The Trifecta Shift: Who Will Tell the People?
The widely shared desperation growing from fears of a Trump victory has trapped reporters and talking heads such as Rachel Maddow and David Axelrod in a continuous loop that leaves the issues after the election largely untouched. In the equally desperate rush for ratings most people know they are being entertained more than informed. E. J. Dionne writes this week in the Washington Post that people "don't expect more from their political leaders than posturing, positioning and captivating media circuses." Which continues to make Trump's chances harder to guess than pollsters may believe.
Mostly untouched is how the racism habit and an economically stranded middle class open flood gates to a volatile, dangerously large audience that makes the next question not just about the November election but about what comes afterward. The deep pathos of news as entertainment disincentivises the public from filling sand bags against the coming storms.
Just over the horizon when post election days finally arrive are the nation's ineradicable mentality derived from slavery; a disabled congress; and a major shift of political power from Washington to state governments.
Take the example of North Carolina where its Research Triangle and great universities compete with Silicon Valley, but where the federal appellate court had to intervene in the Republican's toxic war against the Democrats with their large constituency of African American slave descendents. Last Wednesday (8/31), the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 when asked by the Republicans to reverse an Appeals Court order that was forcing them to redraw their deeply racist voting district rules. The Court had struck down as unconstitutional "the effort to target African Americans with almost surgical precision."
The Supreme Court deadlock seemed like great good fortune because it left the Appeals court order in effect requiring North Carolina to redraw its gerrymandered districts and election rules. Here's the kicker: the Court placed responsibility for redrawing those rules in the hands of 100 local county election boards all controlled by Republicans.
How did this happen? It turns out that three years earlier the infamous Koch brothers oligarchy had financed a Republican take-over of the state house that ultimately led to a "trifecta," i.e., control of both houses of the legislature and the governorship; which is why "trifecta" is no longer about a horse race but a measure of national political power shifting away from Washington. As of September 2016, according to Real Clear Politics, there were 7 Democratic and 23 Republican trifectas. The GOP now controls68 out of 98 partisan state legislative chambers.
The ironies are abundant. The NY Times reported a week ago that In North Carolina's Lenoir County where Democrats outnumber Republicans better than two to one, and four in 10 voters are black, the new Koch-style election plan limits early voting to a single weekend day, bans voting on Sunday (They wouldn't want to desecrate the Sabbath!) and on weekdays demands that residents, including those who are poor and without cars must make long trips to cast their ballot. "Republicans, who wrote and passed the 2013 law...deny the rules reflect anything inappropriate."
It's not hard to see where this leads. Republicans may have a fool for presidential candidate, but their growing control of states is the answer to their dreams: trifectas in state capitals, control of elections, and oligarchic domination of public policy by means wealth.
Who will tell the people? Who will fill the sandbags to resist this coming flood? Hillary? We shall see. In faith communities the predictable pattern will be to flee complicated issues, hand out food, and keep churches as safe sanctuaries. There is of course the Pauline alternative: "put on the whole armour of God, that you may stand against the wiles of the devil," (Ephesians 11 again)--the better to resist what's coming down.
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