Losing Our Democracy"?

Introducing the Election Theft Austin Powers Steamroller

There’s a lot of this type of stuff in progressive circles these days:

Cassandra of Troy @BrynnTannehill

Two fundamental truths that the left / center as a collective are failing to emotionally and intellectually accept and understand: 1. The GOP is authoritarian, and intends to end our democracy 2. Once our democracy is dead, there's no legal way to bring it back 1/n

I’m of two minds here. On the one hand, I think the authoritarian leanings of the Republican Party — especially its Trumpist wing — are unmissable, and I worry that we might lose the ability to choose our leaders. On the other hand, we’re a long way from being Hungary, and I think that parts of the pants-wetting left are overlooking two developments that make a democratic backslide less likely. Only one thing is certain: I comprehensively suck. Is there any issue that I can’t bludgeon into a mushy grey heap with relentless “on the other hand”-ing? I feel like if I got swallowed by a whale, you might hear “but on the up side…” meekly emanating from the blowhole.

The goal of this post is to try to attach a probability to the likelihood of us “losing our democracy”. The number I churn out is, to put it kindly, flaming rhino shit. That’s inevitable, because I’m pulling the inputs out of my ass — if you feel that your ass contains better data, then by all means, extract and apply. Ultimately, the number is less important than the thought process that describes how election theft might happen and where the weak points in our system are.