Will Bunch, in his weekly newsletter for The Philadelphia Inquirer (gift link):

For months, there’s been a heated, endless online conversation between those fearing that an autocratically inclined Donald Trump will find a way to cancel or spoil the November midterm election, versus those who say such an extreme attack on constitutional law in the United States simply isn’t possible.

It is possible! In fact, thanks to the SCOTUS Gang of Six and some diehard Southern reactionaries, four U.S. elections have come undone already this month […]

Bunch notes Louisiana, Alabama, and Virginia (but not Tennessee). The fourth that Bunch mentions, also in Louisiana, relates to the election of Calvin Duncan, a wrongly convicted Black man who, after his release, was elected clerk of court in Orleans Parish. Lawmakers promptly abolished the position and barred Duncan from taking office.

This is straight out of the right-wing Republican playbook: make it harder to vote, gerrymander districts in their favor, litigate and legislate away unfavorable results, and, when all else fails, simply ignore the law.

Democrats as a whole believe in the rule of law and are thus reticent to follow this playbook, but the game Republicans are playing only superficially resembles the “free and fair elections” of representative democracy. Democrats need to either play the game by the same rules or change the game, because the alternative is for them to never again wield power.