Election law expert UC Irvine Professor Rick Hasen now thinks democracy is less fucked after the GOP’s weak showing in the midterms. “With developments over the last week, culminating on Monday night with the loss of election denier Kari Lake for governor in the key swing state of Arizona, I’m a little less worried. If we were two minutes to midnight on the doomsday clock before last week’s midterm elections, we are now back to 10 minutes to midnight,” Hasen writes at Slate.
Hasen still warns of a number of threats that remain, including the fact that MAGA election denier Secretary of State candidates still won in deep Red States, that Trump is still the leader of the Republican Party and could win fairly in 2024, and that whenever he finally leaves the next Republican candidate could be more effective at finding ways to subvert election results.
“So maybe pour a glass of champagne and celebrate that we got over the very low bar of not electing truly anti-democracy candidates to offices in states where it matters. But don’t drink the whole bottle. We need to soberly assess what’s ahead and not reduce our vigilance to safeguard democracy,” Hasen concludes. We concur and recommend readers switch to whiskey.