Why we may be doomed already

This is a sobering article, which I think gets our precarious political situation exactly right.

Democrats control Washington but President Joe Biden is staring at a wall of conservative power, accrued over years and wielded with a ruthlessness and zeal for rule-breaking that his own party has rarely matched.

The President's struggles to implement his strategy to protect US democracy and reshape the economy to help working Americans are hampered by divisions in his own party. But a wider battle is playing out -- a generational struggle between conservatism and liberal activism that Biden appears to be losing, despite some early legislative successes, as the right's hold on critical institutions of the US political system tightens.

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McConnell's moves might be ruthless and against the spirit of democracy. But so far, Democratic leaders haven't come close to showing the same merciless capacity to maximize their power in order to enshrine long-held goals. In fact, they can't even get their own side on board. Both the voting rights push and Biden's massive climate change and social spending bill have been thwarted by the two moderates -- Sinema and Manchin.

America's slide into permanent authoritarianism, if not an outright Republican dictatorship, might really only come down to two people. Two people who love to posture about how much they support progressive, pro-democracy goals like protecting the right to vote, but aren't willing to even make voting rights an exception to the transparently un-democratic Senate filibuster. Both Sinema and Manchin are obviously already bought and paid for - modern day Quislings.

We can't civil war our way out of this. The only thing we can do is organize, communicate, vote and push our current Democratic representatives to do the right thing to save our Democracy. Even moderate Republicans will NOT lift a hand to save us. 

Vote against Republicans in every election for every office. You may not like the Democrats, but they're not the ones trying to subvert our democracy. They're the ones fighting to protect it. 

This is the only way. And because of cheating and entrenched conservative power, even that might not be enough.