These text messages are just ugly for Ron Johnson
A popular doomsday scenario being pushed by media pundits is that Republicans will win no matter what in 2022, which only really serves to take the fight out of Democratic activists from efforts to get out the vote or from driving up new voter registration that could give us the advantage we need to win.
The other very real danger of this scenario is that Republicans have made little effort to hide the fact that they want to be able to steal elections for as long as they can get away with it. They were prepared to do it in 2020, but were largely thwarted by the massive numbers of mail in votes. Now, as the January 6 committee is investigating the motives of the GOP leading up to that particular day, a new bombshell has gone off for Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who is up for re-election in November.
While the committee has uncovered a gap in White House phone messages sent that day, a few text messages sent by Johnson have recently resurfaced – ones he probably doesn’t care to have revealed. It turns out when he visited the state capitol last year, the meeting’s agenda was to discuss dismantling the state’s election commission, putting things into the hands of the state’s Republican legislative majority rather than an independent, non-partisan commission.
This suggests that the over 400 voter suppression bills that Republicans are desperate to force into law aren’t the only thing they’re focused on in an effort to thwart democracy, as their policies get less and less popular across the country. The good news is this is a state we can win and should put our resources into by supporting Democratic candidate Mandela Barnes – who will proudly represent the people of Wisconsin if elected – while ditching one of the worst Trump sycophants in the Senate.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making