For almost three years now, Republicans have defended or embraced Donald Trump’s authoritarianism — from lies about his 2020 loss to inciting an insurrection — which backfired as Americans proved unexpectedly eager to vote in defense of democracy in the 2022 elections as well as in contests this year.
But Republicans aren’t giving up — they’re going even further. To an unappreciated degree, they have responded to these electoral losses with even more flagrantly anti-democratic maneuvers all around the country.
The pattern is becoming clear: Even as voters are mobilizing to protect democracy at the ballot box, Republicans are redoubling their commitment to the former president’s anti-majoritarian mode of politics. And this, in turn, is motivating voters even more.
Call it the “MAGA doom loop.” It’s playing out in state after state.
Let’s start with Michigan, where Trump’s decisive loss in 2020 led MAGA loyalists to reshape the state Republican Party around devotion to the “big lie.” Then Democrats resoundingly captured full control of the state’s government in the 2022 midterms, in which election-deniers across the country lost races up and down the ticket.
Now, the Michigan GOP is in shambles. Just this month, the chairman again called for scrutiny of supposed 2020 fraud, prompting infighting over debunked conspiracy theories. And as the New York Times reports, the party’s descent into MAGA mania is alienating donors, draining volunteer enthusiasm and driving away swing voters. All of that will further dim Trump’s 2024 chances in this crucial battleground state.
Or take Wisconsin. The GOP-controlled state legislature is threatening to impeach state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who won her seat earlier this year by 11 points, handing liberals a majority. Democrats ran ads about protecting democracy to boost Protasiewicz, arguing that her ascent would thwart attempts to overrule the state’s 2024 outcome.
Given that this message already proved successful with Democrats and swing voters, it’s all the more striking that Republicans want to respond with impeachment. Rather than causing introspection, their landslide election loss has them dredging up comments that Protasiewicz made about abortion and gerrymandered maps during her campaign — a concern dismissed by a nonpartisan state panel — as grounds for removal.
But that absurdity aside, Democrats will surely be able to use those MAGA-approved tactics to mobilize voters against Trump and Republicans in 2024. “The threat to overturn an election through impeachment pushes MAGA attacks on democracy to the top of voters’ minds,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler told me.
Then there’s North Carolina, where the GOP legislature is attempting to strip Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s control over the State Board of Elections and to pass new voting restrictions. Oddly, Trump won the state in 2020, yet Republicans — who maintain supermajority control of both state chambers — justify these moves by insisting that voting was dubious anyway, apparently consumed by continued MAGA preoccupations with Trump’s defeat.
This weird disconnect has persuaded North Carolina Democrats that Republicans are worried about the sheer closeness of Trump’s 2020 margin (just over one point), leading the GOP to limit voting by Democratic-leaning constituencies.
“They know North Carolina is getting bluer and more college educated,” Morgan Jackson, a Democratic consultant in the state, said of Republicans. Trump is still heavily favored there, but Democrats can highlight these anti-democratic moves to try to hasten that evolution. “Nothing motivates our voters more,” Jackson told me.
And in Ohio, after watching numerous pro-choice ballot measures pass last cycle, state Republicans recently pushed a referendum to raise the threshold for amending the state constitution to 60 percent of votes. The tactic was rejected by a decisive majority, suffering a crushing 14-point defeat.
While Trump is still very likely to win Ohio in 2024, the dizzying MAGA doom loop can work against Republican priorities even in red states.
As former Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper shows in his book “Laboratories of Autocracy,” states have a long history of such anti-democratic retrenchment. What’s remarkable now is how they’re forging ahead even as Americans are getting more accustomed to voting in democracy’s defense.
A new analysis by Nate Cohn of the New York Times sheds some light here. Despite President Biden’s unpopularity, recent Times polling shows his surprising resilience in swing states — and Cohn suggests this partly reflects backlash against MAGA-fied state parties in these places. By embracing Trump’s efforts to nullify his loss, they are only reminding voters that democracy is once again in peril, including whether their own votes will be counted next time.
All of this syncs up with what political science tells us: Issues become salient for voters when elites talk about them a lot. That has certainly been the case with democracy and that will surely continue next year. Big events — such as Trump’s prosecution for Jan. 6, 2021-related offenses and the GOP’s continued devotion despite those criminal charges — will only reinforce what’s at stake.
“As long as the MAGA-Trump faction remains a threat to free and fair elections, a consequential slice of the electorate will continue to vote on this issue,” political scientist Lee Drutman told me.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that the MAGA doom loop might keep on working its magic — all the way through 2024.