How to stop Marjorie Taylor Greene and the GOP from destroying democracy

Who wouldn’t like to see Marjorie Taylor Greene’s career-ending after one uselessly nauseating term in the US House of Representatives?

Who wouldn’t like to see her spending more time chilling with Putin-loving white nationalists, harassing kids who survived school shootings, or groping photoshopped cutouts of Donald Trump?

It’s just the way our brains need things to work.

Q-curious spreaders of Jewish Space Laser conspiracies who incite violence against public servants aren’t supposed to win reelection.

They’re supposed to be defeated – forced to fly away to an even worse fate, like fleeing Congress to run Trump’s failing fake Twitter site.

Our brains are so desperate to make this true that Marcus Flowers, a possible Democratic opponent, has raised almost $5 million with 87 percent coming from donations of less than $200 – even though his home seems to no longer be in Greene’s district in Georgia.

To be honest, it wouldn’t matter whether Flowers, or any Democrat, raised $50 million or even the more than $90 million Amy McGrath spent to lose to Mitch McConnell in 2020, Greene is going to win – likely by more than the nearly 20-point margin, McGrath lost by.

Why?

Because gerrymandering doesn’t care about your feelings.

If picking your voters didn’t work, Republicans wouldn’t bother rigging maps. No one knows better than Republicans that their future as a party depends on turning fewer (and whiter) votes into more power.

A genius candidate with a bursting war chest could overcome a five-point or 10-point or possibly even a 20-point advantage if everything including the earth’s axis swings to her advantage.

But no candidate is going to overcome a 45 percent Republican lean, not in a country whose largest export is now negative partisanship.

Greene could marry Hunter Biden, put her pronouns on her Twitter bio and give herself a real-time abortion on Tucker Carlson’s desk while wearing a rainbow-colored N95 mask – she’d still win.

All she needs are the votes from her party.

They’d vote for a cumquat as long as it had an “R” next to it.

The urge to lance this human boil from our body politic is obviously born of the best intentions. Democrats must contest every race, including in the second-most Republican House district in Georgia. Remember the success of Howard Dean’s “50-state” strategy?

A “whole ballot” strategy is crucial to confronting the menace of a GOP that has chosen Trumpism (aka American Putinism) over democracy.

You could even argue that investing millions in Georgia’s 14th could end up helping Georgia’s Senator Raphael Warnock, whose race could easily decide control of the upper chamber of the Congress, or Stacey Abrams, who lost to Brian Kemp in her first effort to become the first Black woman governor in US history by a mere .4 percent in 2018.

But whoever runs against Greene is going to have plenty of cash – too much cash, in fact – so why not just give to Warnock or Abrams!

Better yet, donate to Democrats in the House majority who face tight races, including 13 whose races are deemed toss-ups by the Cook Political report. Those races could decide control of the lower chamber of Congress. Even better, how about helping the effort to take control of at least one state House in every key swing state?

I hate lecturing anyone on the best ways for doing politics given the last election I won was for the honor of “Most Talkative” in the ninth grade. But I know one thing. Democracy is on the ballot in 2022.

If the GOP takes both chambers and retains control of legislatures in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, the chances of a Democrat being fairly elected president in 2024 will veer dangerously close to zero.

Don’t believe me. Believe election law expert Rick Hasen. He fears that Republicans could swipe the presidency in one of two ways.

Try employing an absurd legal theory giving state control of elections that has support from at least four Republicans on the Supreme Court.

Or try swaying the actual vote count by corrupting state and local election officials or by threatening their non-corrupt counterparts.

All that’s holding up Nightmare No. 1 is Democratic governors in blue states, all of whom are running for election and facing tight races.

Steve Bannon is aiming for Nightmare No. 2 with a laser focus on local elections to pick the hands that guide the machinery of democracy.

On the Democrat’s side, there’s no national figure trying to rally the party in preparation for a full-ballot assault favoring democracy.

Run for Something is an incredible organization. It’s focused on helping young progressives get on the ballot and win.

But Run for Something’s national budget in the last election was less than half of what Marcus Flowers has raised to lose to Greene.

By November, the millions spent on Flowers’ already-decided race may exceed the $39.3 million spent on all the 2020 races for the Michigan House. And Democratic control of the Michigan House could stop the Trump effort to steal that state in 2024 through the legislature, cold.

Patriotic Democrats should have no delusions about the enormity and importance of the challenge they face.

No Democratic president has seen his party hold both chambers of the Congress through his first midterm election since 1978. Rick Hasen has said that if Kevin McCarthy – who’d likely be the Speaker of the House were the Republicans to win in 2022 – were in chargeback in 2020, “I don’t know that we’d have a President Biden right now.”

You can’t beat Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But you can do even better.

You can help stop a plot to destroy democracy. You might even keep Greene mostly irrelevant with zero committee assignments.

This will require matching, then exceeding Republicans’ ruthless focus on winning. That begins with fixating on where our democracy is decided, not burning money to make our brains feel a little bit better.