Philip Rocco is an associate professor of political science at Marquette University.
Democrats appear incapable of mounting a real opposition to Donald Trump. Their weakness is the result of a decades-long hollowing out of the party, in which organized labor has been displaced by a panoply of interest groups and nonprofit organizations.
For more than a decade, Wisconsin Republicans have taken a battering ram to labor and democracy itself. The resounding victory in the Supreme Court election this week finally opens up space for reviving a working-class politics that can benefit the majority.
Milwaukee is sending two socialists to the state legislature for the first time in over 80 years. It’s the fruit of an impressive canvassing operation — and it marks the revival of working-class politics in Milwaukee, once a bastion of socialism.
Republicans are gearing up to use gerrymandering yet again to entrench their power and smother democracy at the state level. But Congress has the constitutional authority to ensure a “republican form of government” prevails at the state level — and it should act immediately to quash partisan gerrymandering and attacks on voting rights.
Before he leaves office, Trump is looking to give the GOP one last anti-democratic gift: an intentionally skewed congressional apportionment count, so Republicans can entrench their anti-majoritarian power.
A new book shows how the fragmented American state arrests democracy. What we need is nothing short of a reconstruction.
Despite the clear public health risk to voters, and despite the sensible delays enacted by fifteen other states across the country, Wisconsin is going ahead with its in-person primary election Tuesday. The coronavirus pandemic will almost certainly worsen — and state Democratic leaders aren’t stopping it.