Chuck Darwin<p>Two men recognized and exploited the anti-democratic loopholes within America’s rickety democracy <br>-- in order to deliver Republicans victories that they could never win at the ballot box.</p><p>Now their willfully minoritarian creations threaten the very essence of a representative democracy: </p><p>if Donald <a href="https://c.im/tags/Trump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Trump</span></a>, rightwing courts, <a href="https://c.im/tags/gerrymandered" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>gerrymandered</span></a> state legislatures and an extreme Republican <a href="https://c.im/tags/caucus" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>caucus</span></a> in the US House of Representatives create constitutional <a href="https://c.im/tags/chaos" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>chaos</span></a> over the certification of this presidential election, 👉two men cleared the path.</p><p>The single-minded determination of <a href="https://c.im/tags/Leonard" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Leonard</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Leo" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Leo</span></a> built a conservative supermajority on the US <a href="https://c.im/tags/supreme" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>supreme</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/court" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>court</span></a> and ♦️stacked lower and state courts with Republican <a href="https://c.im/tags/ideologues" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ideologues</span></a> that have pushed the nation to the right via the least accountable branch of government.</p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/Chris" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Chris</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Jankowski" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Jankowski</span></a> masterminded the partisan <a href="https://c.im/tags/gerrymanders" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>gerrymanders</span></a> that ♦️tilted state legislatures and congressional delegations across the south and the purple midwest toward extreme Republicans, <br>♦️ended Barack Obama’s second term before it started, and ♦️rendered elections in Wisconsinand North Carolina all but meaningless over the last decade and a half.</p><p>Leo and Jankowski understood, separately, that the courts and state legislatures were undervalued and often undefended targets for a deliberate strategy aimed at capturing important levers of power that sometimes float under the radar. </p><p>They could be Moneyball-ed, to borrow the term Michael Lewis used in his book about how the Oakland A’s made an end-run around large-market teams by understanding value that their opponents overlooked.</p><p>What Leo and Jankowski built separately would soon reinforce the other’s creation (with, of course, crucial assists from chief justice <a href="https://c.im/tags/John" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>John</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Roberts" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Roberts</span></a>), tightening the knots around meaningful elections, pushing policy to the extreme right and 💥making it nearly impossible for voters to do anything about it</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/04/electoral-college-map-gerrymandering?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theguardian.com/commentisfree/</span><span class="invisible">2024/oct/04/electoral-college-map-gerrymandering?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other</span></a></p>