On Liz Cheney's inevitable loss

 As fond as I am of Liz Cheney, anyone who bet on her surviving that primary was what Trump's Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson (and many others) called Donald Trump:  a "fucking moron."  Of course, there was something a bit troubling about that statement.  Not the "fucking" part.  The "surviving" part.  Cheney had to stay off the campaign trail because Trump's terrorists have been threatening Cheney's life, which was also sadly predictable.  This is the Republican Party.

What will or can Cheney do?  For all the speculation, she has literally zero chance of defeating Trump in the Republican contest in 2024, and I detest misuse of the word, "literally."  Can she even run as an independent, and try to play the role of spoiler?  The question is, could she draw more votes from Trump than from Biden/Harris/Whomever?  That's uncertain.  She is more conservative than Trump, but conservatism doesn't even exist anymore.  In principle, one might imagine a strategy in which she rips into the Democratic Party for a combination of big spending welfare state expansion and wokeism, while ripping into Trump for being a lying, psychopathic shit, and just being the real conservative, hoping to peel off more votes of disaffected conservatives who want an alternative, than lefties who drooled over her during the January 6 hearings.  Could it work?  Maybe.  But of course, it could also backfire and draw more votes from the Dem side.  And that still presumes that the GOP will let votes decide the outcome, and the whole problem is that the GOP has followed their autocratic godhead off the cliff, and they no longer accept the premise of democracy.  So... um...

What else can she do?  If one is sufficiently fatalistic about American democracy, then there is not much anyone can do.

And right now, American democracy is not in good shape.  In a couple of months, the 2024 presidential will be held.  If you are checking your calendar, that statement may seem odd, but it is a true statement.  The midterm election will determine who controls Congress, and who controls the various state-level positions.  The officials who win the elections in November will either a) be small-d democrats, and allow an election to be held in which votes are counted and the winner is determined by the votes, or b) be Trumpists, who will throw out any vote tallies in which Trump loses, and install him in the White House no matter how anyone votes.  If Trump wins, he wins and he gets the White House.  If Trump loses, the Trumpists declare fraud, throw out the results, and give Trump the White House.  This is happening.  It will happen.

It just happened in Wyoming.

So again, what can Liz Cheney do?

She can work, now, to make sure that her former party loses.  That's it, because everything else is bullshit.  American democracy is riding on the 2022 midterms.

And the chances of small-d democrats pulling it out are about as strong as Liz's were yesterday.

In November, America votes across the country on whether or not to keep democracy.  Democracy is going to lose because of the stupid and simplistic mathematics of midterms.  Maybe that means people are just too stupid for democracy anyway.  There are dozens of Mencken quotes I could use here, but oh, fuck it.  At least the tax cuts will help me, and if the idiots who don't vote get fucked, that's not my problem.