fact. and i think that s what s so new and disturbing about their strategy is they have been doing the front of it for a long time, joy. but the back end of it is what is newer about their strategy and what makes all of the election subversion so dangerous, and we ve learned over the last year that states are national battles. if you care about what s happening in congress, you care about the national landscape, you have to care about the states, not just because states copy each other and a lot of people obviously live in those places but also the fact that states are the ones, the places where the voting happens, right, and where the election is certified before it even goes to washington and so i think we really have to pay very close attention to what s going on in places like texas, what s happening in places like virginia, and then the fact that republicans are doing everything they can to make it harder to vote, democrats who have power in washington need to do everything they c
decide who wins elections and maps hand them control of state legislators and the u.s. house of representatives. all of this is exhausting and sometimes you want to curl up in the fetal position and wait for it to pass. here s the thing, it ain t going to pass. trump and trumpism is here to stay. he s getting stronger. gop have embraced his brand of political poison. take virginia for example. in three weeks, voters will choose between democrat terry mcauliffe and democrat young kin. endorse bid donald trump. youngkin is rallying republican supporters vowing to repeal covid mandates, promising to keep critical race theory out of schools and hinting at a desire to roll back reproductive rights, and polls show the race is close, very very close. joining me now ari berman, and ”the new york times” columnist, michelle goldberg. thank you for being here. you put out the numbers on what
plan. now they know how to enact it. and the thing is, ari, they ve got a both front end and back end strategy. on the front end, they make it hard to vote, and do things to mess with gerrymandering, to ensure as many republican districts as possible, as red as possible and drown out democratic candidates putting two congressmen in the same district like they re doing in texas. on the back end, and they say, oh, the election was invalid, recount until we win. it s like they ve got both sides covered and so that is why i am concerned about a virginia race because if they get control of any part of that government, particularly the governorship, there s no way to stop them at that point. that s right. i mean, the easiest way to steal an election is to rig it ahead of time, which is why they have been so focused on voter suppression and now so focused on gerrymandering. if somehow that doesn t work, then they re going to try to steal the election after the
they are doing in texas. what i thought is it s easy to demonize the way they are doing things in texas and arkansas, but virginia is more subtle. youngkin doesn t seem as extreme but at the end of the day, the forces compelling republican politicians all compel in one direction, demonize women s right to choose, throw critical race theory, you know, red meat at the base. they re all going to do it. do you have concerns that even people who try to fool you into thinking they re a moderate like youngkin wind up playing the same game in 2024? well, i think it s become very clear in the last year that there are very few moderates left in the republican party and that attacking the democratic process is now the central organizing principle of the gop. remember, the republican candidate for governor kicked off his campaign by lying about what happened in 2020 and made that his key platform. but i think what republicans are doing in texas is so revealing because it s really the
prototype of their governing strategy, which is to pass so many extreme and unpopular laws from basically banning abortion to allowing you to carry a gun without a permit to whitewashing how history is taught, to extreme voter suppression laws. they want to be able to do all of this extreme stuff without any accountability, and that s why they re doing the gerrymandering and the voter suppression, so they can essentially override the will of the voters who want to hold them accountable. the thing is they re not satisfied to do this in places like texas and arkansas. they re coming for blue states. they made a run at the california governorship, trying to unseat the governor and replace him with a trumper. this governor in virginia, he s talking the same way that trump is, just at a lower volume, and if he gets in, the challenge democrats are going to have is that he, too, will be in position to mess with the vote in virginia in 2024, and i feel like at this point voters need to be si