In an inteverview in the Atlantic:
Skocpol: {Trump]’s not necessary for an authoritarian movement to use the GOP to lock in minority rule. The movement to manipulate election access and counting is so far along. I think it’s too late, and we’re vulnerable to it because of how we administer local elections.
What’s happened involves an interlocking set of things. It depends not just on candidates like Trump running for president and nationalizing popular fears and resentments, but also on state legislatures, which have been captured, and the Supreme Court. The Court is a keystone in all of this because it’s going to validate perfectly legal manipulations that really are about locking in minority rule. In that sense, the turning point in American history may have happened in November 2016.
Godfrey: The turning point toward what?
Skocpol: Toward a locking-in of minority rule along ethno-nationalist lines. The objective is to disenfranchise metro people, period. I see a real chance of a long-term federal takeover by forces that are determined to maintain a fiction of a white, Christian, Trumpist version of America.
That can’t work over the long run, because the fastest-growing parts of the country are demonized in that scheme of things. But a lot of things liberals do play into it: Democrats are the party of strong government, and they’re almost as fixated on the presidency as Trumpists are. People on the left started bashing Joe Biden less than a year into his presidency. Why won’t the president just exert his will? Well, that doesn’t work.
The hour is late. This election this fall is critical.
This supports themes I've been developing over the past year. It doesn't matter whether or not Trump's grip on the party is loosening. The party has already been corrupted by him no matter whether he runs or goes to jail. And I think it's pretty obvious to anybody who thinks about it that the southernized GOP bent on one-party rule, has no interest in preserving an open society and has enormous structural advantages that benefit it in the short run. But I've also argued that it can't retain power in the long run for the same reason that the Puritans couldn't retain power in England after Cromwell. Powermad fanatics are loathsome, and the most dynamic and affluent elements in American society simply won't put up with them.
We're not Hungary or Russia where habits of illiberalism are the historical norm. The problem for the forces of sanity in the short run is that most Americans don't think it's as bad as all that. They think that things will get back to normal again, and so the only thing that will arouse them to the reality about what is really happening is for it to happen, and that might require them to experience a good dose of illiberal minority rule.
Is there a risk that these illiberal fanatics will find a way to consolidate power through the mechanisms of the surveillance state and the military. Yes, there is. And it would be infinitely preferable for us not to run that risk, and as Skocpol says, that's why the midterms are so important.
And it could be a lack of imagination on my part, but it seems to me that this is where American federalism is a bulwark against centralized tyranny. The New England states, most of the Mid-Atlantic states, and the states on the west coast just won't go along with it. Will a GOP Federal gov't declare martial law and occupy these states if they resist? Would the military go along with such a thing? Possibly. But it's hard to imagine such a thing being sustainable.
And I could be underestimating the illiberal Right, but its leadership has yet to prove that it has the intelligence, discipline, and sophistication to pull something like this off in a society as dynamic and complex as that in the U.S. Whatever success in the U.S. the forces of illiberalism might have in the short run, the reality is to complex for them to control it in the long run. Roger Stone and Steve Bannon are trickster agents of chaos, not strategic geniuses. The other prominent GOP leaders are trolls and hacks who have yet to prove that they have a broader strategic perspective than winning the next news cycle. The militias are full of cranks high on their own delusional thinking. Too many are like the guy in Ohio who attacked the FBI office with a nail gun.
Whatever the similarities on the level of cultural breakdown, and there are many, we're not the Weimar Republic of the '20s. We're much bigger, more diverse, more economically dynamic, and too allergic to federal overreach, and the fanatics on the Right will overreach. Overreaching is what they do.
We are living in unprecedented times, and it's impossible to say how all this will play out. We are so used to thinking pessimistically, but we could be surprised by something unexpectedly positive. I do really believe in the basic decency and sanity of most Americans. The problem with them is that most don't grasp the seriousness of what we're facing. Politics is for them like sports, an entertainment, and many root for the Red Team because that's what they've always done, and most Americans have no idea how a hard turn to the Right will concretely impact their lives for the worse. They need to be aroused, but once aroused, they will push back against indecency and insanity.
So the question before is us whether we're going to save democracy the easy way by refusing to elect Republicans or the hard way by having to endure their illiberalism. We'll find out in the midterms whether the forces of sanity are already aroused enough to resist the forces of insanity. Did anybody expect Warnock and Ossoff to win in Georgia? I know I didn't. I'm feeling more optimistic than I have in a while. We'll see soon enough if I'm just indulging in wishful thinking .